Assessment of Pricing Efficiency and Levels of Concentration in Cashew Nuts Market in South Western Nigeria

Cashew nuts market in south western Nigeria is characterized by price fluctuations through space and time. This may be linked with the large number of market intermediaries who act between the primary producers and the markets. The sample for the study comprised 250 cashew nuts marketers who were randomly selected from the five south westem states of Nigeria. About 76 % of the cashew nuts marketers had up to secondary school education and 86% of them had 15-year marketing experience and below. Pricing efficiency of the marketers was highest in Ogun state with average efficiency level of85.1% and least for Oyo state （68.9%）. In all, 720 tonnes were transacted in the region with 206 marketers handling maximum of 2 kg per month per individual. Gini-coefficient estimate of 82.3% implied that there was a concentrated market for the cashew nuts. To further increase the pricing efficiency of the commodity it is necessary to reduce the costs incurred on various physical aspects in marketing system. Corporate organizations, government agencies and co-operative societies should assist the cashew nuts marketers in the provision of credit facilities so as to ensure a higher level of pricing efficiency, stable market prices and reduced level of concentration of the marketers.

IPO Pricing Efficiency in China： A ChiNext Board Focus

This paper examines what determines the offer price for a ChiNext IPO and discusses how we can improve the current ＂Chinese-style＂ bookbuilding process. We establish that the ChiNext IPO underwriter relies upon the institutional investors to discover the issuer＇s intrinsic value （in the form of a preliminary price）, and that the same underwriter adjusts the preliminary price to establish the final offer price, based on its assessment of the institutional investors＇ motivations. Since the underwriter does not have discretionary power in new share allocation, this ＂Chinese-style＂ bookbuilding process contains certain pitfalls from an information asymmetry standpoint. The institutional investors mainly use ＂simple and direct＂ variables that do not adequately reflect the issuer＇s true intrinsic value to develop the preliminary price, while the underwriter adjusts that price downward to establish the offer price to clear the market, as a measure to counter a perceived free-rider issue among the institutional investors. This process, in effect, contributes to initial IPO underpricing and causes principal-agent conflicts between the underwriter and the issuer. We argue that such a pricing inefficiency could be improved by an innovative ＂bookbuilding plus price discretionary auction＂ process, which is a combination of the modified OpenlPO and Taiwan-style auctioned IPO approaches.

Rumors and price efficiency in stock market:An empirical study of rumor verification on investor Interactive platforms

Using rumor verification data from investor interactive platforms,we investigate the effect of stock market rumors on price efficiency.We find favorable rumors are positively correlated with stock price synchronicity,while unfavorable rumors are negatively correlated with stock price synchronicity.Both favorable and unfavorable rumors are positively correlated with stock mispricing levels,and stock price crash risk.Mechanism tests reveal that favorable rumors about industry leaders have industry spillover effects.The effect of rumors on mispricing levels and stock price crash risk are more pronounced when there are more retail investors.Further analysis shows stronger detrimental impacts of rumors on price efficiency for small-cap companies,companies with low information transparency and companies with low institutional ownership.

Linguistic specificity and stock price synchronicity

Linguistic specificity effectively reduces barriers to information cognition,increasing the efficiency of information acquisition,integration and processing.Combining the psycholinguistics theory of the concreteness effect with assetpricing theory,we determine that linguistic specificity in the management discussion and analysis section of a firm’s annual reports is negatively associated with stock price synchronicity,particularly in firms with strong external information demand or insufficient information supply.Furthermore,only specificity of the review section leads to a reduction in stock price synchronicity.Mechanism tests show that specificity reduces information processing costs and enhances information credibility.Additionally,proprietary costs are an essential determinant of linguistic specificity adoption.Our findings suggest that linguistic specificity plays an essential role in improving market pricing efficiency.