Why
MSF Chula?
- Classes are taught by world-renowned experts in financial field: A-list faculty, visiting professors from world class universities, and active professionals in finance and banking sector
- Internationally recognized global learning
- Breakthrough curriculum to accelerate career in finance
- Opportunities to meet in persons with distinguished executives
- Flexible weekday or weekend schedules
- Accredited by EPAS as well as Chulalongkorn Business School’s AACSB and EQUIS
- Broad portfolio of learning opportunities at partner universities around the world
HIGHLIGHT
Together with EPAS, CBS has been accredited by EQUIS, which is an international program accreditation system developed by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD). There are currently merely 100+ institutions worldwide that has been awarded EQUIS accreditation, a very few of which are finance program.
EQUIS accreditation process involves an in-depth assessment of the Program through international benchmarking, considering an extensive range of factors that include the Program’s strategy; academic rigor; international focus; quality of the student body, faculty, alumni, as well as their career progression.
Chulalongkorn Business School and the program’s achievement of obtaining EQUIS accreditation reflects our commitment to continuous improvement and dedication to excellence in financial education. For more details regarding the accreditation of Chulalongkorn Business School, please refer to https://intl-accredit.acc.chula.ac.th
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEES
Assistant Professor of Finance
Associate Professor of Finance
Assistant Professor of Finance
Associate Professor of Finance
Assistant Professor of Finance
Assistant Professor of Finance
FACULTY MEMBERS
SUPPORTING STAFF
VISITING PROFESSORS
University of Innsbruck Austria
Smith School of Business, University of Maryland
Copenhagen Business Sochool, Denmark
School of Economics and Finance, Massey University, New Zealand
Bruno R. Gerard DNB Chair Professor in Asset Management, Norwegian School of Management, Norway | Christian C.P. Wolff Professor of Finance, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg | Deborah Lucas Director of the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy, MIT Sloan School of Management, USA | Evangelos Vagenas-Nanos Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Finance, University of Glasgow, Scotland | Hendrik Bessembinder Professor of Finance, Arizona State University, USA | Keng Yu-Ho Professor of Finance, National Taiwan University, Taiwan | Marc Paolella Professor of Empirical Finance, University of Zurich, Switzerland | Meir Statman Glenn Klimek Professor of Finance, Santa Clara University, USA | Michael J. Aitken Professor of Finance, Macquarie University, Australia | Morten Bennedsen Professor of Economics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark | Paul Embrechts Professor of Mathematics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland | Roger King Professor of Finance, Hong Kong University of Science and Techonology (HKUST) | Shawn Cole Professor of Finance, Harvard Business School, USA | Söhnke M. Bartram Professor of Finance, University of Warwick, England | Tony Kang Professor of Accounting, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA | Vidhan Goyal Chair Professor of Finance, Hong Kong University of Science and Techonology (HKUST) | Donald R. Chambers Professor of Finance, Lafayette College, USA
ADJUNCT and CORPORATE CONNECTIONS
Sunti Tirapat Associate Professor of Finance, National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) | Kridsda Nimmanunta Director of Professional MBA/MSc in Finanical Investment and Risk Management, National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) | Nattawut Jenwittayaroje Director of the MSc in Financial Investment and Risk Management (MSc in FIRM) program, National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) | Chonladet Khemarattana Chief Executive Officer, Fintech (Thailand) Co., Ltd. | Chatsularng Karnchanasai, The Bank of Thailand | Chattrin Laksanabunsong Head of 10X Project, Siam Commercial Bank | Kobsidthi Silpachai Head of Capital Markets Research, Kasikorn Bank | Kris Panijpan Managing Partner/Co-Founder, 9 Basil Co., Ltd. | Paritat Lerngutai Chief Financial Officer, Sri U-Thong Limited | Pasu Liptapanlop Director, Proud Real Estate Plc. | Pisit Jeungpraditphan Audit Committee Director & Independent Director, Mudman Public Company Limited | Ponladesh Poomimars, The Bank of Thailand | Sirinattha Techasiriwan | Somjin Sornpaisarn Chief Executive Officer, TMB Asset Management | Sopon Asawanuchit Managing Partner, Confidante Capital Co.,Ltd. | Sornchai Suneta First Vice President, Chief Investment Officer, Wealth Segment, Siam Commercial Bank | Waraporn Prapasirikul Partner, Ernst & Young Office Limited | Yunyong Thaicharoen First Executive Vice President, Economic Intelligence Center, Siam Commercial Bank | Yuttapon Wittayapanitchagorn Executive Vice President, Fixed Income Investment Group, Investment Division SCB Securities Company Limited
Alumni
Overall, the findings suggest that the relationship between ESG performance and the cost of debt varies across firm characteristics, ESG dimensions, and the timing of ESG information. This study provides evidence from the Thai market context and offers insights for corporate managers, creditors, and policymakers in evaluating the role of ESG performance in cost of debt.
and extreme movements in the Thai stock market, and examines whether market-wide investor
attention amplifies this relationship. Rather than focusing on average returns or volatility, the
study directly examines stock market tail risk.
Using daily data for the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index from 2016 to 2025,
extreme movements are defined as days on which the subsequent return falls within either the
upper or lower five percent tail of the return distribution. A series of Probit models is employed
to relate these events to Federal Reserve communication days, a Google-search-based measure
of investor attention, and their interaction, while controlling for global market uncertainty, trading
volume, and the Treasury yield spread.
The results indicate that Federal Reserve communications, on their own, are not
significantly associated with the probability of extreme market movements in Thailand. Their
association with tail risk emerges only when accompanied by heightened investor attention,
suggesting that investor attention serves as an important amplification mechanism through which
Fed-related information becomes relevant for market outcomes. Notably, this amplification
effect is asymmetric: it is strongest for positive extreme movements, weaker for overall extreme
movements, and absent for negative extreme movements. The attention channel therefore
operates on the upside and does not extend to downside tail events.
These findings have implications for retail investors and risk managers by highlighting
the importance of monitoring investor attention around scheduled Federal Reserve
communications. More broadly, the study contributes to the literature on monetary policy
spillovers and investor attention by showing that the relevance of U.S. monetary policy communications for an emerging equity market depends not only on the information released,
but also on the degree of attention that information attracts from investors.
Price revisions are strongly and positively related to first-day returns, supporting the partial adjustment phenomenon, and the relationship is asymmetric, with upward revisions mattering more than downward ones. Contrary to the certification hypothesis, venture capital backing strengthens rather than weakens this relationship, and this effect comes almost entirely from upward revisions, whereas Big Four auditor reputation shows no measurable moderating effect; both patterns hold when the two intermediaries are included together.
Overall, the partial adjustment relationship is not uniform but depends on which intermediary is involved a pattern hard to reconcile with the view that all reputable intermediaries reduce first-day returns through certification as they offer useful guidance for issuers forming pricing expectations, underwriters interpreting demand signals, and regulators deciding which intermediary characteristics merit disclosure.
Empirical results reveal no evidence of a systematic, year-round pollution premium, suggesting that large-cap equities are structurally insulated from general sentiment shocks. However, highly conditional anomalies emerge during peak environmental distress; a significant PM2.5 premium appears strictly during Thailand’s acute seasonal smog crisis (March–April) under the FF3 framework, whereas the composite AQI fails to capture this effect. Fundamental analysis further confirms asymmetric sector heterogeneity: industries facing operational or mobility constraints suffer negative pricing penalties, while those benefiting from defensive mitigation demands capture significant positive premiums. Ultimately, air pollution triggers concentrated market inefficiencies strictly during seasonal crises and within fundamentally exposed sectors rather than market-wide contagion.
For the banking sector, leverage emerges as the principal determinant of capital shortfall (SRISK), while market valuation is associated with greater market exposure (MES) and lower capital shortfall (SRISK). In contrast, a bank's contribution to systemic distress (ΔCoVaR) is driven primarily by the interaction between portfolio risk and the COVID-19 crisis — within R-squared rises sharply from about 1% to over 30% once this interaction is included — supporting the view that crisis amplification, rather than structural characteristics, dominates risk transmission for banks.
For the insurance sector, results point to a different pathway: systemic risk is driven by capital structure and fundamental solvency rather than crisis amplification. Leverage and the loss ratio are robust positive determinants of capital shortfall, consistent with Hypotheses 1 and 2. Contrary to expectation, insurers with stronger solvency (higher Z-scores) exhibit higher, not lower, capital shortfalls — likely because such insurers hold substantial policy reserves, whose debt-side weight in the SRISK formula can outweigh the benefit of improved solvency.
These findings suggest that capital adequacy regulation calibrated to leverage and solvency ratios may be more relevant to capital-shortfall risk than to market contagion risk, particularly for banks during crises — with potential relevance to macroprudential frameworks overseen by the Bank of Thailand and the Office of Insurance Commission.
dynamic covariance estimation into a mean-variance portfolio framework produces measurable
improvements over a conventional benchmark. Three strategies are constructed and evaluated over
a five-year out-of-sample window from January 2021 to December 2025, applied to a universe of
ten global exchange-traded funds spanning US fixed income, developed equity markets, and
emerging equity markets. The benchmark strategy (BM) forms portfolios using historical sample
means and sample covariance. The HR+DCC strategy replaces the sample covariance with a DCCGARCH
covariance forecast while retaining historical return estimates. The XGB+DCC strategy
further replaces the return input with a 20-trading-day-ahead log return forecast from a
hyperparameter-tuned XGBoost model trained on technical and macroeconomic features, with
dimensionality reduced through principal component analysis. All three strategies maximize the
Sharpe ratio subject to long-only constraints with a 30% per-asset weight cap and are rebalanced
monthly using a rolling three-year estimation window.
Before transaction costs, XGB+DCC achieves the highest cumulative log return (38.14%)
and annualized Sharpe ratio (0.416), compared with 0.377 for BM and 0.353 for HR+DCC, indicating
that the XGBoost return forecast adds information value in gross terms. However, XGB+DCC
exhibits substantially higher monthly turnover (45.77% versus 10.07% for BM and 11.88% for
HR+DCC), and once a 0.1% proportional transaction cost is applied, its net Sharpe ratio (0.343)
converges toward that of BM (0.358), with a breakeven cost of only 0.077%. Jensen alpha estimates
for both model-based strategies are statistically insignificant relative to the benchmark. These
findings suggest that the practical value of machine learning-based return forecasting in this setting
depends critically on implementation costs, and that turnover-penalizing construction or lower frequency rebalancing may be necessary for gross gains to survive in net terms.
ten firm-level and macroeconomic predictors, can forecast the one-year-ahead realized beta of
SET100 stocks more accurately than the one-year daily and five-year monthly rolling regressions
that practitioners rely on, using monthly out-of-sample forecasts from 2015 to 2024 evaluated on a
value-weighted basis. The result suggests that the LSTM forecasts beta more accurately than the
five-year monthly regression in every size group and in both COVID-19 regimes. However, it does
not dominate the one-year daily regression. In fact, the two models are statistically equal on the
value-weighted aggregate, and this parity holds both before and after the COVID-19 break,
contradicting a common expectation that a flexible deep-learning model should beat simple
regressions across the board.
A possible explanation for this finding is that a one-year daily regression already estimates
the betas of large and liquid stocks with little bias, so little room is left for a richer model to add
value among the stocks that dominate the value-weighted measure. The network instead earns its
advantage among small and mid-sized stocks, significantly so in the mid group, and its forecasts
depend mainly on the recent historical betas rather than on the wider predictor set. Finally, these
gains are observed in some, but not all, segments of the market, as the advantage among smaller
stocks is clearest before the pandemic, so the additional cost of an LSTM is justified mainly for the
small and mid-cap segment.
The findings indicate that FinTech development is positively associated with firms' market valuation, suggesting that financial markets recognize the long-term growth opportunities created by digital financial innovation. Furthermore, the effects of FinTech development vary across firm characteristics, regions, and levels of external financial dependence. The results remain consistent under the robustness tests using an alternative measure of FinTech development. Overall, the findings suggest that the benefits of FinTech development are reflected more strongly in market valuation than in short-term operating performance.
past, crises were mostly caused by internal economic variables such as fluctuations in
interest rates and inflation. Nowadays, markets have to deal with unexpected
geopolitical crises such as the war between Russia and Ukraine and tensions between
China and Japan. These events are not just horrific for individuals, but also cause
systemic shocks to the world economy, resulting in prices rise up and influences how
fundamental investors are in the market.
Geopolitical crises occur unexpectedly, unlike economic recessions, which
give early warning signs. They happen so suddenly, it’s challenging to predict and
even more difficult to measure these events. These shocks are especially strong for
Thailand, which is an emerging market that depends on foreign investment
The pooled interaction between cash holdings and governance quality is statistically insignificant across all three performance measures, reflecting the limited within-firm variation in the Governance Score over the five-year window. The by-country analysis, however, reveals a striking contrast: Indonesia displays a positive and significant interaction on Return on Assets, while Singapore displays a negative and significant interaction on the same measure. Because the pooled interaction is not statistically significant and the country-level effects appear only in Singapore and Indonesia, and in opposite directions, the trade-off framework is offered as one interpretation of the observed heterogeneity rather than a general result across the five ASEAN markets. The contrast is consistent with the trade-off framework, under which the marginal value of additional cash depends on the joint position of firms along the cash and governance distribution.
The findings carry practical implications for three stakeholder groups. For investors and asset managers in ASEAN-5 markets, the positive cash–performance relationship supports a precautionary view of cash in emerging markets and indicates that high-cash firms are not, on average, destroying shareholder value. For corporate managers, the contrasting Singapore and Indonesia results suggest that the marginal value of additional cash depends on the firm's joint position on the cash and governance distribution: well-governed firms with already-high cash balances may face diminishing returns to further accumulation, while weakly governed firms with low cash positions may still benefit from buffering. For policymakers and regulators in emerging ASEAN markets, the by-country contrast underscores the role of country-level institutional context in shaping the cash–governance interaction and supports continued investment in governance disclosure and enforcement. The study also contributes ASEAN-5 evidence on the cash–performance–governance relationship using the granular LSEG Governance Pillar Score and a recent panel that includes the COVID-19 period.
The results show that CVaR_TL_RP partially achieves its objective. Although it does not consistently outperform all benchmarks, it improves downside-risk control in several settings and performs better when the lookback window provides sufficient tail-loss observations. The 6-month historical lookback records the strongest observed CVaR_TL_RP performance in both portfolios, suggesting a favorable balance between tail-risk estimation and responsiveness to recent market conditions. XGBoost adds value only in specific settings: it improves CVaR_TL_RP only under the 3-month lookback in the domestic portfolio, but improves the model across all tested lookback windows in the multinational portfolio, with the strongest return performance under the 3-month tactical setting. Overall, realized tail-loss risk parity is more effective with broader diversification opportunities, while XGBoost is useful as a supporting tactical signal rather than a consistently superior forecasting engine.
This study uses the event-study methodology to analyse Eurozone market reactions to seven of the European Central Banks’ regulatory measures announcements. The main purpose of this study is to address the different market reactions in the banking sector in order to better anticipate future sustainability regulations. Indeed, up to date, the ECB has not set any direct regulation in favour of fighting climate change. Instead, the ECB has announced several roadmap plans consisting of elaborating sets of sustainable regulations that are expected to be released in the near future. To the best of our knowledge, no empirical research has been conducted on recent ECB roadmap announcements and market reactions on Eurozone banks. The study aims to shed light on market behaviour following such announcements to help investors better predict market movements and regulators to elaborate such regulations.
Using firm-level fixed-effects panel regressions with cluster-robust standard errors, the study investigates whether waste recycling intensity contributes to superior financial performance and whether CSR sustainability reporting quality strengthens this relationship. Recycling activity is measured using two complementary proxies: the Waste Recycling Ratio (RWR), defined as recycled waste as a proportion of total waste generated, and the natural logarithm of recycled waste volume (LNRW), capturing both recycling efficiency and operational scale. Financial performance is assessed through Return on Assets (ROA) and Tobin’s Q, representing accounting-based and market-based performance, respectively. CSR sustainability reporting quality, obtained from LSEG (Refinitiv), serves as the moderating variable. All models control for firm size, financial leverage, sales growth, operating cash flows, GDP growth, and inflation, while continuous variables are winsorized at the 5th and 95th percentiles to mitigate the influence of extreme observations.
The empirical findings yield four principal results. First, waste recycling intensity exhibits no statistically significant relationship with ROA across all model specifications, suggesting that recycling activities do not translate into immediate improvements in accounting profitability. Second, both recycling measures are negatively associated with Tobin’s Q, indicating that capital markets may perceive intensive recycling activities as reflecting the cost burden of waste-intensive operations rather than superior environmental efficiency. Third, CSR sustainability reporting quality demonstrates a positive and statistically significant association with firm value, particularly market valuation, supporting the view that transparent sustainability disclosure enhances corporate legitimacy and stakeholder confidence. Fourth, the moderating effect of CSR sustainability reporting is largely unsupported, as interaction terms between recycling measures and CSR scores are statistically insignificant across most specifications. The only exception is the interaction between LNRW and CSR reporting quality, which exhibits marginal significance but with a negative coefficient inconsistent with the hypothesized positive moderating effect.
Overall, the findings suggest that recycling activities and sustainability disclosure influence firm performance through distinct and independent channels. While high-quality CSR reporting contributes positively to firm valuation, recycling initiatives alone do not generate immediate financial benefits and may even be viewed unfavorably by investors in emerging Asian markets from investors may perceive intensive recycling activities as a cost burden rather than a value-enhancing environmental investment. This study contributes to the literature on environmental management, circular economy practices, and corporate sustainability by providing large-scale evidence from emerging economies and highlighting the importance of distinguishing between operational environmental performance and sustainability communication in shaping financial outcomes.
First, I examine whether cash holdings demonstrate a positive relationship with corporate financial performance.
Second, I analyze how ownership concentration moderates this relationship, specifically investigating whether
higher ownership concentration weakens the impact of cash holdings on corporate financial performance.
The findings reveal a positive relationship between cash holdings and corporate financial
performance across various dimensions. Specifically, the level of cash holdings demonstrates a statistically
significant positive effect on overall financial performance, including Return on Assets, Return on Equity and
Net Profit Margin. These results provide support for the hypothesis that firms with higher levels of cash holdings
will have better corporate financial performance.
Consistent with expectations, the findings reveal that ownership concentration (measured by TOP5
and TOP10) negatively moderates the relationship between cash holdings and Net Profit Margin. While cash
holdings independently exert a positive effect on net profit margin, a higher level of ownership concentration
weakens this positive impact, suggesting that a highly concentrated ownership structure may diminish the
efficiency of cash holdings in generating profitability. However, this moderating effect was found to be nonsignificant
when evaluating corporate financial performance through Return on Assets and Return on Equity.
The findings provide suggestion for three main group of people. First, firms and management should
recognize that higher cash holdings will enhance corporate financial performance. However, this positive effect
is constrained when ownership concentration is high. Similarly, investors should evaluate cash holdings with
ownership concentration of the firm for investment decision. Finally, regulators and policymakers should
encourage high cash holdings to enhance corporate financial performance, while simultaneously implementing
stricter corporate governance and transparency mechanisms in firms with high ownership concentration to
mitigate entrenchment effect and ensures that the positive impact of cash holdings on net profit margin is not
weaken by ownership concentration.
EV/EBITDA) in transmitting Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) score changes to stock
returns in the U.S. equity market. The major question is whether investors who do not monitor
ESG scores directly nonetheless receive ESG-related information indirectly, through movements
in these valuation multiples. The sample comprises of 130 S&P 500 firms (excluding the
Financials and Real Estate/REIT sectors) over the period 2005-2024, covering 2,388 firm-year
observations.
The empirical design proceeds in two stages. Stage 1 comprises two parts: Stage 1A uses pooled
OLS regression to test the effect of ESG score changes (ΔESG) on each valuation multiple (H1),
and Stage 1B uses firm-level time-series regressions to construct an "M-indicator" that classifies
firms as having ESG-sensitive (M = 1) or ESG-insensitive (M = 0) multiples. Stage 2 then uses
pooled OLS regression to test how ESG information is transmitted through these multiples to
the cumulative abnormal return (CAR[0, +5]), computed using the Carhart four-factor model (H2).
The findings offer some support for the hypotheses, with the main observation being an
asymmetry between updates in fundamental valuation and the transmission of prices. In Stage
1A, EV/EBITDA reacts most directly and positively to ESG enhancements, aligning with its
evaluation of the entire firm regardless of capital structure, whereas P/B reacts asymmetrically,
responding negatively to ESG declines. In Stage 2, P/E acts as the main channel conveying ESG
information to short-term returns for firms sensitive to ESG (M_PE= 1), while EV/EBITDA fails to
deliver a noteworthy short-term price signal.
These findings indicate that the ESG-pricing channel is firm-specific rather than market-wide: the
market updates fundamental value through EV/EBITDA, but the signal that reaches short-term
returns travels through P/E, arguably the most widely followed equity multiple. They suggest that, for firms already identified as ESG-sensitive, investors can monitor P/E movements as a sign
of ESG impact; that corporate issuers may influence the short-term market reaction more
effectively by aligning ESG communication with EPS guidance; and that one-size-fits-all ESG
disclosure policies may have limited impact through this channel, signaling more targeted
approaches.
environmental commitments, yet evidence on how equity markets value their issuance remains
mixed, particularly in the United States. Using a sample of 187 green bond issuance
announcements by U.S. listed companies from 2016 to 2024, this study examines the short-term
stock market reaction with an event study methodology. Cumulative abnormal returns are
estimated using the market model across three event windows [−1, +1], [−5, +5], and [−20, +20]
and cross-sectional regressions test whether issuer characteristics shape the reaction.
The findings indicate that green bond announcements do not generate a positive market
reaction, the cumulative average abnormal returns are negative in all three windows, ranging
from −1.26% to −2.50%. A propensity-score-matched comparison against conventional bond
announcements confirms that this negative reaction is specific to the green attribute rather than
to general debt issuance announcements. In the cross-sectional analysis, the market response is
positively associated with the issuer’s pre-announcement ESG performance, with the effect
strengthening over longer windows, whereas first-time issuance status shows no significant
relationship with abnormal returns. These results suggest that U.S. investors value credible
environmental signals from issuers with stronger ESG performance even the overall market
reaction to green bond issuance is negative.
The findings imply that public-market investors should not interpret PE backing as a quality signal during periods of abundant PE fundraising, and that strengthening investor protection and corporate governance may be necessary before PE backing can deliver the certification benefits documented in developed markets.
valuation, using U.S. firms from 1997 to 2021 grouped by two-digit SIC industry. I introduce a new
approach in which peers are matched not only on their forecasted growth but also on their
product life cycle stage, and I construct the enterprise value multiple from net operating assets
to keep the multiple consistent with operating fundamentals. The study proceeds in two stages.
First, I estimate annual cross-sectional regressions to identify the fundamental drivers of the
multiple, finding that profitability and long-term growth explain enterprise value and that the
product life cycle is clearly linked to relative valuation. Second, I compare growth rate matching
against product life cycle matching across peer group sizes ranging from two firms to the entire
industry cross-section, computing implied values from the harmonic mean of peers' multiples
and testing accuracy through one-sided bootstrap resampling with 10,000 iterations. The results
demonstrate that valuation accuracy improves sharply from two to five peers but deteriorates
as the pool expands further, and that a small set of closely matched peers minimizes the
systematic downward bias. The results also show that growth matching significantly outperforms
product life cycle matching in every period and at every peer group size, although both methods
share a common, state-dependent error pattern that points to market-wide mispricing rather
than to weaknesses specific to either method.
Using panel data regression with industry fixed effects, the results show that corporate governance performance does not have a significant effect on dividend policy, as measured by dividend payout ratios and dividend yield. In addition, environmental and social performance do not have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between corporate governance and dividend policy.
In contrast, firm financial characteristics are found to be the main determinants of dividend policy. Profitability is positively related to dividend payments, while leverage is negatively related. Growth opportunities, firm size, and macroeconomic factors such as GDP growth and interest rates also affect dividend yield.
Overall, the findings suggest that, in an emerging market such as Thailand, dividend policy is mainly driven by financial and macroeconomic factors rather than non-financial factors such as corporate governance and ESG performance.
The empirical analysis uses an annual firm-level panel covering 15 Asia-Pacific economies. The baseline regressions include country-year and industry-year fixed effects, with standard errors clustered by firm. The results show that higher lagged Scope 1+2 emissions are associated with a higher composite implied cost of equity. The association is positive and statistically significant across all four implied cost-of-equity estimators but is not significant under the CAPM benchmark. From a valuation perspective, the result is consistent with higher-emitting firms facing a higher required return and, consequently, a lower equity valuation, holding expected earnings, growth, and other fundamentals constant.
The association is concentrated in Japan, South Korea, and China, which provide the largest usable emissions samples, and is weaker or absent in other markets. Adjusting for the probability that emissions data are available materially reduces the estimated association. Positive relationships are observed for absolute Scope 1, Scope 2, and combined Scope 1+2 emissions, but not for emissions intensity scaled by sales. Scope 3 disclosure is not significantly associated with the implied cost of equity. The emissions association is also stronger among firms with higher institutional ownership, indicating a moderating relationship rather than evidence of active institutional engagement. Governance and social performance do not significantly moderate the relationship.
Overall, the findings indicate that carbon emissions are reflected in forward-looking equity discount rates and are consistent with a carbon-related valuation discount. However, the evidence is primarily cross-sectional, subject to sample selection arising from data availability, and should be interpreted as associational rather than causal. The relationship is not supported by the CAPM benchmark or by specifications based on within-firm changes and first differences.
The results indicate that carbon intensity is negatively and significantly associated with the cost of debt, consistent with the lender myopia hypothesis whereby creditors prioritize short term financial metrics over long-term carbon transition risks. This negative relationship is concentrated among non-carbon-intensive firms and is absent in carbon-intensive sectors, where lenders appear to treat elevated emissions as an inherent industry characteristic rather than a firm-specific risk signal. No evidence is found that above-median polluters face a steeper marginal pricing penalty than lower-emitting peers within the same sector-year group, suggesting that U.S. large-capitalization lenders do not engage in within-sector carbon benchmarking. Firm characteristic analysis further reveals that carbon risk pricing is most pronounced among value firms and high-profit firms, identifying asset intensity and profitability as key firm characteristics associated with stronger carbon risk pricing. These findings contribute to the sustainable finance literature by documenting that U.S. large-capitalization debt markets do not yet systematically penalize carbon-intensive borrowers, and that mandatory carbon disclosure requirements may be necessary to enable more systematic carbon risk pricing in debt markets.
Using common stocks listed on the main board of the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) from January 2002 to December 2025, this study constructs monthly BAB portfolios following Frazzini and Pedersen (2014). The empirical results provide evidence of the low-beta anomaly, as the BAB strategy generates a positive and statistically significant abnormal return, with this evidence persisting across both large-cap and small-cap subsamples. However, the strategy also experiences large losses during several periods of strong market increases. The state-dependent analysis shows that BAB’s market exposure becomes substantially more negative when the market performs strongly, indicating negative market timing. In contrast, the optionality analysis does not provide strong evidence that the Thai BAB strategy behaves like a short-call-like option on the market. Finally, volatility management improves both risk-adjusted and factor-adjusted performance. Overall, the findings suggest that the BAB strategy delivers a significant return premium in Thailand, but this premium is accompanied by downside risk related to time-varying market exposure.
The results show that ESG performance is positively and significantly associated with both ROA and Tobin's Q, supporting the view that ESG signals firm quality and reduces information asymmetry. Human capital, measured by per-employee compensation, is likewise positively and significantly associated with both performance measures, consistent with Human Capital Theory.
For the moderating role of human capital, which is the core hypothesis, the interaction between ESG and human capital is not statistically significant for ROA but is positive and significant for Tobin's Q. This horizon-dependent pattern indicates that equity markets price the ESG–human capital complementarity before it appears in accounting profitability. In the pillar decomposition, the interaction is significant for Tobin's Q across all three pillars, with the Social pillar showing the largest effect. In the sub-sample analysis by market development, the complementarity is concentrated in emerging markets and does not appear in developed markets. This is consistent with an institutional interpretation in which ESG disclosure in developed markets has become a regulated minimum standard, compressing cross-firm variation. The findings remain robust across several alternative measures of human capital.
Overall, the study indicates that ESG is not a uniform value creator across firms, but a capability-contingent resource whose value depends on internal firm capability, particularly the human capital needed to implement ESG in practice. The findings have practical implications for managers, investors, and policymakers. For managers, increasing ESG investment alone may not be sufficient; firms should also develop workforce quality to realise the complementarity. For investors, ESG scores should be read conditionally, taking human capital quality into account, because a firm with a high ESG score but low per-employee compensation may not convert that score into returns. For policymakers in emerging Asian markets, ESG disclosure requirements may be more effective when paired with policies that support human capital development.
Policy rate changes are decomposed into expected and unexpected components using Bloomberg median analyst forecasts, and cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) are estimated using the market model over five event windows: pre-event [-2,-1] and [-1,0], the post-announcement window [0,+1] (the primary specification), and the combined windows [-1,+1] and [-2,+2]. All regressions use HC1 heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors and control for firm size, book-to-market, leverage, momentum, and crisis periods.
The results show that policy rate surprises generate significant, negative, and economically meaningful abnormal returns, with a standard 25-basis-point unexpected associated with an abnormal price decline of approximately 0.27 percentage points in the primary event window. The unexpected component of the policy change dominates the expected component by a factor of roughly five once the announcement window is correctly measured, resolving the Thailand Puzzle and indicating that Thai equity markets process monetary policy information efficiently. The market's reaction to tightening and easing surprises is statistically symmetric at the point of announcement, although asymmetric anticipatory trading is detected in the day preceding the meeting. A day-by-day decomposition of abnormal returns further reveals that the cumulative price impact peaks one trading day after the announcement before partially reversing, consistent with short-lived overreaction. Finally, the transmission of policy surprises varies significantly across industries, with Real Estate, Financials, and Healthcare exhibiting the greatest sensitivity, while the Energy sector shows no significant response, consistent with its role as a natural hedge against the commodity price conditions that typically accompany Thai monetary tightening.
These findings contribute to the literature on monetary policy transmission in emerging equity markets and offer practical implications for the Bank of Thailand's communication strategy and for investors seeking to manage monetary policy risk in the Thai equity market.
The regression analysis reveals three key findings. First, the models provide conditional evidence that target firms have an organic capital replacement rate approximately 0.19 units lower than that of their matched control group in the years preceding the buyout. Second, this severe underinvestment behavior is a unique characteristic of target firms and cannot be fully explained by operating cash flow factors or excessive debt conditions under normal market environments. Finally, the empirical evidence finds no statistically significant difference in capital allocation between the MBO and IBO groups, a result that contradicts the hypothesis of excessive managerial empire-building prior to MBOs.
Overall, rather than supporting intentional managerial undervaluation, these findings point toward a universal sponsor selection mechanism. They demonstrate that whether the acquirers are incumbent managers or external financial institutions, the transition to a private company frequently occurs after a period during which the target firm falls into a state of capital depletion and its physical assets are continuously allowed to deteriorate. These findings hold significant policy and practical implications for corporate boards and investors, highlighting the need to recognize that both internal and external sponsors systematically target firms with historically neglected asset bases, positioning them as prime candidates for privatization and subsequent operational restructuring.
Managerial confidence is extracted from Thai-language Oppday presentation transcripts using three language model (LLMs). The resulting evaluations are aggregated under both binary (Very Cautious and Overconfident) and three-class (Very Cautious, Confident and Overconfident) classification schemes. Using a sample of 2,461 Oppday presentations from 2022Q4 to 2025Q2, the study employs event study methodology to examine average abnormal returns (AAR) and cumulative average abnormal returns (CAAR) and cross-sectional regression analysis to assess the relationship between managerial confidence and firm-level cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) while controlling for earnings-related effects and form characteristics.
The results show that firms classified as Overconfident generally experience positive abnormal returns before and around Oppday presentations, but these gains weaken or reverse over the medium term. Firms classified as Confident exhibit similar but less pronounced patterns, whereas Very Cautious firms generally experience declining cumulative abnormal returns following the presentations. The findings also indicate that the choice of sentiment classification scheme affects the observed results, with the three-class scheme producing clearer behavioral distinctions but fewer statistically significant relationships.
This study contributes to the literature by providing evidence from Oppday presentations, a disclosure environment that differs from earnings calls, and demonstrate the applicability of LLM-based sentiment analysis for Thai-language corporate disclosures. The findings suggest that investors initially respond positively to managerial confidence, although these effects diminish over time, highlighting the importance of both disclosure context and sentiment measurement in understanding market reactions.
expressed through portfolio holdings, influence the ESG performance of Thai-listed firms. Using a panel dataset of 178 Thai-listed firms over 2022–2024, this study constructs a holdings-based Fund CSR preference measure following Hwang et al. (2021) and employs panel regression models with firm and year fixed effects and two-way clustered standard errors to identify the holding-based channel, the moderating role of CSR-friendly ownership, the conditioning effect of stock liquidity, and the heterogeneous influence of fund activeness on corporate ESG outcomes.
The baseline results confirm that a one standard deviation increase in lagged Fund
CSR preference is associated with an approximately 1.96-point increase in firm ESG score in the subsequent year, statistically significant at the 5% level, establishing that the investor preference channel documented in developed markets is also operative in the Thai emerging market context. Conditioning Fund CSR preference on CSR-friendly ownership does not produce a detectable marginal effect, consistent with the absence of formal ESG mandate declarations among Thai mutual funds and the information asymmetry inherent in a less developed institutional engagement infrastructure. In contrast, the interaction between Fund CSR preference and Amihud illiquidity is negative and highly significant at the 1% level, confirming that the holding-based channel is substantially stronger in more liquid stocks, consistent with the exit threat mechanism. The sub-sample analysis by fund activeness reveals that Fund CSR preference is significant only in the Low Activeness group, a pattern better explained by a composition effect whereby passive funds systematically concentrate in larger, better-governed firms, rather than a genuine reversal of the disciplinary mechanism.
Using separate panel regressions across 7 Industries, the results show that peer influence does not affect all industries in the same way. The consumer products industry shows a significant negative peer effect suggesting that firms in highly competitive market reduce dividend to assets ratio and keep more cash for future growth instead of following peers. For the moderating effects, the interaction terms for cash holdings and corporate governance are significant only in the agro & food industry. This shows that firms with strong liquidity and governance have more flexibility to make independent dividend decisions rather than follow industry trends. Overall, the results show that the impact of peer effect depends strongly on the industry environment and the firm’s internal conditions.
The findings fill the research gap in emerging markets, providing implications for corporate managers, boards of directors and dividend-focused investors. It serves as a reminder that while firm and macro factors are the starting point, the industry peer effect should not be overlooked when assessing dividend policy.
prices, gold prices, and the stock market indices of developed and emerging
markets—the MSCI Developed and MSCI Emerging indices, with MSCI World used
as the developed-market proxy—using a Johansen cointegration and error-correction
framework. Specifically, the study compares the dynamics between Bitcoin prices and
stock market indices, and between gold prices and stock market indices, across
developed and emerging markets under identical econometric specifications. The
analysis further evaluates whether adjustment dynamics differ across market
structures and crisis regimes.
Using 2,348 daily observations from 2017 to 2025, the study analyzes four
bivariate systems: Bitcoin–MSCI Developed, Bitcoin–MSCI Emerging, gold–MSCI
Developed, and gold–MSCI Emerging. The sample is divided into three regimes: pre-
COVID, COVID, and post-COVID. Johansen cointegration tests are used as the
formal test of whether a long-run equilibrium relationship exists, while Vector Error
Correction Models are used to examine adjustment dynamics. Conditional on
cointegration, the VECM adjustment coefficients (α) identify which variable corrects
toward equilibrium, and the absolute magnitude of the significant adjustment
coefficients indicates which side adjusts faster.
The results indicate that Bitcoin prices exhibit stronger evidence of longrun
linkage with the MSCI Developed index than with the MSCI Emerging index.
Evidence of a long-run equilibrium relationship is concentrated primarily in the
Bitcoin–MSCI Developed pair, where both Bitcoin and the MSCI Developed index
respond to deviations from equilibrium, although Bitcoin bears the main adjustment
burden. In contrast, gold does not show persistent full-sample asset-side adjustment
toward a long-run equilibrium with either equity index, but it does exhibit asset-side
adjustment within the COVID-period cointegrated systems, indicating that gold’s
correction toward equilibrium appears mainly under crisis conditions.
This study contributes to the literature by providing a like-for-like
Johansen–VECM comparison of Bitcoin and gold against the same developed- and
emerging-market equity benchmarks across matched crisis regimes. By separating
the existence of cointegration from the direction and speed of error correction, the
study shows not only whether long-run equilibrium relationships exist, but also which
asset or index bears the adjustment when deviations occur. The findings have
practical implications for portfolio and risk management: Bitcoin’s diversification role
against developed-market equities may be horizon-dependent, while gold’s
adjustment behavior appears more crisis-specific. Overall, the results suggest that
Bitcoin and gold occupy different positions in the long-run cross-asset structure, and
that Bitcoin should not be treated as a direct substitute for gold in long-horizon
portfolio analysis.
performance influences two critical stages of the mergers and acquisitions (M&A)
process: transaction completion and post-acquisition purchase price allocation.
Despite the growing importance of ESG considerations in corporate valuation and
investment decision-making, limited evidence exists regarding their impact on M&A
execution and accounting outcomes. To address this gap, this study develops a twostage
empirical framework using a sample of Healthcare and High Technology
acquisitions announced between 2019 and 2025.
In Stage 1, logistic regression models are employed to examine whether target ESG
performance aRects the likelihood of deal completion. ESG performance is measured
using both continuous ESG scores and threshold-based indicators. In Stage 2, ordinary
least squares (OLS) regression with robust standard errors is used to investigate
whether target ESG performance and acquisition rationale disclosures influence the
proportion of purchase price allocated to goodwill under ASC 805. Financial,
transaction-specific, and deal-structure controls are incorporated throughout the
analysis.
The results indicate that target ESG performance does not have a statistically
significant eRect on M&A deal completion. This finding remains robust across
alternative ESG specifications, including continuous ESG measures and industryadjusted
ESG thresholds. Instead, transaction characteristics such as cross-border
status and payment method are more strongly associated with deal completion
outcomes. Similarly, target ESG performance does not significantly influence goodwill
allocation in completed transactions. Acquisition rationale disclosures also fail to
demonstrate a significant relationship with the goodwill ratio. Rather, traditional
financial fundamentals, particularly target profitability and relative transaction size,
emerge as the primary determinants of purchase price allocation.
Overall, the findings suggest that while ESG considerations have become increasingly
prominent in corporate strategy and valuation discussions, they do not appear to
materially influence either transaction execution or post-acquisition accounting
recognition within the sample examined. The study contributes to the ESG and M&A
literature by providing evidence that traditional financial and transaction
characteristics continue to dominate both deal completion outcomes and purchase
price allocation decisions.
The results show that board size has a negative and statistically significant effect on firms’ cost of debt, suggesting that firms with larger boards tend to face lower borrowing costs. However, board independence does not have a significant direct effect on cost of debt. The findings also show that control of corruption and political stability have significant negative direct effects on cost of debt, indicating that firms operating in stronger institutional environments benefit from lower borrowing costs. However, the interaction terms between board structure and the institutional variables are positive and statistically significant, which is opposite to the predicted direction. This suggests that board structure does not become more effective in reducing the cost of debt when firms operate in stronger institutional environments.
This study provides practical implications for investors and lenders by showing that both board structure and country-level institutional quality matter in assessing firms’ cost of debt and credit risk. For firms and regulators, the results also suggest that board structure policies or regulations could be developed to support effective monitoring and governance quality, which may help reduce borrowing costs.
The findings confirm the existence of a tail risk premium, high tail risk funds outperform low-risk funds by 1.92% per annum, though this compensation is less than half the size of what is observed in the U.S. market. Furthermore, this premium is entirely relative, as Thai funds generally underperform broader market benchmarks regardless of their risk level. The results also identify investor cash flows and active management deviations as the primary drivers of a fund's exposure to extreme risk. Crucially, by testing the impact of mandatory holding periods in tax-saving funds, the study reveals that capital lock-ups significantly reduce tail risk exposure. This strongly supports the Stability Hypothesis, demonstrating that locking in capital protects managers from fire-sale redemption pressure, and firmly rejects the notion that such safety nets encourage reckless risk-taking.
markets in three Emerging Asian economies namely China, Thailand, and Indonesia over the
period 2001 to 2024. Drawing on the wealth effect hypothesis, the collateral channel, and the
participation wave framework, the study investigates whether housing price appreciation drives
stock market returns and whether stock market booms redirect capital into the housing sector.
The homeownership rate and stock ownership rate are introduced as country-level moderators
to capture how the breadth of market participation shapes the intensity of wealth spillovers.
The empirical analysis employs panel fixed effects estimation, pooled OLS, and seemingly
unrelated regression to exploit both cross-country and within-country variation.
The central finding is a null result. At the annual country-aggregate level, neither
housing returns nor stock returns are statistically detectable predictors of one another, and the
moderating roles of ownership rates in those transmissions are indistinguishable from zero. This
outcome does not contradict urban household-level evidence from China or long-run evidence
from advanced economies; rather, it suggests that classical wealth and collateral transmission
mechanisms do not aggregate cleanly to annual national signals in these settings, likely due to
limited mortgage infrastructure, high data aggregation, and short panel length.
A secondary, tentative pattern emerges in which broader stock market participation is
negatively associated with subsequent housing returns, broadly consistent with portfolio asset
substitution. This finding is marginal in statistical significance and rests on partly-interpolated
ownership data, and is therefore flagged as a hypothesis for future research rather than an
established channel. Across multiple specifications, the interest rate emerges as the most reliably
significant determinant of both asset markets, affirming monetary policy as a meaningful lever
for cross-market stability in the region.
to global financial conditions, affects lending behavior and forward-looking loan loss provisioning
across ASEAN banking systems, and whether this relationship varies with a country's level of
financial development. Using a quarterly panel of 22–23 commercial banks across six ASEAN
economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) from 2020 to
2025, the study applies a two-way fixed effects model with bank-level clustered standard errors.
The results show no significant relationship between the foreign currency deposit ratio
and aggregate lending, though domestic deposit reliance significantly boosts corporate lending. For
risk recognition, the aggregate provisioning result is insignificant, but a subsample of eight banks
with full IFRS 9 stage-level disclosure shows a significant positive relationship. Financial
development moderates the foreign funding lending relationship. Below a threshold index of 0.70,
foreign currency deposits reduce lending, while above it, the effect turns positive, though only at
the 90 percent confidence level.
Using high-frequency Bitcoin price data around 65 scheduled FOMC announcements from 2018 to 2025, the main event window used as a robustness check. Continuous volatility is measured using jump-robust realized measure methods, the policy-action surprise is measured through a WIRP-based Target Surprise, and statement language is scored on Tone and Uncertainty dimensions using a fixed rubric. Because the event sample is small and high-frequency outcomes are skewed, the study relies on transparent group comparisons and permutation inference rather than high-parameter regression.
The results that FOMC event windows differ significantly from matched non-event windows, particularly in continuous volatility and jump-like diagnostic activity; this is the strongest evidence in the study, while signed-return predictability remains weak. The action channel, measured through Target Surprise, is mixed across the full sample but becomes more visible after late-2020. The words channel, measured through Tone and Uncertainty, provides weaker evidence, consistent with the central-bank-communication literature's view that language effects require more nuanced interpretation than the policy decision itself.
These findings support the view that Bitcoin has become more sensitive to macro-financial information around central bank communication, but this sensitivity is expressed mainly through elevated volatility and trading activity rather than predictable directional returns. The study contributes to the literature by separating the actions and words channel in a digital-asset setting and highlighting FOMC announcements as high-frequency events for Bitcoin market.
risk-adjusted performance among Thai fixed income mutual funds. Using a sample of 89 openended
domestic fixed income mutual funds across six AIMC categories over the period January
2021 to December 2025, the study employs a three-stage analytical framework comprising Returns-
Based Style Analysis (RBSA), a multi-factor performance model, and Pearson Correlation Analysis.
The results indicate that funds with higher style consistency, as measured by the R² from
RBSA, tend to generate superior risk-adjusted returns compared to their lower-consistency
counterparts. This finding holds consistently across all six AIMC categories and is robust to an
alternative peer-relative return measure. The evidence provides empirical support for the Agency
Theory framework, suggesting that mandate adherence serves as a mechanism to mitigate agency
costs and is positively associated with superior fund performance in the Thai fixed income mutual
fund market. These findings suggest that R² can serve as a reliable fund screening tool for investors,
complementing traditional performance metrics.
corporate debt composition in Thailand using a Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR)
framework. The analysis covers 204 listed firms from the SET100 and MAI, excluding
the financial sector, from 2007 Q1 to 2024 Q4. Monetary policy surprises are
measured as deviations of Bank of Thailand policy rate decisions from Bloomberg
consensus forecasts. The results support the bank lending channel: an unexpected
monetary tightening lead to a significant and persistent increase in bank borrowing,
consistent with a precautionary credit line drawdown mechanism. In contrast, bond
issuance shows no significant response to monetary policy shocks, suggesting
structural insulation of the Thai corporate bond market. Bond market access does
not reduce the bank borrowing response, contradicting the substitution hypothesis.
Crisis-period analysis reveals that the precautionary drawdown mechanism intensifies
during periods of uncertainty, particularly during the COVID-19 era. Overall, monetary
policy transmission in Thailand operates primarily through committed bank credit
facilities rather than shifts in debt composition.
(FOMC) announcements on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), specifically focusing on the
SET100, SET50, and SETEX50 indices. FOMC policy statements are released while the Thai market
is closed, local investors face a unique time-zone mismatch that results in an overnight
information shock, forcing the market to digest and price accumulated expectations at the
following morning's opening bell. Using 30-minute high-frequency intraday data from January
2018 to June 2022, this research utilizes an event study framework, panel regression, and a
GARCH(1,1) model to analyze market reactions across normal, Pre-FOMC, and FOMC
announcement days. The study isolates these effects by conducting cross-sectional analyses
across investor types (institutional versus retail), industry sectors (Financial, Real, Service), and
distinct monetary policy actions (rate hikes, cuts, and holds).
The empirical findings reveal that while the FOMC announcement window generally
depresses overall baseline returns, it does not exert a predictable or systematic directional effect
on intraday abnormal returns. Instead, the market's reaction is prominently captured through
conditional volatility, which significantly increases and clusters during both the Pre-FOMC and
actual announcement days. The study uncovers behavioral differences among market
participants, retail-dominated stocks exhibit structurally higher conditional volatility throughout
the entire event timeline, aligning with noise trading behaviors. In contrast, institutional-dominated
stocks experience a distinct volatility surge during the Pre-FOMC window,
demonstrating that informed traders engage in strategic pre-positioning and hedging before the
news is officially released. The Financial sector exhibits the highest early baseline of abnormal
volatility. Ultimately, these findings expose the information asymmetry within the Thai equity
market and provide a deeper understanding of how emerging markets absorb major
macroeconomic news on a high-frequency basis
The direct results show that DIO, DPO, and DSO have negative and statistically significant effects on ROA, indicating that firms with longer inventory holding periods, payable periods, and receivable collection periods tend to experience lower profitability. The negative effects of DIO and DSO are consistent with the hypotheses. However, the negative effect of DPO contradicts the hypothesis and the traditional view that longer payable periods improve profitability. This finding suggests that extended supplier payment periods may be associated with lower profitability rather than improved profitability.
The moderating results indicate that board gender diversity does not influence all working capital components in the same way. Female board representation weakens the negative relationship between DSO and ROA, supporting the hypothesis that board gender diversity helps mitigate the adverse profitability effects of longer receivable collection periods. In contrast, female board representation strengthens the negative relationship between DPO and ROA, which contradicts the hypothesis that female board representation would weaken the positive relationship between DPO and ROA. Meanwhile, the estimated moderating effect of female board representation on the DIO–ROA relationship is negative but statistically insignificant, providing no evidence that board gender diversity moderates the relationship between DIO and ROA. Industry-specific regressions further show that the moderating role of board gender diversity differs across sectors. Overall, the findings suggest that board gender diversity does not moderate all working capital components uniformly, but its role is more evident in receivables and payables.
This study provides practical implications for managers, boards, and external stakeholders. For managers, the findings highlight the importance of managing inventory, payables, and receivables separately rather than relying solely on aggregate working capital measures. In particular, firms should closely monitor excessive inventory holding, delayed customer collections, and extended supplier payment periods, as each may reduce profitability through different operational channels. For boards and governance committees, the results suggest that board gender diversity can strengthen oversight of working capital decisions, especially in relation to receivables and payables. For investors, creditors, analysts, and lenders, the findings offer useful signals for evaluating whether firm profitability is supported by efficient working capital management or weakened by inefficiencies in individual working capital management components.
of Leverage and Cash Holdings in Thailand
The analysis employs a panel regression model with firm fixed effects to test three main hypotheses. First, I examine whether geopolitical risk negatively affects firm performance. Second, I investigate whether higher leverage strengthens this negative effect, based on the expectation that more financially constrained firms are more exposed to external shocks. Third, I analyze whether larger cash holdings buffer firms against the adverse effect of geopolitical risk.
The findings reveal a relationship that differs across the two performance measures. Geopolitical risk has a negative and statistically significant effect on Tobin’s Q in the complete model, while its effect on ROA is weaker and not statistically significant. This provides partial support for the first hypothesis and indicates that geopolitical risk is reflected more clearly in market-based valuation than in current accounting profitability. Since the complete model includes interaction terms, the direct coefficient on geopolitical risk should be interpreted together with the moderating effects of leverage and cash holdings.
The moderating results are mixed. The interaction between geopolitical risk and leverage is not statistically significant, and its sign is unstable across specifications; therefore, the second hypothesis is not supported. In contrast, the interaction between geopolitical risk and cash holdings is positive and significant for Tobin’s Q in the main specification, while a directionally similar but weaker pattern is observed under alternative proxy definitions. This supports the third hypothesis in the market-valuation dimension and indicates that cash holdings help reduce the negative valuation effect of geopolitical risk.
These findings contribute to the understanding of how geopolitical risk influences firm performance in an emerging market and highlight cash holdings, rather than leverage, as the more reliable buffer against this form of uncertainty. The results have practical implications for corporate managers who manage liquidity under external uncertainty, for investors who assess firm exposure to geopolitical risk, and for policymakers concerned with firm resilience in the Thai market.
artificial intelligence came to be one of the key focuses of many organizations around the world.
The literature in developed markets, such as the U.S. market, revealed that the AI adoption
positively affects the firm value, sales, and innovation. (Babina et al., 2024; Soto, 2025). Regarding
Thailand context, although some literature studies the impact of digital technology and digital
transformation on firm performance such as Return-On-Asset (ROA) and the firm value such as
Tobin’s Q and show that the digital technology have the positive effect on those two outcomes
(Moolkham, 2025;Jungprasert, 2024), there is no study that specifically focuses on the impact of AI
on firm performance. Hence, this study aims to be the first study investigating the effectiveness of
AI on firm efficiency (e.g. ROA) and firm value (Tobin’s Q). To make the AI usage measurement
more rigorous and less prone to “AI-Washing”, our study also is the first study in Thailand which
measure the digital or AI usage by using context-based textual analysis approach proposed by
Yang et al. (2024) which does not focus only on the frequency of AI related keyword but also the
action vocabulary around them. Moreover, this study also explores the role of institutional investors
on monitoring and encouraging the real AI usage in the firm rather than just superficial mentions in
the report. In other words, we test whether institutional ownership can enhance the AI effectiveness
in the firm or not. The result from our study shows that disclosure of AI usage in firms can
significantly improve the firm value in subsequent years. But, AI adoption may not suddenly improve
the firm efficiency in a short time period as we cannot detect the significant effect in our study.
Regarding the institutional investor, the institutional investors have a positive effect to improve the
AI effectiveness, specifically to improve the margin of the firm.
cryptocurrency futures and spot markets before and after Bitcoin Spot ETF approval in January
2024. Using four datasets covering Bitcoin and Ethereum, we estimate Error Correction Models with
five news sentiment categories across two market periods. Results confirm long-run cointegration
throughout all datasets. After ETF approval, the short-run price correction mechanism becomes less
effective, Bitcoin's news sensitivity shifts from geopolitical to monetary policy signals, and news
categories are found to influence the speed of price adjustment. Pre-ETF, futures adjust significantly
faster than spot. Overall, ETF approval altered both how price gaps are corrected and which news
matters in cryptocurrency markets.
of exit route at the end of the investment lifecycle. Specifically, it investigates
whether a portfolio company is exited through a secondary buyout or through an
alternative route, including trade sales and initial public offerings (IPOs). The
analysis focuses on how market conditions, sponsor capabilities, and inter-sponsor
relationships shape exit decisions within the private equity industry.
The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 225 exits originating from
U.S. public-to-private leveraged buyouts entered between 2000 and 2015 and
tracked through 2025. Logistic regression models are employed to evaluate the
likelihood of a secondary buyout exit. The explanatory variables include industry
dry powder, credit market conditions, sponsor track record, network embeddedness,
holding period, and transaction size. To reduce potential endogeneity concerns, all
explanatory variables are measured using information available before the focal exit
year.
The findings reveal that sponsor track record is the strongest predictor of
exit route selection. Sponsors with more extensive prior exit experience are
significantly less likely to complete a secondary buyout, suggesting that
experienced firms may possess greater access to alternative exit opportunities.
Industry dry powder is also negatively associated with the probability of a
secondary buyout, while credit market conditions exhibit the expected directional
effect but are not statistically significant. In contrast, network embeddedness does
not demonstrate a significant relationship with exit choice in either the baseline
model or a series of robustness tests.
The results point to sponsor-specific capabilities as more important than
financing conditions or network position in explaining secondary buyout activity.
The study contributes to the private equity literature by providing evidence that exit
route selection is influenced primarily by differences in sponsor experience and
capabilities rather than by embeddedness within co-investment networks. The
evidence sheds light on the strategic considerations underlying private equity exit
decisions and on the evolving role of secondary buyouts within the broader exit
market.
among financial institutions listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand following the 2020
adoption of TFRS 9 and its expected-credit-loss framework. Using a panel of 432 firmyears
from 43 institutions (12 commercial banks and 31 non-bank financial institutions,
NBFIs) over 2014-2025, the study tests whether two observable dimensions of audit
quality, audit fees and auditor tenure, strengthen the responsiveness of provisions to
credit-risk deterioration (recognition responsiveness) and weaken their association with
pre-provision earnings (earnings neutrality), whether any such effects intensified after
TFRS 9, and whether they differ between banks and NBFIs. Each model is estimated by
two-way fixed-effects panel regression separately for banks and NBFIs, with the crossequation
difference tested by a Wald test and directional hypotheses evaluated one-sided.
The evidence provides little support for an audit-quality disciplining role: none of
the directional hypotheses is supported, two interactions are significant in the direction
opposite to prediction (longer NBFI tenure is associated with less responsive
provisioning, and higher NBFI fees with a stronger provisions-earnings link), and no
bank-NBFI heterogeneity is detected. The negative tenure result is consistent with the
familiarity-threat rationale for auditor rotation, while the positive fee result most
plausibly reflects the confounding of audit fees with institution size and complexity. The
findings constitute an informative null: in an emerging-market, bank-oriented setting
with near-universal Big-4 coverage, observable audit quality does not measurably
discipline provisioning under the expected-credit-loss regime.
adoption by property funds and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) listed on the Stock
Exchange of Thailand is associated with fund valuation, stock price volatility, and investors’
required return, and how this relationship evolves over time following adoption.
Using a fixed-effects panel regression model with fund and year fixed effects and
clustered standard errors, based on an unbalanced panel of 341 fund-year observations covering
51 Thai property funds and REITs from 2016 to 2025, the study tests four hypotheses grounded
in disclosure theory, ESG literature, and asset pricing frameworks. Fund valuation is measured
using the price-to-net asset value (P/NAV) ratio, stock price risk is measured using annualized
return volatility, and dividend yield is used as a proxy for investors’ required return.
Contrary to the predictions of disclosure theory, the findings show that ESG disclosure
adoption is associated with a statistically significant decline in fund valuation (coefficient = -0.104,
significant at the 1% level), a result that remains robust after controlling for macroeconomic
conditions. The study finds no evidence that ESG disclosure adoption reduces stock price
volatility, as the coefficient on the lagged ESG disclosure indicator is statistically insignificant
across specifications. The evidence on dividend yield is mixed: ESG disclosure adoption shows
no significant effect under the baseline specification, while the dynamic analysis reveals that
dividend yield increases significantly with the number of years since adoption, contrary to the
expectation of a declining risk premium over time.
Taken together, these findings suggest that ESG disclosure adoption alone does not yet
function as an effective valuation-enhancing or risk-reducing mechanism among Thai property
funds and REITs during the sample period. Investor decisions continue to be driven more strongly
by traditional financial fundamentals, such as leverage, income expectations, and macroeconomic
conditions, than by ESG disclosure status. The results contribute to the ESG and real estate
finance literature by offering evidence from an emerging market setting where ESG disclosure remains voluntary, and carry practical implications for fund managers, investors, and regulators
seeking to strengthen the effectiveness of sustainability reporting in the Thai REIT market.
Public Firms
holdings, short-term credit financing, and dividend payout ratios using a quarterly panel of S&P 500
firms from 2008 to 2023. Four MPU measures are employed — market- based, news- based,
orthogonalized monetary policy surprises, and FOMC Dissent estimated via firm fixed-effects panel
regressions with firm- clustered standard errors and firm- size heterogeneity tests. Contrary to the
precautionary savings prediction, higher MPU is associated with lower cash holdings, consistent
with a cash depletion mechanism whereby firms draw on internal liquidity rather than building
reserves. For credit financing, continuous MPU measures produce negative or insignificant effects,
while FOMC Dissent generates a positive and significant response, reflecting pre-emptive borrowing
before anticipated rate increases. Dividend payout ratios increase significantly under three of four
measures, consistent with the agency motive that firms distribute more cash to reduce managerial
discretion under uncertainty. Heterogeneity analysis shows that cash depletion is uniform across
firm sizes, the negative credit effect concentrates among large, capital-market- exposed firms, and
dividend responses vary by firm size and the nature of the MPU signal.
quarter whether it reflected in stock returns on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). This work
done by using Carhart four-factor model on 398 non-financial firms over 2006Q2-2024Q4 (~7,300
firm-quarter observations), four hypotheses are tested on this work- which is direction, asymmetry,
event-period moderation, and firm size moderation of the market reaction. The results show a
significant on asymmetric hypothesis, which state that increases in earning manipulation risk
generate negative abnormal returns, while decreases do not show significance sign. Then the event
based and firm size hypothesis are not supported. This finding suggests Thai investor respond to
earning manipulation signals only on the downside, consistent with loss-aversion, and highlight the
M-score as a useful downside screening tool alongside a need for improved disclosure practices.
characteristics and trading activity and returns in the Thai stock market (SET and
MAI, 2002–2025). Thailand is well-suited for this study, given its strong lottery
culture and retail investors' 35–50% share of trading volume. Using the Lottery-
Like Index (LLI) framework of Gould et al. (2023), based on idiosyncratic
volatility, idiosyncratic skewness, inverse price, maximum daily return, and
negative past return, this study assesses lottery-likeness for 948 stocks across
122,196 stock-month observations, applying two-way fixed-effects panel
regressions with trading turnover (H1) and FFC4-adjusted abnormal returns (H2) as
dependent variables.
The results show that stocks with higher LLI scores are associated with
significantly higher trading turnover, though this relationship weakens over time,
consistent with increasing market efficiency. For H2, the results confirm a lottery
tax of approximately -0.41% per year, which intensifies in the post-COVID period
even as trading activity has moderated. The lottery tax is most pronounced among
retail-dominated and SET-listed stocks. Daily mood seasonality analysis shows that
trading activity declines while the lottery tax intensifies around holidays, contrary
to Gould et al. (2023), suggesting liquidity and substitution effects characteristic of
emerging markets.
This study extends the LLI framework to an emerging market context,
highlighting how lottery-like characteristics are associated with market
inefficiencies and a return penalty of approximately -0.41% per year for stocks with
high LLI scores.
The finding shows a positive association between ESG rating disagreement and financial distress risk, while no significant relationship show up for cash flow volatility or profit volatility. Contrary to expectations, analyst coverage does not weaken this positive association; instead, it appears stronger among firms with higher analyst coverage. Governance quality, on the other hand, does weaken positive association between ESG rating disagreement and financial distress risk. Together, these results suggest that analyst coverage and governance quality play different roles in how ESG rating disagreement relates to financial distress risk within a developed market context. The findings also provide useful insights for managers, investors, and policymakers in understanding the relationship between ESG rating disagreement and firm's financial distress risk
Furthermore, a cross-sectional Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis is conducted across multiple sectors including Financials and a targeted high-asymmetry cohort to determine if firm-specific fundamentals (Market Capitalization, Book-to-Market ratio, and Debt-to-Equity leverage) explain the magnitude of the panic response g. The empirical cross-sectional findings reveal a lack of statistical significance and low explanatory power across these variables, indicating that internal balance sheet metrics do not reliably predict a firm's correlation breakdown. We conclude that asymmetric correlation is primarily driven by exogenous macroeconomic shocks and systemic investor behavior, highlighting the critical need for dynamic risk management strategies beyond traditional static portfolio diversification.
The empirical results indicate that, in contrast to evidence from developed markets, overnight–daytime return reversals in Thailand exhibit limited predictive power for future returns at the aggregate level. Although economically meaningful patterns emerge when overnight and daytime returns are examined separately, their effects largely offset each other, resulting in weak overall return predictability. This cancellation effect suggests that overnight information is incorporated into prices relatively quickly and that daytime trading does not systematically overcorrect overnight price movements. The findings are consistent with features of the Thai market, including its auction-based trading structure and the prominent role of retail investors, which may compress price discovery into narrow trading windows. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by providing out-of-sample evidence on the tug-of-war mechanism in an emerging market and highlights the importance of market structure and investor composition in shaping the predictive content of overnight–daytime return dynamics.
The empirical evidence strongly confirms that Thai earnings announcements are made up predominantly of firm-specific information, as compared with industry-level information, consistent with developed-market profiles. The conditional spillover study, however, reveals characteristic Thai capital market characteristics. Firms reporting significant earnings surprises demonstrate no systematic evidence in precipitating larger peer reaction, and leaders within industries demonstrate no identifiable information transfers, as hypothesized, despite their leadership status in markets. The evidence suggests that the characteristic institutional conditions in Thailand lead to information dynamics different from theoretical expectations. The paper provides support for the argument that investors and financial regulators in emerging markets, on average, should focus primarily on firm-specific information rather than industry-level information in making investment decisions or crafting disclosure standards.
The results reveal that governance rating coverage and overall rating levels do not significantly affect earnings management, indicating that being rated by governance agencies does not necessarily constrain opportunistic reporting behavior. Furthermore, discrepancies among rating providers show no significant relationship with earnings manipulation, suggesting that rating disagreement does not materially weaken governance monitoring. Collectively, these findings imply that while governance ratings capture some aspects of transparency, their practical influence on managerial behavior remains limited in the ASEAN context. The study highlights the need for more consistent governance rating methodologies and stronger enforcement mechanisms to enhance the credibility and effectiveness of corporate governance evaluations in emerging markets.
pricing in the Thai bond market during periods of distress. Using quarterly mutual fund holdings
from Morningstar and transaction-level data from the Thai Bond Market Association (ThaiBMA)
between 2015 and 2024, the analysis examines whether mutual funds exhibit “Flight from Liquidity”
behavior—selling their most liquid assets under stress—and how such behavior affects bond yield
spreads.
Three hypotheses are tested. First, whether mutual funds are more likely to sell
government bonds than corporate bonds during distress periods. Second, whether funds exhibit
flight-from-liquidity behavior within each bond segment by selling the more liquid bonds of the same
issuer. Third, whether government bond liquidity affects the corporate–government yield spread,
particularly whether the liquidity premium in government bonds declines during distress periods.
The results show that mutual funds are significantly more likely to sell government bonds
than corporate bonds during distress, indicating that government bonds serve as the main source
of liquidity when funds need to rebalance their portfolios. Within each bond segment, both
government and corporate bonds display clear flight-from-liquidity patterns, as more liquid bonds
are more likely to be sold during distress. On the pricing side, the liquidity premium embedded in
government bonds is positive in normal periods but diminishes during distress, leading to a
narrowing of the corporate–government yield spread.
Overall, the findings confirm that liquidity risk affects both selling behavior and pricing in
the Thai bond market and provide new evidence on liquidity dynamics in emerging markets.
Sentiment regimes powerfully amplify flow effects. Bullish domestic sentiment and high domestic turnover significantly increase leverage (sentiment-exploitation). Conversely, deteriorating sentiment and foreign outflows intensify debt reliance (stress-compensation). Domestic flows have stronger, more immediate leverage effects than foreign flows, revealing a behavioral asymmetry. Cyclical firms respond aggressively to domestic factors and sentiment, while non-cyclical firms prioritize foreign capital stability.
The findings highlight the critical role of investor composition and sentiment dynamics in shaping leverage adjustments in Thailand.
Empirical analysis reveals that policy uncertainty, particularly through Forecast and News channels, significantly affects momentum returns, with the strongest effects concentrated among low ESG-rated and domestically focused firms. Cyclical sectors display heightened sensitivity to both EPU and CPU, while international firms show weaker or isolated effects, indicating a buffering role of geographic diversification. Importantly, momentum alpha that is initially significant in low ESG portfolios becomes insignificant once uncertainty variables are introduced, suggesting that policy uncertainty is a key driver of momentum profits. These findings highlight how macroeconomic and climate policy dynamics shape the performance of sustainable investment strategies and provide insights for investors and policymakers on managing ESG momentum exposures under uncertainty.
Remarkably, I discovered asymmetric effects where retail trading amplifies certain anomalies while reducing others, contradicting traditional noise trader theories. Furthermore, the integration of investor-type volume indicators with long-short anomaly strategies revealed that institutional investors in Thailand do not uniformly enhance market efficiency as observed in developed markets. Surprisingly, foreign investors exhibited patterns similar to individual investors in certain anomalies. Unfortunately, volume-weighted portfolio constructions showed only selective improvements over traditional-weighted portfolio constructions, indicating that optimal weighting strategies for long-short portfolios depend on the specific anomaly being exploited.
The findings indicate that modern machine learning models significantly outperform the traditional logistic regression model in both the overall unsecured retail market and the subprime market. This superior performance is likely due to modern models' ability to capture various customer profile, non-linear relationships and interactions among variables, which are more prevalent in riskier subprime borrowers.
However, in the prime market segment, where borrowers tend to have more stable behaviors, modern models do not show a significant advantage over logistic regression. This is because the prime segment generally exhibits simpler, more linear patterns in the data, which logistic regression can model effectively without the need for more complex algorithms.
Although a Probit model was initially applied to estimate the likelihood of safe haven behavior, it was not pursued further due to a lack of variation in the dependent variable; most healthcare sectors did not exhibit safe haven characteristics, making the model statistically unviable. Accordingly, this study does not conclude that the healthcare sector served as a safe haven during COVID-19. However, the OLS regression suggests that certain pandemic-related factors—particularly strong government responses and lower death rates—may have contributed to a reduction in correlation between healthcare and market indices, especially in countries with effective public health infrastructure.
and ESG performance on corporate debt financing costs of the firms in Asia-Pacific countries during the year 2014 to 2023. Grounded in signaling and stakeholder theories, the analysis assesses whether lenders respond more to transparency or actual ESG implementation.
The findings show that ESG performance consistently has a stronger and more significant impact on reducing borrowing costs than ESG disclosure. In models including both variables, only ESG performance remains significant. Robustness checks using an ESG gap score reveal that in developed economies, firms with misaligned disclosure and performance are penalized, while in emerging economies,
visibility through disclosure is more favorably received.
Overall, the results emphasize that ESG performance plays a more critical role than disclosure in shaping debt financing outcomes, though its influence varies by institutional context.
These findings reveal the importance of Diversity, Inclusion, and People development (DIP) that enhances a firm’s value, both the combination and each dimension, even in the diverse economy context like Emerging Asia. Corporate governance and ownership structures matter, but their influence is not a universal amplifier of DIP initiatives. Instead, its moderating effect is different on each DIP dimension.
The findings reveal that only awards received by competitors significantly reduce a firm’s abnormal returns, supporting both the Asymmetric Information Theory and Social Comparison Theory. In contrast, the gross opening revenues of a firm’s own movies do not lead to abnormal returns, aligning with the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which suggests that investor expectations are already priced into the market.
(ESG) performance and corporate cash holdings among publicly listed firms in the Asia-Pacific region from 2010 to 2023. Grounded in stakeholder theory and the precautionary motive for cash, the analysis examines whether firms with higher ESG performance hold less cash and whether this relationship is moderated by financial constraints and financial distress. Employing panel fixed-effects regression, two-stage least squares (2SLS), and system GMM methods, the results consistently indicate that ESG performance is negatively associated with cash holdings. The moderating analyses reveal that financially constrained or distressed firms with high ESG
performance tend to retain more cash, highlighting the interplay between ESG and liquidity strategies. The study also shows that institutional quality strengthens the ESG–cash holding relationship. These findings contribute to the ESG-finance literature by offering region-specific insights from the Asia-Pacific, an underexplored and institutionally diverse region and provide practical implications for corporate financial policy and sustainability integration.
The analysis employs a panel regression model with firm and year fixed effects to test three main hypotheses. First, I examine whether corporate strategic aggression positively affects ESG scores. Second, I investigate potential non-linear relationships where excessive strategic aggression may lead to diminishing returns in ESG scores. Third, I analyze how institutional investor ownership moderates the strategic aggression-ESG relationship.
The findings reveal nuanced relationships between strategic aggression and ESG scores across different dimensions. Corporate strategic aggression demonstrates positive but statistically non-significant effect on overall ESG scores, positive and statistically significant effects on Environmental and Governance scores, while showing limited impact on Social performance. This provides partial support for the hypothesis that strategically aggressive firms achieve better ESG outcomes, particularly in environmental innovations and governance structures that align with their competitive strategies.
The study confirms a non-linear, inverted U-shaped relationship between strategic aggression and overall ESG scores, supporting the diminishing returns hypothesis. This indicates that while moderate levels of strategic aggression enhance ESG score, excessive aggression becomes counterproductive, particularly in social and governance dimensions.
Contrary to expectations, institutional ownership negatively moderates the relationship between strategic aggression and ESG performance. While both strategic aggression and institutional ownership independently contribute to better ESG scores, higher institutional ownership weakens rather than strengthens the positive impact of strategic aggression on ESG scores. This suggests that institutional investors serve as a restraining force on aggressive strategies, prioritizing long-term sustainable value creation over short-term competitive gains.
These findings contribute to the understanding of how corporate strategic choices influence sustainability performance and highlight the complex role of institutional investors in shaping ESG outcomes. The results have important implications for corporate managers seeking to balance aggressive growth strategies with ESG responsibilities, institutional investors considering their governance role, and regulators interested in enhancing corporate sustainability frameworks.
seen as the option market's prediction of how much the returns of the underlying asset will fluctuate in the future, over the remaining duration of the option.
If option markets operate efficiently, this implied volatility should serve as an
accurate and comprehensive forecast of future volatility. This means that implied
volatility should already incorporate all the relevant information available in the
market that could help predict future volatility; no other market variables should add
any further predictive power. This interpretation of implied volatility as an efficient
predictor of future volatility is widely used in various financial analyses.
Although the Black-Scholes implied volatility can be seen as a prediction of
future volatility, it can also be understood as a way to measure an option's price,
taking into account specific factors like how far the option is in or out of the money
and the time remaining until it expires. All existing option pricing theories agree that
option prices should rise and fall along with the volatility of the underlying asset. as
confirmed in Theorem 6 of Bergman et al. (1996).
Beside what has been studied in academic areas, It's widely observed in
options markets that implied volatility (IV) often surpasses realized volatility (RV).
This difference is usually explained by a few key factors.
Firstly, imbalances in the demand for and supply of options can play a
significant role. A strong demand for options from those looking to hedge against
risk, especially businesses and real money investors managing foreign exchange
exposure, can push option prices higher. On the other hand, the capacity of market
makers and financial institutions to sell options can be limited by regulations and risk
management rules.
Secondly, the risk aversion of market participants contributes to this
phenomenon. Essentially, people are willing to pay a premium to protect themselves
against extreme market events. This leads to a "volatility risk premium" built into
option prices, which is particularly noticeable in options with longer time horizons
and with deep out-of-money strikes.
The predictability of implied volatility and market efficiency remains an
ongoing area of research, raising questions about the potential for exploiting the
relationship between implied and realized volatility to generate consistent returns
through options trading strategies. To address this, we investigate whether mispricing
between implied volatility and realized volatility can be capitalized upon using an "at-the-money" (ATM) straddle strategy in the USD/THB currency options market. This
strategy, which involves simultaneously selling a call and a put option with the same strike price and expiration date, offers immediate premium income but carries the risk
of potential losses if the underlying asset's price experiences significant fluctuations.
The rationale behind can be simplified as higher Implied than realized volatility will
cause the options price to be overstated compared to its potential loss which can occur due to future movement of underlying asset. Hence, we will be selling overpriced options in our strategies.
Our study focuses on the USD/THB currency pair due to its importance in the
Thai economy and the prevalent use of USD/THB options for hedging purposes. We
hypothesize that implied volatility typically exceeds realized volatility in the
USD/THB options market, leading to inflated option premiums relative to the
potential payoffs from underlying asset price movements, and thus creating
opportunities for profitability.
In addition to the basic implied and realized volatility relationship, we
examine the profitability of other aspects of implied volatility, specifically the term
structure and volatility smile. Both of these phenomena are likely to incorporate
higher volatility risk premiums and irrational mispricing by the market, potentially
offering enhanced profitability compared to our base hypothesis.
Recognizing that selling and holding options until expiration without hedging
does not constitute a pure volatility play and can be influenced by scenarios of high
volatility with minimal price movement or low volatility with significant directional
price moves, we refine our analysis to include delta hedging. This involves daily
adjustments to the portfolio through the buying or selling of USD/THB forwards to
neutralize the delta exposure arising from the option positions, effectively isolating
the impact of volatility from underlying price movements.
By gaining a comprehensive understanding of the profitability of these
strategies, we aim to determine whether the observed returns are primarily driven by
mispricing between implied and realized volatility, as suspected. This will be
achieved through OLS regression analysis, examining the relationship between
strategy returns and explanatory factors. This analysis will include further
investigation of non-base strategies to define the drivers of each strategy's additional
return.
This paper will contribute to the deeper understanding of FX options trading
profitability, an area where existing research remains relatively underdeveloped,
particularly regarding the specific characteristics of options and the USD/THB
currency pair. The focus on USD/THB options is important given the growing FX
options market in Thailand. As Thai clients increasingly embrace complex financial
products for both hedging and investment purposes, this market offers significant
potential. Furthermore, FX options related products can offer more business opportunities compared to more established instruments like FX forwards and
traditional savings accounts. This research will enable service providers, such as
commercial banks, to better understand the profitability of their FX options offerings,
leading to optimized product design that benefits both the institutions and their
clients.
Among ESG pillars, the Social Score shows the strongest risk reducing effect. Additionally, ESG proves more effective in mitigating firm-specific risk during periods of economic crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, China stock market crash and
the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Firms involved in ESG controversies tend to experience higher idiosyncratic risk, reinforcing the importance of transparency and stakeholder
trust. These findings highlight the financial value of ESG as a risk management tool in volatile, high-growth markets and offer practical implications for investors, firms, and policymakers across Emerging Asia.
The analysis uses monthly data from January 2017 to December 2023, covering both active equity funds and corporate bond funds. The models include fund level characteristics such as size, expense ratio, age, past flows, and return volatility, along with macroeconomic variables including inflation, exchange rates, interest rates, and industry sentiment.
The first result shows that AGP has a negative but statistically insignificant effect on fund flows for both active equity and corporate bond funds, although the direction is consistent with prior research only for equity funds. The second result reveals that fund’s βΔGP has a significant negative impact on future fund flows in active equity funds, implying that investors reduce capital allocation to funds that are more sensitive to economic risk, highlighting investor aversion to macro-sensitive strategies. In contrast, the relationship between fund’s βΔGP and fund flows is not statistically significant for corporate bond funds. Lastly, no significant interaction is found between βΔGP and periods of extreme market stress. Overall, while the influence of GP ratio is unobserved on corporate bond fund flows, its influence is notable in the case of equity funds with high βΔGP.
While average returns during the TOM period are consistently higher than those during the Rest-of-the-Month (ROM), none of the differences are statistically significant, suggesting a weak and inconsistent TOM effect. Further calendar-based tests during the Turn-of-the-Year (TOY), Turn-of-the-Quarter (TOQ), and Index Rebalancing (IR) windows also show no robust amplification of the TOM anomaly. Regression results on trading activity similarly reveal no statistically significant increase in volume during TOM periods, though trading by institutional and foreign investors appears directionally elevated in large-cap stocks.
These findings challenge prior evidence from developed markets and imply that the TOM effect in Thailand has weakened or become conditional on firm size and market structure. By integrating investor-type trading volume analysis, this study provides novel evidence that the TOM anomaly is not a persistent feature in Thailand’s increasingly efficient and institutionally influenced equity market.
Evidence in Thailand Equity Mutual Funds.
performance, persistence, and fund flows in the Thai mutual fund market. The
research focuses on three main objectives. First, it examines the relationship
between Morningstar ratings and performance metrics including net return, 1-factor
alpha, 4-factor alpha, Sharpe ratio, and Sortino ratio and risk metrics, including
maximum drawdown, standard deviation, and Value-at-Risk, using both matchedpair
analysis and regression methods. Second, it explores the persistence of fund
performance through quintile transition matrices, regression analysis of lagged 4-
factor alpha, and the cross-product ratio. Third, it analyzes the relationship between
Morningstar ratings and mutual fund flows by regressing fund flows on lagged
flows, ratings, performance, and ESG investment.
This paper finds that higher Morningstar ratings (3 to 5 stars) are
significantly associated with better fund performance. Highly rated funds tend to
deliver higher net returns, stronger alpha, and better risk-adjusted performance, while
also exhibiting lower risk. Based on this, one might expect consistent performance
over time, making investment decisions easier. However, the results in this paper also
show that during crisis the performance and rating persistence are exists but it is not
consistent in the long term. This implies that strong past performance does not
guarantee strong future performance. These findings are consistent with Carhart
(1997), who suggests that persistence is short-lived and tends to disappear over time.
Similarly, Elton, Gruber, and Blake (1996) find evidence of short-term persistence,
but not strong enough to indicate long-term outperformance. Regarding fund flows,
the results suggest that Morningstar ratings alone do not have a significant impact on
investor flows. Instead, fund flows are more strongly influenced by lagged flows,
past performance, fund characteristics (such as size, age, and expense ratio), and ESG
investment. This indicates that investors respond more to actual performance and
qualitative signals than to the rating label itself.
Governance (ESG) materiality issues on stock returns in the Stock Exchange of
Thailand (SET). Leveraging data from 90 listed companies between 2018 and 2021,
the research examines whether firms focusing on material ESG issues demonstrate
superior performance. Using an innovative SASB, MSCI, and MSCI-SASB ESG
materiality framework, the study differentiates between material and immaterial ESG
issues. By constructing portfolios based on ESG materiality scores and evaluating
their performance through a comprehensive five-factor model, the research provides
nuanced insights into ESG investing in an emerging market context. The study
addresses a critical gap in the existing literature by exploring ESG materiality's
impact in the Thai market, where unique market characteristics may influence the
relationship between sustainability factors and financial performance. Additionally,
the research analyses potential differences in stock returns between firms listed on
the Refinitiv ESG rating and those not included in the rating. The findings of this
study exhibit that different ESG materiality frameworks as well as portfolio
weighting methodologies provide different results on the relationship between ESG
materiality and stock returns in Thailand. As the equal-weighted portfolio exhibits
consistently higher volatility than the value-weighted portfolio. This research
contributes to the understanding of ESG materiality in emerging markets and offers
valuable implications for investors seeking to integrate ESG considerations into their
investment strategies.
volatility-managed strategies using Thai open-ended domestic equity funds from
January 2005 to December 2024. The study investigates whether volatility-managed
strategies improve risk-adjusted returns across both active and passive funds,
examines the performance drivers through volatility timing and return timing
analysis, and analyzes whether investors implement these strategies in practice
through fund flow behavior.
The results show that volatility-managed strategies improve risk-adjusted
performance and survive transaction costs but only work effectively during specific
market conditions. Thai mutual fund investors demonstrate awareness of volatility
timing benefits, as evidenced by reducing fund positions when volatility is high
across all volatility measures.
The result of this study finds that. First, it investigates the extent to which Thai REITs engage in dividend smoothing, finding that REITs in Thailand adjust dividends rapidly to align with their target dividend payout. Second, the results show that regulatory mandates by SEC—particularly the 2021 policy requiring REITs to distribute at least 90% of net income—positively influence dividend payouts, underscoring the importance of policy enforcement in promoting dividend discipline.
The results show that companies with high regulatory risk usually keep more cash because they expect extra costs from new rules. However, risks from natural disasters or moving to a low-carbon economy have less direct effect, because companies often use other ways like insurance or long-term plans to deal with them. The study also finds that when climate policy is more uncertain, companies save more cash to be safe. This was clear after big policy events, such as when the United States left the Paris Agreement.
Finally, the study shows that companies with financial problems have less ability to change how much cash they hold when they face climate risks. This means that strong financial health and clear government policies help companies get ready for climate challenges. This paper gives useful ideas for investors and policymakers and shows why stable and clear climate policies are important for business planning.
Results indicate a significant ESG yield spread in both corporate and government segments prior to the policy. However, while the spread remained unchanged for government bonds, it narrowed for corporate bonds after the policy launch, suggesting a potential shift in market dynamics. The findings highlight the importance of investor demand and policy design in shaping ESG bond pricing and offer practical insights for policymakers, issuers, and investors in promoting sustainable finance in emerging markets like Thailand.
The results show that board gender diversity is negatively and significantly associated with Tobin’s Q, indicating that increased female representation on boards is linked to lower market valuation. However, no significant effect is found on accounting-based performance measures, including ROA, ROE, and NPM. Additionally, internationalization is found to moderate the relationship between board gender diversity and profitability, with a significant interaction effect observed only for Net Profit Margin.
These findings suggest that while gender diversity may not enhance short-term financial performance or market perception in this context, it becomes more valuable in internationally engaged firms. The study contributes to the understanding of how board composition and strategic orientation interact to shape
has changed how the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) responds to regulatory policy announcements affecting EUA supply and demand. Using event study and volatility analysis, it compares 81 events across Pre-MSR (before 2019) and Post-MSR (after 2019) periods.
Cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) are estimated via a mean-adjusted model and
tested using Welch’s t-test. Volatility is assessed through a GARCH(1,1) model, with structural differences evaluated using a Likelihood Ratio Test and a bootstrap test.
Findings show that the MSR has reduced overreaction and volatility in specific
contexts—particularly during recurring supply-related events like Auctions and MSR updates. CARs for MSR-related events improved significantly, and volatility persistence declined post-MSR.
While variance drops in individual categories were not statistically significant, patterns suggest improved market stability.
Overall, the MSR acts not only as a supply tool but also as a behavioral anchor,
strengthening market resilience where predictability and transparency are highest.
The findings reveal that Scope 1 emissions are positively and significantly associated with ROA, indicating that emission-intensive firms—especially in production-driven industries—may achieve higher profitability. Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions do not exhibit significant effects on accounting-based performance, and corporate governance does not play a clear moderating role in this context.
However, in market-based performance analysis using Tobin’s Q, the winsorized results show that all emission scopes have a negative and statistically significant impact. Moreover, corporate governance is found to intensify this negative effect, suggesting that investors expect more from well-governed firms and may penalize them more severely for higher emissions.
This research offers valuable insights for regulators, policymakers, financial institutions, firms, and investors by highlighting the critical role of maturity mismatch. The findings may support to improved financial regulations and institutional frameworks, and enhanced corporate transparency, and greater investment awareness in the Thai capital market.
The findings reveal a U-shaped relationship between integrity and trade credit: only firms with exceptionally high integrity receive significantly more trade credit, while those with moderate levels do not experience a meaningful advantage. This positive effect disappears during periods of financial crisis but becomes more pronounced among firms with low market power. These results suggest that integrity may function as a strategic intangible asset—helping less powerful firms gain supplier trust in normal times, though its influence weakens when systemic risks dominate decision-making.
Using cross-sectional regression analysis with CAPM-adjusted abnormal returns, the study tests two hypotheses: (1) high excess volume during positive return months predicts negative future abnormal returns, and (2) high excess volume during negative return months predicts positive future abnormal returns. The empirical results provide statistically significant support for the second hypothesis (β = 0.613, p < 0.05), indicating that each unit increase in excess volume during market declines predicts a 61.3 basis point increase in next month's abnormal returns. However, the first hypothesis lacks statistical significance.
Portfolio analysis reveals that a trading strategy based on these findings generates positive raw returns (0.103% monthly) but exhibits high market exposure (beta = 1.018) with minimal risk-adjusted abnormal returns (Jensen's alpha = 0.064%). The strategy's adjusted R-squared of 0.653 indicates that portfolio performance is primarily driven by systematic market movements rather than superior stock selection.
The study documents pronounced seasonal effects, particularly significant underperformance in March (-105.3 basis points) followed by recovery in April (+96.8 basis points). These findings contribute to the literature by demonstrating that volume-based technical indicators can identify behavioral patterns in emerging markets, though practical implementation faces challenges from transaction costs and modest economic magnitude. The research provides empirical support for behavioral finance theories in a non-Western context while highlighting the asymmetric nature of volume-based signals in identifying oversold versus overbought conditions.
A regime-specific pairs trading strategy between SET50 futures and the TDEX ETF reveals persistent, regime-dependent arbitrage opportunities. Notably, one regime generates consistent net returns after transaction costs, although limited trade frequency raises robustness concerns.
The findings highlight the limitations of static models and underscore the value of adaptive, regime-aware strategies for exploiting arbitrage in futures markets for both regulatory policy designers and investors.
The results show that lottery stocks underperform other categories. Fama-Macbeth result supports that stocks classified as lottery exhibit lower returns in the subsequent month. The pair of lottery stocks held and not held by Thai mutual funds can generate positive alphas under both models on value-weighted basis, but the significances disappear under equal-weighted scheme suggesting exposure to size effects.
The analysis uses a sample of 66 matched pairs of green and conventional corporate bonds, matched through Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to ensure comparability across key bond characteristics. Key variables are obtained from Bloomberg for the period 2019 to 2024.
The results confirm the existence of a modest green bond premium, with green bonds trading at slightly lower yields than comparable conventional bonds, after controlling for liquidity differences. However, firm-level environmental performance does not have a statistically significant effect on the green premium. In addition, there is no evidence that social or governance performance moderates the relationship between environmental performance and green premium.
Further analysis reveals that the environmental, social, and governance pillars each independently contribute to mitigating mispricing, highlighting their distinct roles in enhancing pricing accuracy. ESG controversy does not significantly moderate the ESG - mispricing relationship. However, the interaction between ESG performance and analyst coverage is significant, implying that analyst coverage strengthens ESG’s effect on reducing mispricing. Analyst coverage alone also shows a strong negative association with mispricing, underscoring its role in enhancing market efficiency.
GLOBAL LEARNING
WORKSHOPS AND TALKS
STUDENT ACTIVITIES
1 year work experience

1 year work experience

PROGRAM
| Term 1 (August-November) |
Term 2 (December-March) |
Term 3 (April-July) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan A (Thesis) |
5 Core Courses | 1 Core Courses +3 Elective Courses +Proposal | 1 Elective Course +Thesis |
| Plan B (Special Project) |
5 Core Courses | 1 Core Courses +3 Elective Courses+SP(l) | 4 Elective Courses + SP(ll) + Comprehensive Exam |
Plan B: Students with at least 1 year work experience
PROGRAM
| Term 1 (August-November) |
Term 2 (December-March) |
Term 3 (April-July) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| YEAR 1 | 3 Core Courses | 2 Core Courses | 1 Core Course + 2 Electives Courses |
| Term 4 (August-November) |
Term 5 (December-March) |
Term 6 (April-July) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| YEAR 2 | 2 Electives Courses+ Comprehensive Exam | 2 Elective Courses +SP(l) | 1 Elective Course +SP(ll) |
Course List
- MANDATORY
- ELECTIVE: Corporate Finance
- ELECTIVE: Risk Management
- ELECTIVE: Investment
- ELECTIVE: Others
types and roles of various financial institutions in intermediation process; determination of interest rates; roles of regulators;
central banks; commercial banks; money supply process; debt markets; equity markets; foreign exchange markets;
financial instruments; efficient market hypothesis; financial markets in international context.
Condition: Prerequisite 2604631 and 2604632"
Financial planning and assessment of financing needs; cost of capital estimation and capital budgeting; discounted cash flow valuation model; weighted average cost of capital; adjusted present value model; corporate financial decisions and their impact on firm valuation"
Condition: Prerequisite 2604643"
Fundamentals of pension plans; pension plan valuation concepts; pension funding concepts; solvency concepts; asset and liabilities management of pension funds; optimal asset allocation and risk management for pension plans; capital requirements and economic capital."
With proficient professors and interesting curriculum, a year spent in this program was a great opportunity for accelerating my career path in finance."
UNIVERSITY FACILITIES
FACULTY FACILITIES
OPEN FOR APPLICATION 2025 - Admission
13 May 2026 (Approx 17:00 - 20:00) (Flexible)
