Asymmetric tax competition in the presence of lobbying

This paper incorporates the influence of interest groups into the asymmetric tax competition model to explain the phenomenon that small countries do not necessarily set lower capital tax rates than large countries. In addition to the efficiency effect considered by the standard model, which leads the smaller country to set a lower capital tax rate, this present paper also takes account of the political effect arising from lobbying. We show that the smaller country may face less downward political pressure. If the political effect outweighs the efficiency effect, then the smaller country sets a higher tax rate than the larger country. This result has several welfare implications, which are in contrast to the conventional consequences.     

Chief Audit Executive as Supervisory Board Member and Executive Compensation Contracts

This paper studies a unique phenomenon in China's corporate governance—that chief audit executives (CAEs) sit on supervisory boards (CAE duality)—and examines its effects on executive compensation contracts. Using a sample of listed firms between 2010 and 2018, we find a significant positive relation between CAE duality and pay-for-performance sensitivity, which suggests that the dual position helps integrate monitoring resources and reduces agency costs. This positive relation is more pronounced when companies face a stricter monitoring environment and in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) than in SOEs. In addition, we find that the recent reforms on compensation strengthen the role of CAE duality in SOEs. Further analysis identifies the reliability of performance information (i.e., earnings quality) and reduced executive self-interested behaviours (i.e., perquisite consumption) as the influencing mechanisms that increase the demand for performance-based compensation and thus improve pay-for-performance sensitivity.     

Rational expectations and the smoothing properties of inventories of finished goods

This paper formulates and estimates a dynamic rational expectations equilibrium model of inventories of finished goods and employment of labor. The view that the primary role of inventories of finished goods is to act as a buffer stock in the face of fluctuating demand is examined. Both the model and estimation results indicate that this is the case because of differences in the costs involved for firms in changing their inventory stocks and labor force. In addition to providing some new evidence on the behavior of inventories of finished goods and employment, the paper illustrates a technology for maximum-likelihood estimation of structural parameters under the hypothesis of rational expectations.     

对近年来我国内需不足特异性的反思

摈上来，我国经济中出现了前所未有的内需不足现象，这种现象与成熟的市场经济国家中出现的需求不足有所不同，它的出现具有明显的特民划性。本文分析了这种需求问题特异性的表征、 形成机理以及治理的对策。     

Globalisation and the Major Accounting Firms

Driven mainly by deregulation and technological change, globalisation is a common tendency among firms seeking better opportunities and lower costs. This paper discusses the nature of globalisation in accounting firms, in particular the "Big 5" (the paper was written before the Big 5 became the Big 4). The firms seem to exhibit two forms of the phenomenon: establishment globalisation (spread of a firm's establishments in different locations) and product globalisation (addition of new services in a bid to extend global reach). The paper examines the effect of globalisation on the demand for accounting information and how globalisation transforms the major accounting firms.     

人民币汇率对国内价格的传导机制研究

本文构建了我国进口价格、消费者价格与各相关因素的长期均衡模型。通过实证研究发现：长期内汇率、国际初级商品价格波动是影响我国进口价格指数的显著因素,但其对国内消费者价格的影响并不明显;同时国内需求和货币供应量波动对消费者价格的影响也不显著。从方差分解结果来看,国内消费者价格的上涨更多来自CPI自身的粘性。分段分析结果表明,汇改后人民币有效汇率波动对国内进口价格和消费者价格的传递效率有所提高,汇率工具在宏观经济中的调节作用逐步增强。     

On the nature of credit demand and credit rationing in competitive credit markets

Conventional analyses of the credit rationing problem seek to explain that problem within the context of classic demand analysis. In this paper we demonstrate that it is generally inappropriate to apply the notion of classic demand to credit markets, consequently, conventional notions of credit rationing must be rejected. In providing a new definition of credit rationing we also establish the previously rejected characterized by credit rationing.     

Multiple corporate governance attributes and the cost of capital – Evidence from Germany

This paper investigates the extent to which corporate governance affects the cost of debt and equity capital of German exchange-listed companies. I examine corporate governance along three dimensions: financial information quality, ownership structure and board structure. The results suggest that firms with high levels of financial transparency and bonus compensations face lower cost of equity. In addition, block ownership is negatively related to firms' cost of equity when the blockholders are other firms, managers or founding-family members. Consistent with the conjecture that agency costs increase with firm size, I find significant cost of debt effects only in the largest German companies. Here, the creditors demand lower cost of debt from firms with block ownerships held by corporations or banks. My findings demonstrate that a uniform set of governance attributes is unlikely to satisfy suppliers of debt and equity capital equally.     

Lending Policies of Financial Intermediaries Facing Credit and Funding Risk

This paper compares the optimal lending decisions of financial intermediaries that differ in their risk exposure. All intermediaries are assumed to face a loan demand described by a random applicant arrival process with each applicant offering a unique risk-adjusted rate of return; loan demand is therefore uncertain in both quantity and quality. The intermediaries differ in terms of their risk exposure because of disparate funding practices. Intermediaries functioning as brokers minimize their exposure by borrowing funds only as demand is realized, whereas those behaving as asset-transformers borrow in advance of realizing loan demand, thereby maintaining a loanable funds inventory and sustaining the related exposure. The optimal sequential lending policy is shown to involve setting a credit standard that becomes stricter with the length of the intermediary's planning horizon and the volume of loans outstanding. Most importantly, it is shown that brokers adopt stricter credit standards than asset-transformers and therby reduce their volume of lending.     

投资偏向分析：基于全球银行股票投资的实证研究

本文研究了29个国家的银行在全球范围内的股票投资配置,发现存在很明显的投资偏向。研究中采用了7类变量共25个子变量对投资偏向进行解释,使用两种方法进行经验分析,第一种借鉴Kalok Chan,Vicentiu Coverig,Lilian Ng等人的方法将7类变量逐一与投资偏向回归,发现股票市场发展变量对国内投资偏向解释最显著,投资保护、全球化变量次之。而股票市场投资回报对外国投资偏向(该经济体对于外部投资者的吸引力)解释最显著,股票市场发展、资本控制、全球化等变量次之。另一种方法是笔者提出的因子回归分析法,将25个子变量进行因子分析,形成了反映一个国家经济水平与经济制度、全球化等7个突出的公共因子。将这7个公共因子与投资偏向回归,发现经济水平和经济制度因子以及股票市场因子对国内投资偏向具有明显的影响,而经济水平和经济制度因子、全球化因子以及熟悉程度因子对其外国投资偏向具有明显影响。     

Industrialization and the demand for mineral commodities

This paper uses a new data set that begins in 1840 to investigate how industrialization affects the derived demand for mineral commodities. I establish that there is substantial heterogeneity in the long-run effect of manufacturing output on demand across five commodities. A one percent increase in per capita manufacturing output leads to an approximately 1.5 percent increase in aluminum demand and a roughly 1 percent rise in copper demand. Estimated elasticities for lead, tin, and zinc are below unity. My results suggest that the experience of Japan and South Korea’s industrialization, for example, may be used to infer the impact of China’s industrialization on future demand for metals. The results imply substantial differences across commodities with regard to future demand. Adjustment to equilibrium takes 7–13 years, which helps explain the long duration of commodity price fluctuations.     

The Impact of Oil Price Shocks on the Returns in China’s Stock Market

The main goal of this paper is to study the relationship between oil price shocks and mainland China’s stock market. From empirical study, we have found that the impact of oil price shocks on stock prices in China has been mixed. In contrast to the conventional wisdom that higher oil prices may cause lower stock prices, positive shocks to oil-market-specific demand resulted in both higher real oil prices and higher stock prices, which helps explain the boom of the Chinese stock market as oil prices were increasing in 2007. However, global oil demand and supply shocks had no significant effects.     

Inattentive consumers

This paper studies the consumption decisions of agents who face costs of acquiring, absorbing and processing information. These consumers rationally choose to only sporadically update their information and re-compute their optimal consumption plans. In between updating dates, they remain inattentive. This behavior implies that news disperses slowly throughout the population, so events have a gradual and delayed effect on aggregate consumption. The model predicts that aggregate consumption adjusts slowly to shocks, and is able to explain the excess sensitivity and excess smoothness puzzles. In addition, individual consumption is sensitive to ordinary and unexpected past news, but it is not sensitive to extraordinary or predictable events. The model further predicts that some people rationally choose to not plan, live hand-to-mouth, and save less, while other people sporadically update their plans. The longer are these plans, the more they save. Evidence using U.S. aggregate and microeconomic data generally supports these predictions.     

A Reexamination of Housing Price and Household Consumption in China: The Dual Role of Housing Consumption and Housing Investment

It is important to investigate the correlation between housing price and household consumption to gain an understanding of the behavior of the economy and effectively handle the consequences of economic development. In the last two decades, the accumulation of housing wealth by Chinese households has not been effectively transmitted to their final consumption. We discovered that the sustained increase in household wealth and housing-ownership rate in China has been accompanied by a decrease in consumption rate. We also identified a negative correlation between housing price and household consumption for both the homeowners who own one housing unit and those who own two units of housing. We investigated this phenomenon in China both theoretically and empirically by capturing the dual nature of housing as a consumption good and an investment vehicle. We found that the demand for second housing units is motivated by increasing housing consumption demand rather than pure investment needs. To explain the mechanisms that drive household-consumption behavior, we also explored the effects on household consumption of China’s educational system, marriage market and ageing society, as well as future housing-market uncertainty. The implications of government intervention in the housing market are discussed.     

Price Elasticity of Demand and an Optimal Cash Discount Rate in Credit Policy

While the provision of a cash discount is equivalent to a reduction in price, the role of price elasticity of demand in determining credit terms has been neglected in the extant literature. In this paper, this role is investigated and it is shown that the optimal cash discount rate is affected by the price elasticity of demand for the firm's product. The comparative effects on the optimal cash discount rate with respect to exogenous changes in the fraction of credit sales paid after taking cash discount, the cost of short-term funds and the bad debt loss ratio are investigated. A trade-off between the time value gain and the price elasticity of demand is established. We find that firms which sell in locations having different price elasticities for their products, and/or which face various costs of short-term funds in different locations, should vary their cash discount terms accordingly.     

Liquidity,Reconstitution, and the Value of U.S. Treasury Strips

An apparent pricing anomaly exists in the market for U.S. Treasury strips: zero-coupon strips created from principal payments typically trade at significantly higher prices than otherwise identical zero-coupon strips created from coupon payments. In addition to documenting this phenomenon, this study demonstrates that differences in liquidity and differences in reconstitution characteristics explain much of this price variation.     

Consumption-based capital asset pricing models: issues and controversies

This paper discusses the issues and controversies surrounding consumption-based capital asset pricing models (CCAPMs). While CCAPMs provide a chance to explain the phenomena observed in stock markets, their viability is jeopardized owing to the weak predictability of the equity premium and risk-free rate puzzles. Even given market frictions and market incompleteness, CCAPMs must test their validity constantly in the face of the formidable challenges of rival models. Measurement error with respect to time aggregation is also regarded as a major threat, causing the low volatility of consumption and eventually resulting in chaining itself to weak return predictability. In addition, the dual choice problem of portfolio and consumption rooted in CCAPMs guides us into how investors accumulate wealth through the financial market to reach the zenith of expected utility. This paper offers insights as well as understanding into the behavior of an agent and market phenomena in the context of a consumption-based economy.     

Signaling in the Internet craze of initial public offerings

We explain the clustering of underpricing in initial public offerings (IPOs). The model features an industry with aggregate demand uncertainty and asymmetric information about firms' quality. In the IPO market, firms can signal quality by underpricing or under-issuing new shares. Expected aggregate demand for the industry's products increases with the publicity that the industry creates through IPO underpricing. We show that asymmetric information and expectations on aggregate product demand interact with each other to generate multiple equilibria. Underpriced IPOs cluster in one equilibrium but not in the other. We use these results to explain why the clustering often occurs in particular industries, is short-lived, and is sensitive to economic conditions.     

Retail investor attention and herding behavior

In this paper, we argue that when individual investors can obtain information from public resources such as Google search, the degree of investor attention to a particular underlying company is positively linked with herding behavior for retail investors. Empirical results confirm that Google Search Volume Index can be a proxy for the information demand of uninformed individual investors. Empirical evidence also shows that reaching the price limit generates an attention-grabbing effect. Further, in general, small cap firms generate more intensive individual investor herding. In addition, we explore the asymmetric impact of abnormal search volume index on individual investor herding behavior for bull and bear markets, and confirm that the individual investor buy herding phenomenon is stronger in bull markets, especially for small capitalization firms. In bear markets, with greater price deterioration for large cap firms, we detect herding behavior on the sell side.     

Econometrics of efficient fitted portfolios

In this paper we propose a mean variance analysis of the portfolio choice under constraints. An efficient portfolio under constraint is called fitted. We show that the fitted portfolios can consistently be estimated and used to assess the performances of the portfolio management. The explicit formula of the individual demand function for assets is also derived, and generalizes the demand function of the standard portfolio choice theory. The performance measures and associated statistics can be used to test the hypothesis of the portfolio efficiency under constraint. Moreover, we explain how to estimate subsets of constraints faced by an individual. Finally, we show that our framework is also adequate for the analysis of incomplete information.