The National Pension Service (NPS) of Korea suddenly announced that they would suspend their stock lending business from October 22, 2018. Using this ideal setting, the authors investigate the effects of this suspension on market quality and short-selling activities. The authors find that stock return does not increase after the suspension of stock lending for both the KOSPI and KOSDAQmarkets. However, the returns of stocks with NPS ownership decline less than thosewithout NPS ownership. The authors also find that the institutional and foreign investors' short sales did not increase in both markets after the lending business suspension by the NPS. In addition, the effect of suspension of stock lending onmarket quality is mixed, so the authors cannot conclude that market quality has improved. Overall, the authors' results indicate that the stockmarket, especially for short-sales activity, has not been affected by the suspension of the stock lending service by the NPS.

As of March 2021, the National Pension Service (NPS) is the world's 3rd largest pension fund with 872.5tn won (KRW) in management. Recently, the NPS proposed a policy to gradually reduce the proportion of domestic stocks in the portfolio in the future. This change in the asset allocation strategy is related to the NPS's exit strategy for domestic stocks. This study aims to examine the market impact cost asymmetry between buys and sells of the NPS and suggest a trading strategy for mitigating the market impact cost. The results are as follows. First, there is an asymmetry between buys and sells in the market impact cost of the NPS. The market impact cost of the NPS is gradually increasing over time. In particular, the market impact cost from selling has increased significantly in recent years. Second, past returns, volatility, liquidity and trading intensity can be found as external factors affecting the asymmetric market impact cost of the NPS. Although there is no difference between the buying and selling ratios of the NPS, the market impact cost from sells is relatively higher than that from buys. Third, after controlling for the order execution size of the NPS, the longer the trade execution period, the lower the market impact cost. This result implies that the strategy of splitting orders as a way to reduce the market impact cost is effective. The trading behavior of the NPS directly or indirectly affects other investors. If the sell of the NPS incurs excessive market impact cost, the negative impact on the stock price will be further exacerbated. Therefore, it is necessary for the NPS to reduce the market impact cost through split trading in executing orders in the domestic stock market. Findings of this study provide implications for countermeasures and long-term management strategies that can minimize the market impact cost of the NPS in the process of reducing the proportion of domestic stocks in the future.

This study proposed an optimal model to examine the relationship between the Bitcoin price and six macroeconomic variables - the Bitcoin price, Standard and Poor's 500 volatility index, US treasury 10-year yield, US consumer price index, gold price and dollar index. It also examined the effectiveness of the vector error correction model (VECM) in analyzing the interrelationship among these variables. The authors employed the following approach: first, the authors sampled the period August 2010-February 2022. This is because Bitcoin achieved a market capitalization of more than US$1 tn over this period, gaining market attention and acceptance from retail, corporate and institutional investors. Second, the authors employed a VECM with the six macroeconomic variables. Finally, the authors expanded the long-run equilibrium relationship (time-invariant cointegration)-based VECM to develop a time-varying cointegration (TVC) VECM. The authors estimated the TVC VECM using the Chebyshev polynomial specification based on various information criteria. The results showed that the Bitcoin price can be modeled with the VECM (p 5 1, r 5 1). The TVC approach generated more explanatory power for Bitcoin pricing, indicating the effectiveness of the approach for modeling the long-run relationship between Bitcoin price and macroeconomic variables.

This paper examines whether long-term foreign investors may force firms to use a costly dividend to mitigate inefficient managerial behavior. The authors also hypothesize that the relation between foreign investment horizons and payout policy depends upon the extent of the corporate governance. The authors find that firms held by long-term foreign investors make dividend more often in the subsequent years. The authors also find that foreign investors with long-term investments do not cause firms to pay dividends when firms have strong corporate governance. It suggests that long-term foreign investors serve as a substitute for strong corporate governance with respect to controlling agency conflicts.