‘Hands Across the Water’: Canadian Industrial Financiers in the City of London, 1905–20

This article traces the emergence of Canadian industrial financiers and their links to the British capital market before the Great War. Within a few years, these individuals evolved from bond salesmen to investment bankers channelling capital from British and North American investors to Canadian industry. Between 1908 and 1912, a select group of these financiers established branches of their investment houses in the City and conducted flotations on behalf of their Canadian clients. Judging by the case of Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook), Canadian financiers did so to circumvent the high fees and, at times, poor service offered by the City investment banks, and to increase their own profits. The financial depression of 1913 and the outbreak of the Great War slowed and then stopped Canadian industrial flotations in London. Thereafter, Canadian security issues were redirected to the North American capital market, particularly the United States.     

Capital in British banking, 1920–1970

British banks have long attached great importance to capital. Currently they are subject to greater scrutiny and regulation on this issue than ever before. However, it was not until the disclosure of ‘hidden reserves’ in 1970 that a true picture of British banks' capital emerged. This article uses archival evidence to reveal the capital ratios of several major banks for much of the twentieth century, and demonstrates how these ratios were influenced by official restrictions. Overall the banks maintained much higher levels of capital than implied by their published accounts, although the impact of official restrictions was to force them to operate with lower capital ratios than they desired. But it is argued that capital ratios were neither achieved nor maintained at the expense of reduced or less risky lending.     

美国风险投资企业的治理机制创新对我国的启示

风险投资又称创业投资。风险投资是否成功最主要在于它的投资企业发展情况和退出渠道选择。风险资本进入创业企业的目的不是为了控制企业或取得企业的所有权 ,而是希望适时退出以便获取高额的投资回报 ,这种追逐利润的热情是风险投资发展的内在动力。美国的风险投资企业的治理机制创新对风险资本的退出的影响是巨大的 ,对我国风险资本的发展有着重要的启示     

中国制造业大企业外向国际化趋势、问题与应对策略

本文分析了我国制造业大企业外向国际化的发展趋势、存在的问题,并提出了相应的对策建议。通过研究发现,我国制造业大企业国际地位逐渐上升,外向国际化动因、全球生产组织方式、国际市场进入方式、企业社会责任呈现新趋势。但是,我国制造业大企业外向国际化水平和能力仍需要提升。与发达国家相比,制造业大企业利润率不高,国际化程度较低,行业分布不合理,同时面临发达国家贸易与投资保护主义的挑战。本文针对上述问题提出了相应的对策建议:培育具有国际竞争力的世界一流制造业大企业,需要政府和企业共同发力。从政府角度看,要推动形成全面开放新格局,构建中国主导的全球价值链,培育世界级先进制造业集群,推进国有企业改革,以及组合运用宏观调控政策工具。从企业角度看,要优化企业国际化战略,培育国际化核心能力,优化国际化竞争策略,以及防范企业国际化风险。     

Market Discipline of Canadian Banks' Letters of Credit Activities: An Empirical Examination

While the motivation and riskiness of US off-balance sheet banking activities have been studied both theoretically and empirically, no such study has been found dealing with Canadian off-balance sheet banking activities, although such activities are numerically huge, and growing larger each year. This article provides support for a market discipline hypothesis of Canadian bank letters of credit activities by employing several market measures of risk from one-factor and multi-factor models, and an implied asset volatility from the option-pricing model. Furthermore, it examines both price and quantity response of off-balance sheet activities in the Canadian banking market by employing a tobit analysis to assess the robustness of our conclusions about market discipline. The results indicate that various market measures of risk and letters of credit are negatively related. Moreover, banks with greater portfolio risk measured in terms of equity and asset risk, high leverage and interest rate risk are less likely to issue letters of credit.     

Foreign Direct Investment in China: Reward or Remedy?

This paper tests the significance of FDI as a way to alleviate credit constraints. Incoming foreign investment provides additional sources of capital. Specifically in the Chinese case, enterprises may look for foreign investors, being constrained in their activity due to distortions in the state‐dominated system. First, the Chinese financial system allocates resources to the least efficient firms – state‐owned enterprises – while denying the same resources to Chinese private enterprises, forcing them to look for a foreign investor. Second, the inefficient system of state investment planning leads to mismanagement of public enterprises, increasing ‘insolvency‐induced FDI’. We propose to analyse determinants of FDI in Chinese provinces to test the above hypotheses. We control for traditional determinants of FDI such as market access, labour costs, productivity, infrastructure, reform advances and banking sector size in order to assess the impact of inter‐provincial heterogeneity in terms of the access that private enterprises have to credit and the distortive management in state‐owned firms.     

Small businesses and liquidity constraints in financing business investment: Evidence from shanghai's manufacturing sector

When firms experience financial hierarchy, external finance, if at all available, is substantially more expensive than internal finance. Factors such as transaction costs, agency problem, and asymmetric information have created such a hierarchy. Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) argue that asymmetric information between firms and potential suppliers of external finance creates adverse selection and moral hazard problems in the credit market in developed market economies. This problem of a higher cost of external finance is commonly thought to be more serious for small firms because they are more disadvantaged than their larger counterparts in accessing external finance due to several factors: (1) Public information on small firms is generally not available and leads to the even greater problem of asymmetric information, i.e., more severe adverse selection and moral hazard problems. These information problems have excluded small firms from bond and share markets. (2) Due to the lack of available means of external finance, small firms rely more heavily on bank loans than their larger counterparts. In addition, as small firms are more interested in cultivating stable relationships with a few banks in order to secure a stable supply of credit, these banks become virtual monopolies by lending to small businesses and exercise their market power in lending to small firms.Most of existing research considers only small firms in market economies; little research has been done to understand the relationship between firm size and investment financing in any economy in transition. This paper makes a contribution to the literature by studying the relationship between firm size and liquidity constraints by using a firm level data of manufacturing enterprises in Shanghai during the period of 1989–1992. We consider whether small manufacturing firms in Shanghai are constrained by the availability of liquidity compared with their larger counterparts when they are financing their fixed investment. In a transforming economy such as China (or other similar transition economies), external finance relies heavily on loans from banks that are fully owned by the state. Due to historical reasons, allocations of credit are always biased in favor of state-owned enterprises. Such a `lending bias' imposes an extra cost on small Chinese enterprises in financing investment as the majority of them are not state-owned.In such an environment, our empirical results show that small manufacturing firms in Shanghai are actually less liquidity-constrained than their larger counterparts in financing their fixed investment. This surprising result is rather different from what people normally predict based on the experience in market economies. We suggest three possible explanations for this peculiar finding: (1) The composition of various firm size classes plays an important role in explaining the result: Non-state enterprises which are fast growing and efficient dominate the small firm classes. Their successes in the markets helps them to generate enough internal funds to smooth their investment over time. (2) The presence of heavy indebtedness of large state-owned enterprises may deprive them of sufficient cash available for investment decision. Given that state-owned enterprises have been making heavy losses, the central and regional governments have a liquidity problem in satisfying their huge liquidity demands. (3) Small enterprises in non-state sectors can rely on the informal credit market to obtain funds for investment although they are excluded from the state banking system.However, the further trade liberalization in terms of eliminating tariffs and quotas caused by China's bid of joining the WTO will erode the profits of these small enterprises as imported goods will be supplied at lower prices. In addition, further reforms in financial sectors may also affect the supply of external finance to small enterprises in nonstate sectors. The consequence may lead to a tight liquidity constraint for small enterprises in China.     

金融“脱媒”现象下的商业银行经营策略

本文通过分析美国的实际情况发现，随着资本市场的发展及多样化投资工具的日益普遍，商业银行的经营业绩并没有因为传统业务被挤占而一蹶不振，反而开创出了新的盈利空间。与资本市场形成了一种良性互动的发展态势。共同促进整个经济体系的持续增长。这全归功于美国商业银行的法人治理结构、业务运行模式及利润来源发生了根本性的转变。因而，对于处于变革中的中国商业银行而言。面临金融”脱媒”的影响。应该改革现有的产权制度，成立金融控股公司，转变业务运行模式及增加非利息收入来源。     

An Analytical Foundation of the Classical View of Long‐Period Prices with Differential Profit Rates

The uniformity of the profit rates has been justified by the modern literature on long‐period positions on the ground of the working of free capital mobility across sectors. However, classical economists allow for profit rates differentials also in case of absence of barriers to entry, because of specific factors affecting the investment behavior of producers in industries. We develop a linear multisectoral model in which differential profit rates are determined by such ‘idiosyncratic’ factors. We provide conditions ensuring the uniformity of the profit rates in the long‐run.     

外商投资企业在华收益、经验及启示

改革开放四十多年来,我国成为了全球第二大外资流入国。外资在为我国经济社会发展做出重要贡献的同时,也获得了应得的收益,实现了营收和利润双增长。具体表现为:中国市场是外资企业营收增长的重要来源,各国企业在华营收保持持续增长,中国市场营收占据跨国公司全球重要位置;外商投资在中国获得较高收益率,诸多美欧企业在华投资收益率高于其全球平均水平。与此同时,外资企业在华经营还实现了其战略目标。实践证明,成本寻求型外资在中国获得了低要素成本,市场寻求型外资与中国市场共同成长,创新资产寻求型外资取得在华创新投入产出双增长。     

Japan's Lost Decade and its Financial System

After briefly explaining the causes of the Japanese asset‐price bubble in the 1980s, this paper analyses why the bursting of the bubble developed into a full‐fledged financial crisis in the late 1990s. In order to cope with this crisis, the Government has injected capital directly into the banking sector and banks have written off enormous amounts of bad loans. However, the Japanese financial sector remains very weak and Japan still faces a number of problems in its financial system. Firstly, the profit margin of banks is too small to cover the increased default risk following the bursting of the bubble, and there are market distortions created by the government‐backed financial institutions and the requirements on new lending to small and medium sized companies. Secondly, banks still have excessive stock investment and crossholding of shares between banks and other companies has weakened the market discipline on entrenched management. Thirdly, the government guarantee of all banking‐sector liabilities should be removed. Once the financial system is stabilised, a risk‐adjusted deposit insurance premium should be introduced so as to strengthen market discipline on banks, and the huge postal saving system should be privatised to create a level‐playing field among deposit taking financial institutions. Besides the foregoing, the weak corporate governance structure of Japanese financial institutions has to be remodelled. The management of banks has shielded themselves by extensive cross‐shareholdings, especially with life insurance companies. There has been extensive mutual provision of capital, most large life insurance companies have weak corporate governance, and many of the large shareholders of banks are life insurance companies. This double gearing between banks and life insurance companies has therefore weakened the market control of Japanese financial institutions.     

银行利润对经济增长影响的实证分析——基于中美两国数据的对比

随着中国利率市场化改革的深化,银行拥有更多的经营自主权,但银行在信贷市场中所处的垄断地位却没有随着利率市场化改革而相应改变。运用VECM模型对中国12家上市银行及同时期美国商业银行的利润增长对经济发展的影响进行了实证研究,结果表明美国的银行利润增长显著促进了经济发展。相比之下,中国银行利润增长对经济发展的长期影响并不显著,而四大国有银行利润增长对经济发展有显著的阻碍作用,非国有银行利润增长则对经济发展有显著的促进作用。四大国有银行在信贷市场中的垄断地位导致其对经济发展产生阻碍,这意味着中国利率市场化改革及资本市场改革仍不彻底。因此,应鼓励非国有股份制银行发展,并进一步深化利率市场化改革及资本市场改革。     

人才资本形成中教育投资的成本收益分析

随着我国社会经济的飞速发展,人力资本概念也登上了历史的舞台,人力资本形成方式中教育投 资便成为全社会关心的问题。同其他投资一样,教育投资也必须考虑其成本和收益问题。     

Why Does the Problem Persist? ‘Rational Rigidity’ and the Plight of Japanese Banks

One of the most perplexing factors in the Japanese financial crisis is the apparently non‐optimal and non‐rational behaviour of Japanese banks. We provide a “rational” explanation for bank behaviour based on a theory of community banking that incorporates Japanese institutional characteristics. We find three implications of community banking – a low lending rate, a low bankruptcy rate, and in particular, institutionalisation of ‘rational rigidity’ (an institutional pledge of no profit maximisation) – in Japanese banks. We argue that this type of banking is viable as long as the economy expands and asset prices go up, which was the case before the asset‐market crash in 1990. The stagnation and free‐fall of asset prices in the 1990s exerted tremendous pressure on Japanese banks but did not paralyse them completely in the 1990s, although there are indications that they failed to restructure distressed large corporations in some sectors, notably real estate. Thus, the problem is not that paralysed banks are blocking recovery, but that their current institutionalised rigidity in banking practices is no longer viable because private enterprises in the market economy are suffering from asset‐price deflation and economic stagnation.     

企业R&D投入行为的Heckman两阶段分析——基于中国工业企业面板数据的实证研究

文章从企业规模、市场及竞争环境因素、企业财务资源、企业产权制度、行业特征等方面对企业R&D投入进行理论分析,采用中国工业企业数据库提供的制造业60万个观测样本数据,利用Heckman两阶段分析法,对企业R&D投入行为进行实证研究。研究结果表明：企业规模、企业财务资源实力、企业集聚度和产业市场集中度等因素与R&D投入选择和R&D投入程度均存在显著的正相关关系,企业杠杆与R&D投入选择和R&D投入程度存在显著负相关关系。在此基础上提出了相应的政策建议,并对未来的研究方向进行展望。     

中小企业引进创业投资策略研究

作为追求高回报、承担高风险的创业投资,在促进中小企业发展的过程中逐步扮演起重要角色。中小企业在引进创业投资解决"资金瓶颈"问题的同时,应重点关注创业投资与资本市场的有机结合,为中小企业的持续和快速发展奠定良好基础,也为创业投资的适时退出和获取高额回报创造条件,从而最终达到中小企业与创业投资双赢的局面。     

FDI对我国高新技术产业技术溢出效应分析

本文借助C-D函数,实证并分析了FDI对我国高新技术产业内资企业产出、自主创新能力、新产品开发的影响。研究表明,外资通过竞争效应、人员流动效应、示范效应以及产业关联效应等带动高新技术内资企业劳动生产率提高,从而促进内资高新技术企业产出总量增加;但较大的内外资企业的技术差距和较弱的技术消化吸收能力抑制了FDI对航空航天器制造业自主创新能力的提升;较高的外资企业市场集中度和市场开放度,不利于电子及通信设备制造业以及电子计算机及办公设备制造业新产品市场开发。文章据此探讨了相应的对策建议,以期为高新技术产业更好地利用外资提供有益的思路。     

“营改增”对我国物流上市公司投资活动的影响

“营改增”是我国财税体制改革的一部分,是国家实施结构性减税的一项重要举措。作为首批试点行业企业,物流企业在实施“营改增”后税收负担及投资活动等的变化,是政府部门和学术界都很关心的问题。选择我国沪深两市物流上市公司2009—2018年的相关数据为研究样本,从国泰安数据库中获得最新数据,采用多元线性回归模型评估“营改增”对上市物流公司固定资产及无形资产投资活动的政策效应,研究结果显示,“营改增”能显著增加仓储邮政业上市公司的固定资产及无形资产投资,显著降低水上运输业上市公司的固定资产投资,对其他物流行业上市公司的固定资产及无形资产投资均没有显著性影响。鉴于不同盈利和不同税率情况下的物流细分行业受“营改增”政策影响的结果差异较大,建议政府部门进一步简化并降低物流企业税率,完善鼓励投资的相关配套政策;相应行业的企业管理层也应顺应政策导向,根据市场需求和自身资产情况,统筹安排投资时机和力度,将税收节约的资金进行有效投资。     

SMES' FINANCING, Hard Nut to Be Cracked?

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a crucial driving force for innovation,employment and development and the engines of growth in an economy. But as the sector is characterized by information asymmetries and high processing costs, banks are reluctant to lend to SMEs, which have long faced difficulties in financing. Amid capital depletion, risk aversion and credit contraction in the current global economic crisis, the issue of financing for SMEs isa pressing issue for all nations, which isnot exceptional to China.     

创新型企业不同阶段资本运营问题探讨

高效的资本运营对创新型企业发展至关重要。目前,我国资本运营的体制机制还不健全,缺乏长远发展的战略管理理念,管理水平低,运营理念和风险防范意识薄弱,资金投入力度小,中介组织不规范,加之资本市场及金融政策体制等因素的影响,致使创新型企业在发展中存在着内外部融资渠道和高研发资金需求间的矛盾。应从加强创新型企业内部治理,促进资本运营和优化创新型企业外部环境,提升资本运营效率两方面入手,将长远战略目标与不同的资本运作模式结合,以有效提高创新型企业资本运营风险控制能力。