The study employs data envelopment analysis to a panel of commercial banks operating in Pakistan for a period 2001 -2008 in order to measure the technical efficiency of banks. Technical efficiency is then broken down into pure technical and scale components. We divide banks into three categories for analytical purposes: state owned banks, domestic private banks and foreign owned banks. We find foreign owned banks to be the most efficient, followed by state owned banks and domestic private banks are found to be the least efficient. Further, it is found that pure technical efficiency contributes more towards technical efficiency and banks are faced with serious scale problems. The scale inefficiency is found to be the main source of overall technical inefficiency. We observe an increasing trend in pure technical efficiency whereas an opposite trend is found in scale efficiency during the sample period.

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By taking a longer period (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008) this study examines the stock price reaction to the announcement of different equity issues in China. Initially, the study documents the announcement effects of Right issues and Public Offerings (SEOs). Secondly, it adds to the previous literature by keeping in view three successive announcement dates for SEOs as event dates i.e. Board of directors meeting date (BOD), shareholders' meeting date and announcement date to public. Findings suggest that market react positively to the announcement of right offerings while SEOs convey negative signals to market. Consistent with earlier studies on Right issues announcement effects around different event dates, SEOs price effects are also more significantly negative around BOD date. For shareholders' meeting date less significant response is observed, while around announcement date again more negative significant returns are observed, more than shareholders' meeting date but less than BOD meeting date.

By considering two time windows of crises, first one is the time period of Asian financial crisis (1997-1999) and the other one is prevailing global economic crisis (2007-2009), the pattern of underpricing and aftermarket performance are studied. A sample of 626 companies and Market adjusted return model are used. Result indicates that in the recent global economic crisis IPO activity is on shrinking trend and there is 10% increase in average underpricing as compared to last Asian financial crisis. There is a fluctuating trend in aftermarket performance of IPO returns. A minimum return of 62% in 2009 is observed. This study also endeavors to examine the efficiency of Chinese stock market and how the Asian and global financial crisis influences the efficiency of Chinese stock market. In order to determine the efficiency of Chinese stock market we apply efficient market hypothesis of random walk. Here we apply ADF, DF-GLS, PP and KPSS tests on stock market returns in order to check the unit root in data series for both Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges separately. The results of the study shows that Chinese stock market is weak form efficient and past data of stock market movements may not be very useable in order to make excess returns. In both periods of crises Chinese stock market is observed weak form efficient.

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