公司治理、现金股利变化与盈余变化持续性——基于中国上市公司的分析

考察了中国上市公司治理结构、现金股利变化与盈余变化持续性之间的关系。研究发现,现金股利变化对盈余变化持续性的影响有类似成熟资本市场所呈现的预测作用,但作用较弱;而且这种预测作用的强弱受到公司治理结构的影响;现金股利变化对盈余变化持续性的预测作用表现直接,并非通过股利变化的市场反应表现出来。该结论为市场参与者客观准确地判断上市公司业绩及其投资价值提供了良好的参考。     

基于我国上市公司股利政策的特点论股权结构改革

我国上市公司对现金股利的派发表现出与西方成熟股票市场截然相反的反应,股权集中度与现金股利支付呈正相关关系,流通股与非流通股有不同的股利政策偏好.     

企业社会责任、现金股利与投资效率

本文选择我国2008-2016年沪深两市的A股上市公司作为研究样本,首先实证检验了企业承担社会责任对企业现金股利分配的影响。研究结果表明,社会责任表现越好的企业其更倾向于派发或连续派发现金股利,并且现金股利支付率越高。接下来本文对企业发放现金股利与投资效率的关系进行了研究。研究表明,企业发放现金股利通过减少企业的自由现金流抑制代理问题,缓解了自由现金流富余的企业的过度投资,连续派现向市场传递出的积极信号为企业带来新的融资,缓解了自由现金流紧缺的企业的投资不足。最后,本文进一步研究了企业社会责任在现金股利与投资效率的相关关系中发挥了何种调节作用,研究结果显示企业通过履行社会责任增加现金股利的发放,进而可以显著提高现金股利对过度投资的抑制作用。履行社会责任的企业更倾向于连续派现,从而提高了现金股利对投资不足的缓解程度。     

利益相关者与股利政策:代理冲突与博弈

本文以股权分置改革为背景,利用2004—2008年中国上市公司经验数据,从代理冲突和博弈的角度分析了利益相关者与股利政策之间的关系。研究表明,我国上市公司利益相关者各方在股利分配上存在政策博弈现象。博弈的结果表现为具有控股股东的公司比其他公司具有更高的现金股利支付率;具备再融资条件的公司比其他公司具有更高的现金股利支付率;第一大股东参与管理的程度越低,现金股利的支付率越高,但这一特征并不显著。同时,在股权分置改革后,我国上市公司存在少分现金股利的倾向。     

媒体关注与公司现金股利支付*

随着中国证监会针对上市公司现金股利支付行为的一系列政策的出台,公司的现金股利支付行为成为广受热议的重点话题。本文从媒体关注视角研究了中国上市公司的现金股利支付行为。通过实证研究,本文得到如下研究结论：（1）媒体关注的增多可以显著提高公司未来股利支付意愿和支付水平;（2）媒体关注与“铁公鸡”公司、“微股利”公司的比例显著负相关;（3）与国有控股公司相比,媒体关注对民营控股公司未来股利支付意愿和支付水平的正面影响更为显著;（4）媒体关注对第一类和第二类代理问题更严重的公司的现金股利支付意愿和支付水平的正向影响更强。进一步的研究还显示,媒体关注与现金股利支付意愿和支付水平的正相关关系在管理层持股比例低、非国际四大会计师事务所审计、分析师跟踪少的公司样本中更显著。以上结论说明媒体关注是除行政治理外,另外一种督促上市公司支付现金股利的重要机制。本文除了具有丰富媒体治理和股利政策两方面理论研究的贡献外,对监管机构规范资本市场股利支付行为和保护投资者权益具有重要政策启示。     

股利政策的因素分析：制度和技术的解释——基于公司成长性特征的实证分析

本文以763家上海证券交易所A股上市公司2003年的横截面数据为观察值，从制度和技术两个层面实证分析了现金股利政策的影响因素，分别考察了股权结构和组织特征对现金股利支付率的解释力。本文发现，股权结构（股权集中度和大股东持股）和组织特征（盈利能力、盈余水平、现金拥有量、公司规模和财务杠杆）均对现金股利政策具有一定的影响（而且大多数影响在统计上是显著的）；大股东整体上具有分配现金股利的倾向和能力。企业成长性机会能够弱化大股东集团分配现金股利的激励，并促使公司保留更多的现金用于有价值的投资机会。     

上市公司股利政策与公司可持续发展关系的研究

文章针对我国上市公司派发现金红利的公司数量少、不分配股利的现象严重、股利分配缺乏连续性和稳定性、股市投机性强的现状 ,指出公司应采取剩余股利政策、固定或持续增长的股利政策、固定股利支付率政策、低正常股利加额外股利政策以及可选择股利分配政策等。在权衡所有者与经营者利益 ,并充分考虑影响盈利分配的各种因素如交易成本、税收、融资成本、股东偏好等来确定公司最优的股利分配政策。     

投资者关注,盈余持续性与盈余管理

文章使用2008—2014年我国A股上市公司为样本数据,检验了投资者关注、盈余持续性与盈余管理的相关关系。研究发现,投资者关注越高的公司拥有更强的盈余及其组成部分的持续性。并且,投资者关注越高的公司越能够抑制公司的盈余管理。这表明,投资者注意力程度的提升能够加强公司盈余的持续性并显著抑制上市公司管理者的盈余操纵行为。     

连续性分红、股利变更与市场反应——基于宝钢股份的案例研究

以宝钢股份为例,采用案例研究的方法,考查了连续派现的公司由于实施股票回购而引起的股利变更的市场反应。结果表明,市场对于回购社会公众股和派发现金股利相结合的股利支付方式反应积极,而对股利支付率的下调并不敏感。其原因是在控股股东持股比例占绝对优势的情况下,变更股利支付方式为中小股东提供了更大的获利空间。同时,股票回购期间股价的波动也反映出通过股票回购获取资本利得的风险不容忽视。     

股利支付决策与迎合理论——基于中国上市公司的实证研究

本文采用1993-2006年的中国上市公司股利分配数据为样本,从迎合理论的角度对上市公司股利决策行为与股票市场的关系进行了实证检验。针对现金股利支付决策的研究发现,市场股利溢价水平较高时,上市公司更倾向于支付股利;进一步,对股票股利决策的分析发现相似的结果,即股票股利溢价越高,上市公司支付股票股利意愿越强。本文的研究表明,迎合理论对中国上市公司股利政策有较强的解释能力。另外,政策因素对上市公司的股利政策有显著的影响。     

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.