Law and Economic Workshop Series – 25 Jan 2018

The Whack-A-Mole Game: Tobin Tax and Trading Frenzy

Thursday, 25 January 2018
1:30 – 2:30 pm
Room 723, 7/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower
The University of Hong Kong

The Law & Economic Workshop is a forum devoted to discussing the latest research in law and economics featuring both external and internal speakers. The workshop aims to promote interdisciplinary research, and to foster collaboration between law professors and scholars from other disciplines.

The Whack-A-Mole Game: Tobin Tax and Trading Frenzy

Dr Wenxi Jiang
Assistant Professor, Business School, CUHK

The Whack-A-Mole Game:Tobin Taxesand TradingFrenzy by Jinghan Cai, Jibao He, Wenxi Jiang, Wei Xiong

To dampen the trading frenzy in the stock market, the Chinese government tripled the stamp tax for stock trading on May 30, 2007. Interestingly, the largely increased trading cost caused trading frenzy to migrate from the stock market to the warrant market, which was not subject to the stamp tax, exacerbating a spectacular price bubble in a set of deep out-of-the-money put warrants. This episode highlights the so-called “Whack-A-Mole” game in financial regulations – when a policy is instituted to whack down frenzy or turmoil in one market, it may crop up in other unregulated markets. The paper is a joint work with Jinghan Cai (Scranton), Jibao He (Shenzhen Stock Exchange) and Wei Xiong (Princeton).

Dr Wenxi Jiang joined the CUHK Business School in 2015 as an Assistant Professor of Finance. He obtained a PhD in Financial Economics from Yale University in 2015 and a Bachelor degree from Renmin University of China in 2007. His research interests include asset pricing, institutional investor, and behavioural finance. His research papers have appeared in the Journal of Finance and Review of Financial Studies.