我国上市公司的股权结构与多元化战略

本文探讨了股权结构与公司多元化战略选择之间的关系。实证结果发现,公司多元化水平与国有股比例和股权集中度均呈显著的负相关关系,与法人股比例呈倒U型关系,与流通A股比例及董事持股比例均呈显著的正相关关系,但与经理持股比例关系不显著。本文结果表明,代理问题是公司实施多元化经营的重要原因。     

中国上市公司股权代理成本影响因素实证研究

本文以2005年中国上市公司中1269个有效样本为分析对象,探讨了企业盈利状况、高管持股比例、资本结构、股权集中度、股权制衡度、终极产权性质、企业的成长性等与股权代理成本之间的关系。研究发现:盈利能力、负债融资比例、第一大股东持股比例和公司的成长性与代理成本呈显著负相关,股权制衡度与代理成本呈显著正相关,管理层持股比例与代理成本呈微弱负相关,由经营性或非经营性单位控制的上市公司的代理成本不具有显著差异。     

上市公司股权结构与公司治理的关系研究——来自装备制造业上市公司的经验证据

股权结构是影响公司治理的重要因素,利用多元线性回归对股权治理、债权治理、管理层激励三个层面进行分析,探讨其对公司治理的影响程度。实证表明:第一大股东持股比例、股权集中度、股权制衡度和管理者持股比例与公司治理呈正相关关系,而现金流动负债比率和资产负债率与公司治理呈负相关关系。然而我国装备制造业上市公司股权治理结构并不合理,应进一步优化股权结构、完善监管体系以及建立多元化投资体系等来提高公司治理水平。     

股权结构、股改效应与代理成本关系研究

本文利用2004～2007年沪、深两市A股公司的数据,研究股权结构、股改效应与上市公司代理成本间的关系。结果表明:股权集中度与代理成本呈显著负相关;股权制衡度与代理成本呈显著正相关,这说明,股权集中更有利于控股股东对管理层行为的控制,从而减少代理问题的发生;机构持股比例与上市公司代理成本呈显著的负相关,表明机构投资者的参与有利于公司治理环境的改善;上市公司是否完成股改与代理成本呈显著负相关,且股改完成年份越早,代理成本越低,表明股改效应的确促进了代理成本的降低,且这一影响随时间的推移得到较明显的体现。     

中国上市公司多元化经营与公司业绩之间关系的实证分析

以中国A股上市公司为研究样本,实证检验多元化经营对公司业绩的影响。研究发现,多元化经营水平与公司长期会计业绩、短期会计业绩和短期市场业绩均显著负相关,与长期市场业绩及业绩波动程度呈不显著的负相关关系,这说明我国上市公司多元化经营的确存在折价效应。     

电力上市公司资本结构对经营绩效的影响

本文通过对我国电力上市公司2014-2016年的资产负债率等数据进行收集,利用eviews统计软件分析资产负债率,流动负债比率,第一大股东持股比率、前十大股东持股比例等对净资产收益率的影响.最终得出资产负债率、流动负债比率、第一大股东持股比例与经营绩效呈负相关关系,而前十大股东持股比例与经营绩效呈显著性正相关关系.在此基础上,为了提高电力上市公司经营效率及效果,提出了明确债务与权益的筹资比例,拓宽融资渠道、股权多元化,优化股权集中度,控制流动负债比例等建议.     

信息披露、代理成本与公司治理

本文采用2004-2008年沪深两市A股上市公司数据,运用面板数据固定效应模型和Logistic回归模型,分项和综合考察了公司治理对信息披露质量和代理成本的影响。结果显示:信息披露质量与股权集中度、第一大股东持股比例、高管持股比例、公司控制权、公司所有权显著正相关,与股东人数显著负相关,与最终控制人属性无显著关联;代理成本与股权集中度、第一大股东持股比例、高管持股比例、公司控制权、所有权显著负相关,与股东人数、最终控制人属性无显著关联。     

代理问题、股权结构与公司多元化

本文以深沪两市1031家非金融公司作为样本,对股权结构和代理问题对公司多元化经营决策和绩效的影响进行了实证检验。本文研究表明,在国有控制的上市公司中多元化程度与国有股权所占比例呈U型曲线关系,这种关系在由地方政府和地方国有企业控制的公司中尤其显著。而在非国有控制公司中,没有证据表明存在这种关系。我们进一步发现对地方政府和国企控制的公司来说,多元化经营会显著降低公司的资产收益率;而在中央政府控制的上市公司中,多元化经营没有显著降低公司的资产收益率;在非国有上市公司中,多元化经营也没有降低公司的资产收益率。结果表明我国国有企业中普遍存在的委托代理问题是公司采取不合理多元化经营策略的动因。     

董事会构成研究——基于联立方程模型的分析

本文通过构建联立方程模型控制内生性问题,系统地研究了董事会构成的决定因素.结果发现:公司独立董事比例与公司业绩、国有股权、监事会规模显著负相关;与股权集中度、管理层持股比例呈倒“U”型曲线关系,与财务杠杆呈“U”型曲线关系;与法律环境、CEO两职兼任显著正相关.     

多元化战略与资本结构——基于中国上市公司的实证检验

文章从多元化战略的视角,使用基于面板数据的模型,利用2001年～2003年我国上市公司的数据,对上市公司多元化战略及其对资本结构的影响进行了实证检验。我国进行多元化的公司,销售增长率、公司规模与资本结构显著正相关;盈利能力与资本结构显著负相关。在控制了这些变量以后,发现代理成本是影响多元化公司资本结构的重要因素。多元化程度与资本结构之间是倒“U型”的非线性关系。董事长持股比例与资本结构之间的非线性关系并不显著。     

Pleasure and belief in Hume's Decision Process

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to introduce explicitly pleasure and belief in what aims at being a Humean theory of decision, like the one developed in Diaye and Lapidus (2005a). Although we support the idea that Hume was in some way a hedonist – evidently different from Bentham's or Jevons' way – we lay emphasis less on continuity than on the specific kind of hedonism encountered in Hume's writings (chiefly the Treatise, the second Enquiry, the Dissertation, or some of his Essays). Such hedonism clearly contrasts to its standard modern inheritance, expressed by the relation between preferences and utility.

The reason for such a difference with the usual approach lies in the mental process that Hume puts to the fore in order to explain the way pleasure determines desires and volition. Whereas pleasure is primarily, in Hume's words, an impression of sensation, it takes place in the birth of passions as reflecting an idea of pleasure, whose “force and vivacity” is precisely a “belief”, transferred to the direct passions of desire or volition that come immediately before action. As a result, from a Humean point of view, “belief” deals with decision under risk or uncertainty, as well as with intertemporal decision and indiscrimination problems.

The latter are explored within a formal framework, and it is shown that the relation of pleasure is transformed by belief into a non-empty class of relations of desire, among which at least one is a preorder.     

Globalization,Neoliberalism and the attack on social security

Neoliberal political movements advocate privatization of public pension systems. Globalization imposes pressure on nations to conform to neoliberal policy views with respect to the design and structure of social insurance, including public pension systems. The paper begins with an investigation of the economic, ethical and ideological dimensions of the privatization debates in the U.S.; it argues that privatization advocates may be largely moved by ideology, since the other reasons advanced appear weak or unfounded. The second part discusses the history of Social Security, the purposes for its creation, and some of its economic effects. Differences between public and private pension systems are considered. A brief international comparison of some aspects of public pension system finance and benefit structures is presented. The final section considers the ethical, macroeconomic and distributional implications of privatization, prefunding and payroll tax funding, and argues for a pay as you go system financed with income taxes. In order to promote equity, economic security, community, and social cohesion, public pension systems should be universal in coverage. In order to reduce the inequality, income insecurity, and aged poverty generated by market economies, public pension systems ought to be progressive: benefit/contribution ratios should be inversely proportional to income, and progressive income taxes should finance the system. To promote economic growth, the systems should be financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, and should not be prefunded except for an emergency reserve. The fiscal policy recommendations partially depend upon the theory developed by Abba Lerner in the 1940s, and recently advanced by Wynne Godley and Randy Wray: Lerner's “principle of functional finance.”     

Interest on reserves and inflation

The payment of interest on reserves has been a common practice in inflationary economies. This policy may seem paradoxical since it involves returning part of the seigniorage, generated by the inflation process, with the intention to finance the fiscal deficit. This paper argues that the motivation for this policy can be captured by the discretionary regime, where the policymaker pays interest on reserves because he is concerned with the erosion of real liquidity by inflation, which is in part beyond his control. However, this policy is an unlikely outcome in the commitment regime, where the policymaker is in full control of inflation.     

Bayesian estimation of duration models: An application of the multiperiod probit model

The multiperiod probit model is presented and Bayesian estimation using the Gibbs sampler with data augmentation is described. As an empirical illustration, the multiperiod probit model is then used to estimate a duration model using employment duration data for the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Bayesian estimation with unobserved heterogeneity is shown to be a simple extension of estimation of a duration model with no unobserved heterogeneity. More importantly, perhaps, some numerical problems encountered by other authors using Maximum Likelihood are avoided.I would like to thank M. Baker, G. Koop, A. Melino and D. Poirier for helpful comments and discussions. I would also like to thank M. Baker for providing his data.     

Scenarios and creativity: Thinking in new boxes

To be creative and make change happen, leaders must do more than simply ‘think outside the box’, as the traditional business manuals suggest, using the popular American expression. After all, the space outside the box is infinitely expansive. Moreover, there can be no guarantee that a solution to the problem will be found. The answer: ‘Think in new boxes.’ This requires developing the right new box; in other words, useful new models, a helpful new approach to a problem. That is the real art of practical creativity. This short article outlines the approach (Thinking in New Boxes) and its application to classic scenario planning with a few examples. The authors also present the ‘Expressway to Scenarios’, an approach that wins in impact and practicality what it loses in deep analysis, by having top executives involved in key steps.     

On the Role of Paradigms in Understanding Economic Globalization

Any adequate analysis of economic globalization necessarily requires fundamental understanding of the worldviews underlying the views expressed with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization. This paper is based on the premise that any worldview can be associated with one of the four basic paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. It argues that any view expressed with respect to economic globalization is based on one of the four paradigms or worldviews. It, therefore, discusses four views with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization which correspond to the four broad worldviews. The paper emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the nature and role of economic globalization from a certain paradigmatic viewpoint. Emphasizing this example in the area of economic globalization, the paper concludes that there are opportunities for each paradigm to benefit from contributions coming from the other three paradigms.     

A Humean theory of choice of which rationality may be one consequence

For the reader who considers economic theory of choice as a special case of a more general theory of action, Hume's discussion of the determinants of action in the Treatise of Human Nature (1739?–?40), in the Enquiry on Human Understanding (1748) and in the Dissertation on Passions (1757) deserves attention. However, according to some modern commentators, Hume does not seem to have given any evidence that would favour what nowadays we would consider as the kind of rationality involved in modern theories of rational choice. On the contrary, this paper arrives at the conclusion that consistency between preferences and choice, like the usual properties of completeness and transitivity, may be considered as outcomes of a mental process, described by means of a decision algorithm that aims to represent Hume's theory of choice.     

The concept of freedom and its relation to economic development--a critical appreciation of the work of Amartya Sen

Following a brief review of the conception of freedom as employedin economic discourse, this paper focuses on the evolution ofthe concept of freedom in the work of Amartya Sen. It tracesthe development of Sen's thought from the capability analysisof the late 1970s to his more recent separation of freedom intoits opportunity and process aspects. While broadly appreciativeof Sen's development of the concept of positive freedom, thepaper identifies some difficulties arising from his definitionof capability as a set of options as well as from his separationof the opportunity and process aspects of freedom. Aspects ofthe relationship between Sen's conception of freedom and thatof Marx are discussed briefly in the context of Sen's recentdiscussion of the market as a source of freedom.     

How chaebol restructuring after the 1997 crisis has affected corporate decision and performance in Korea: debt financing,ownership structure,and investment

ABSTRACT

Korean chaebol firms, characterized by excessive debt financing and overinvestment, experienced restructuring after the 1997 crisis. By reducing debt financing and thus overinvestment, they tried to reorganize financing structure and ownership structure. Chaebols’ debt reduction turns out to have improved performance. However, polarization between chaebol and non-chaebol firms has become more significant. Even after the crisis, firms that give higher cash flows to a controlling shareholder take more capital investment, indicating that agency problems still exist within chaebols. Chaebol-affiliated firms continue to be more active in R&D than non-chaebol firms. However, the pattern is limited to the group of top 10 chaebols after the crisis.

Abbreviations: KFTC: Korea Fair Trade Commission     

Types of technology

Technology is a concept rife with confusion. Here, I argue that technologies can be distinguished as a combination of type of producer and an idealized artefact life history. Using this definition, a number of technologies are identified. The first technology historically, in the Protostomes, was the production of individual or family dwellings. Next came objects such as spider webs for trapping prey. Stigmergy followed, with the social insects, as a collective endeavour to construct a mega-structure using simple rules of accretion. Some birds and primates began to make tools, or simple technological objects whose function is closely related to their form. Humans are distinguished by their ability to make machines. Traditional technology took place once people voluntarily organised into groups with specialised knowledge to produce more complex objects and structures. Monumental objects like ceremonial pyramids came with the command economies of the early agrarian societies, which also resulted in a new category of artefact, the network. Finally, with modern civilizations came ad hoc accretion, or population-level adding-on, to make truly complex technological systems. Developing a theoretical framework within which artefacts, production processes and ways of interacting with them are identified should help the study of technology to become more scientific.