From Privatised to Hybrid Corporatised Higher Education: A Global Financial Management Discourse

Abstract: This study addresses the emerging financial management focus of publicly and privately funded universities in the global marketplace, focusing on their financial management strategies. Despite regional and national differences, both public and private universities are found to exhibit a global trend towards operating as predominantly market funded commercial organisations. In many countries this reflects the insinuation of New Public Management philosophies into university missions and strategies. University objectives show signs of serving an underlying financial imperative often driven by constrained government funding of higher education and the expansion of private higher education institutions. Revenue expansion through mass education and engagement in the education export trade emerge as primary financial management strategies for a self‐generating profit oriented business model of higher education.     

稳制造业是重振经济的重心

新型肺炎疫情的爆发,在给人民群众生命安全带来巨大风险的同时,也对我国经济发展带来较大冲击,首当其冲者就是广大中小企业。制造业中小企业作为其中的主力,面临着严峻的生存危机。我国不仅是世界制造业第一大国,也是制造业就业第一大国,保持制造业稳定是当前稳就业的关键。皮之不存,毛将焉附?中小企业的重要性和脆弱性在疫情期间凸显据第四次全国经济普查的数据,我国目前中小微企业数量达到1808万家,占全部企业数量的99.80%。     

Determinants of information technology investments: The case of ATM in an emerging economy

This paper examines the determinants of automatic teller machine (ATM), a kind of information technology (IT), in the Taiwanese banking industry. The lessons learned from Taiwan's banking industry can be applied to China's banking industry to facilitate the understanding of the IT adoption strategies of Chinese financial institutions. Factors that are expected to have impact on IT investment in general and on ATM investment in particular are identified from three perspectives, namely operating scale perspective, deposit service perspective, and operating cost perspective. The results of this study indicate that operating scale, banking deposit service and operating cost are all significant determinants of ATM investment in the Taiwan banking industry. The results are useful for those banks and financial institutions outside of China in deciding their ATM investment strategies in China when trying to enter and penetrate the Chinese banking market.     

Contemporary University Strategising: The Financial Imperative

This paper examines the financially focused strategies now evident amongst institutions competing for space in the global higher education system. In their search for increasing financial self‐sufficiency, universities and other higher education providers are examined for their primary competitive strategies. The study provides comprehensive evidence of their cost and operating efficiency strategies, facilitated by increasingly pervasive financial performance accountability systems. The primary operational strategies of teaching and research are found to have been transmogrified into strategies of customised education and research that is primarily focused upon and measured in terms of its funds generation. These trends contribute to complex performance management and accountability challenges as universities’ senior managers balance their internal financial ambitions with the expectations of external stakeholders, while simultaneously projecting sanitised imagery through corporate public relations strategies.     

The hospital capital crisis: issues for trustees

The erosion of the capital position in the hospital industry--one of the most complex and overregulated industries in the United States--is a major challenge to trustees. Hospital trustees have often neglected to examine their hospitals' capital needs on more than a project-by-project basis. In dealing with their hospitals' capital needs, trustees, most of whom are successful business people, too often take off their "business" hats and put on their "social worker" hats. In doing so they not only neglect to subject their hospitals' capital and operating programs to searching cost-benefit review, but they also overlook much useful knowledge about how to use corporate organization to shelter new ventures and strengthen their hospitals' market position and solvency. In this article, the authors discuss how hospitals can adopt successful corporate restructurings and strategies to respond to the adverse financial developments they will have to face in the coming years.     

Voluntary Disclosure,Manipulation, and Real Effects

We study a model in which managers’ disclosure and investment decisions are both endogenous and managers can manipulate their voluntary reports through (suboptimal) investment, financing, or operating decisions. Managers are privately informed about the value of their firm and have incentives to voluntarily disclose information and manipulate their reports in order to obtain more favorable terms when issuing equity to finance a new profitable investment opportunity. The model shows that treating managers’ disclosure and investment decisions both as endogenous and allowing managers to manipulate their voluntary reports yields qualitatively different predictions from when the disclosure and investment decisions are considered separately and managers cannot engage in manipulation. The model predicts that managers’ disclosure strategy is sometimes characterized by two distinct nondisclosure intervals (contrary to traditional threshold equilibria of voluntary disclosure models) and that managers with intermediate news sometimes forego the new profitable investment opportunity. As such, the paper highlights the importance of considering the interdependencies between firms’ disclosure and investment decisions and provides new empirical predictions.     

Wealth from creativity: Insights and strategies for the future of international cultural relations

Regardless of frontier, the creative community has begun to benefit financially from the democratisation of creative production and distribution opened up via the Internet, a place where planetary plurality and diversity is implicit. Artists are major ambassadors for their cultures operating in a collaborative environment that recognises the distinctive differences between cultures without threat to indigenous expression.

The cultural ecology may have changed but the response of government has been obstructive. Until the second Iraq war cultural diplomacy seemed to have replaced gunboat diplomacy and there was a growing movement to foster cultural relations in an environment being characterised as mutual. In parallel, at national level, governments were seeking to recognise the strong economic value of the cultural industries sector in the new globalised technology. This has now all been thrown into reverse gear by the practice of public diplomacy, a policy of unreformed imperialist hubris that seeks to influence policy in other nations by using domestic producers of intellectual, scientific, creative or economic content to promote selected values and so dominate the international relations agenda.

What if one were to integrate into the activities of international cultural relations the dynamic ways of working and thinking of the creative industries? A more beneficial model emerges if creators are given centre-stage and the values of the creative community applied to the management of international cultural relations. A series of insights borne of many years work in the creative industries could lead to a new set of strategies that would call the bluff of those currently seeking to promote the advantages of liberal democracy. For these strategies demonstrably uphold the rights of individuals to creative expression and to enrich their local economies. This does require the managers of international cultural relations to live more dangerously than at present and it is to them that this paper is addressed.     

Inflation,operating cycle,and cash holdings

A corporate cash-holding strategy is a trade-off between the costs and benefits of holding cash.At the macrolevel,firms are inclined to adjust and optimize their cash-holding strategies in response to changes in purchasing power due to inflation.At the microlevel,the operating cycle,which indicates the speed and turnover of corporate cash flow,also influences the corporate cash-holding strategy.Firms flexibly adjust their cash-holding strategies in response to changes in the internal and external environment,which is referred to as the cash adjustment strategy.We examine these predicted relationships using a sample of listed firms in China’s stock market over the 1998–2009 period.Consistent with our predictions,the empirical results indicate a significant negative association between cash holdings and the CPI,but the relationship is reversed when the CPI reaches a certain level.There is also a U-shaped relationship between operating cycle and cash holdings,and this relationship is similarly influenced by changes in the inflation level.In examining the macroeconomic environment and microlevel firm-specific characteristics simultaneously,our findings supplement the literature on firms’cash-holding strategies and provide theoretical and practical implications.     

Evaluating Constructive Lease Capitalization and Off‐Balance‐Sheet Financing: An Instructional Case with FedEx and UPS

This case illustrates the effects of the proposed new lease standard by the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board on existing outstanding operating leases. Specifically, the case examines the effects of the proposal that all firms report existing operating leases as capital leases upon the initial adoption of the proposed standard. By applying a constructive capitalization model to two firms who rely on operating leases for financing, FedEx and UPS, we found that both companies would have to record billions of dollars of liabilities that had only appeared in the footnotes of their financial statements under the current lease standards. In addition, the firms would experience a decline in retained earnings and key financial ratios, such as the debt‐to‐equity, return‐on‐assets, and interest coverage ratios, by reporting operating leases as capital leases under the new proposed standard. Furthermore, the magnitude of the lease capitalization impact is much smaller for UPS than for FedEx.     

银行业面对互联网金融挑战的应对策略——基于大数据背景下的思考

伴随着信息技术及互联网的快速发展,社会正在走向全面数字化。大数据、云计算等技术的异军突起使得居民的生活行为方式和企业的生产经营方式都发生了显著变化,科技进步带来的数字化变革正在影响并形成全新的生活习惯和商业模式。在这种大背景下,以网络为载体的互联网金融改变了金融运营模式,传统的银行业正在面临严峻考验。商业银行必须全面认识大数据技术变革带来的影响,转变经营策略,积极应对互联网金融带来的深刻变革。     

Defensive marketing: how a strong incumbent can protect its position

There has been a lot of research on marketing as an offensive tactic-how it can help companies successfully launch new products, enter new markets, or gain share with existing products in their current markets. But for nearly every new product launch, market entrant, or industry upstart grabbing market share, there is an incumbent that must defend its position. And there has been little research on how these defenders can use marketing to preemptively respond to new or anticipated threats. John H. Roberts outlines four basic types of defensive marketing strategies: positive, inertial, parity, and retarding. With the first two, you establish and communicate your points of superiority relative to the new entrant; with the second two, you establish and communicate strategic points of comparability with your rival. Before choosing a strategy, you need to assess the weapons you have available to protect your market position-your brand identity, the products and services that support that identity, and your means of communicating it. Then assess your customers' value to you and their vulnerability to being poached by rivals. The author explains how Australian telecommunications company Telstra, facing deregulation, used a combination of the four strategies (plus the author's customer response model) to fend off market newcomer Optus. Telstra was prepared, for instance, to reach deep into its pockets and engage in a price war. But the customer response model indicated that a parity strategy-in which Telstra would offer lower rates on some routes and at certain times of day, even though its prices, on average, were higher than its rival's-was more likely to prevent consumers from switching. Ultimately, Telstra was able to retain several points of market share it otherwise would have lost. The strategies described here, though specific to Telstra's situation, offer lessons for any company facing new and potentially damaging competition.     

STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS: TRANSLATING STRATEGY INTO RESULTS

A large and growing number of companies worldwide are adopting strategic performance measurement (SPM) systems to help them execute their business strategies. SPM systems use some combination of financial, strategic, and operating measures to evaluate management's success in improving operating efficiency and adding value for shareholders. In many cases, the SPMs also provide the primary basis for rewarding top management, divisional operating managers, and, increasingly, rank‐and‐file employees. Some SPM systems are based entirely on a financial measure like economic value added (or EVA), which encourages managers to consider the opportunity cost of investor capital in making all operating and investment decisions. Other systems are based heavily on nonfinancial considerations, such as the balanced scorecard's emphasis on customer and employee satisfaction, operational excellence, and new product introduction. In this article, the author uses the findings of his recent survey of 113 North American and European companies to shed light on a number of questions: What are the most popular measures in such systems—are they primarily financial, nonfinancial, or amix of the two? To what extent is incentive compensation tied to such measures—and how far down in the organization are such measures (and incentives) extended? What are the most formidable challenges to implementing SPM systems in large corporations, with often diverse collections of businesses and tens if not hundreds of thousands of employees? Among the article's most notable conclusions, a majority of companies expect in the next three years to publish SPM targets and results in their annual reports. The most commonly cited financial SPMs will be cash flow, return on capital employed, and other variations of EVA. The most frequently cited nonfinancial SPMs are customer satisfaction, market share, and new product development. The greatest challenge in implementing SPMs is translating the vision and strategic objectives at the corporate level into performance measures that are relevant to activities at the business unit level, and securing buy‐in from business unit managers and employees.     

数字化转型背景下保险科技对财险公司经营效率的影响研究——基于DEA-Tobit面板模型

本文利用2011—2017年58家财险公司的面板数据和中国数字金融发展指数,构建DEA-Tobit面板模型,探究保险科技对财险公司经营效率的影响。研究结论表明:(1)保险科技与财险公司经营效率之间呈U形关系,即在互联网保险阶段,受资源投入不充分、新技术产出滞后性等因素影响,保险科技对财险公司经营效率产生消极影响,而在新技术赋能的保险科技阶段,科技的沉淀开始逐步释放效益,助推了财险公司经营效率的提升;(2)保险科技对中外资财险公司经营效率的影响具有差异性;(3)保险科技发展在长期可通过降低经营成本、增加营销收入和资金运用收益来提高财险公司经营效率。     

New empirical evidence on the investment success of momentum strategies based on relative stock prices

This paper provides significant extensions and tests of momentum trading strategies based on relative prices that were first explored by George and Hwang (2004). We develop new momentum strategies based on the ratio of the current stock price to each of five different reference points in past prices: 52-week high, 52-week median, 52-week low, half-year high, and 2-year high. We measure their investment performance on the basis of the Fama and French 3-Factor and Momentum Model (Carhart four-factor model), and further employ the technique of nested trading strategies to measure incremental performance. The strategy based on the ratio of current stock price to its 52-week high price is the most profitable, and its performance is robust when tested over a wide range of financial and economic factors. Our results provide strong new evidence of the investment merits of a momentum trading strategy based on the 52-week high price ratio, and add new weight to challenges to the hypothesis that the stock market is efficient in the semi-strong sense.     

资金集中结算:制度完善与风险控制

本文从理论上阐明结算中心存在的产权基础,以及在此基础上观念的重塑。强调不同类型的集团管理模式下总部对财务管理的首要问题是风险控制和与集团整体利益相匹配的管理模式,而资金集中与结算是其重要的运作平台。并对两种主流结算模式下的风险控制制度进行了讨论。     

Using artificial neural network and multivariate analysis techniques to evaluate road operating conditions

Regional paved roads are low volume roads with a prevalence of heavy traffic. In the world, these roads concern about 80% of the total road network; however, the traffic that affects these roads is about 20%. Since regional roads are characterized by weak demand, budget for their management/maintenance is very low. This produces considerable difficulties in the choice of strategies for maintenance planning and scheduling. For this reason, the recurring topics of research in this field deal with typical roads issues and aim to develop low cost tools and methods. The study proposes a decision support system to evaluate regional paved roads operating condition in relation to the hydrogeological situation. In particular, the system allows to evaluate in a quick and easy manner, the operating conditions of the road, through low-cost tools (i.e. using low economic resources). This is very useful in the case of LVRs because administrations for these roads have a limited budget. The procedure is developed on a regional paved roads network based on more than 80 roads located in Southern Italy. Data is collected by direct surveys in the field and is integrated with cartography and information available in road agency records. From data analysis, obtained using two different techniques, an easy and quick use procedure is made. In particular, Model 1 is built through multivariate analysis and Model 2 using the artificial neural network (ANN) technique. The results show the validity of the two models in Regional paved roads operating conditions estimation in relation to hydrogeological situations of sites. Both models show good reliability. In particular, the first model (Model 1) is characterized by a high level of significance (p < 0.01) and by a coefficient of determination equal to 0.82. Comparative tests between the second model (Model 2) on which standard tests cannot be performed for obvious reasons, and the first model (Model 1). The results show that the ANN model (model 2), characterized by lower residual, simulates more accurately than the second (Model 1).     

Cash from operations and earnings management in Korea

Our study investigates the relationship between the operating performances of Korean industrial firms and the behavior of discretionary accruals during the period 1994-1997. We hypothesize that the degree of earnings management will depend on the firm operating performances. We construct 10 “cash from operations (CFO)” portfolios to test if there are systematic differences in discretionary accruals across portfolios.Four test methods (a mean accrual test, a correlation test, a regression analysis, and a sign-change test) are used to investigate if operating performances affect discretionary accruals differently. We compare three accrual estimation approaches (two discretionary accruals and total accruals) in testing the earnings management hypotheses.The results support the hypothesis that Korean industrial firms manage earnings. When operating performance is poor, the firms tend to choose income-increasing strategies. In addition, when operating performance is extremely poor, some firms tend to take a big bath, while some of the exceptionally well-performing firms tend to select income-decreasing strategies.     

An equilibrium approach to pricing foreign currency options

The paper presents a modified version of the Garman-Kohlhagen formula for pricing European currency options. The equilibrium approach deviates from the no-arbitrage approach by allowing domestic and foreign interest rates and their dynamics to be determined endogenously in the model. By using the relations between exchange rate dynamics and the dynamics of interest rates, I provide a new characterisation of the relevant volatilities for European currency option pricing, which only depends on parameters describing the variability of the log-exchange rate. The implications of the model for the valuation of American currency options and optimal exercise strategies are examined by applying numerical methods.     

An Analysis of Yield Curve Notes

This paper analyzes a new type of security, the yield curve note, which pays interest at a rate that varies inversely with short-term interest rates. A valuation model for yield curve notes is presented, the parameters of the model are estimated empirically, and the estimated model is used to explore, in simulation, the price behavior and risk characteristics of yield curve notes in comparison with fixed-rate notes. The risk of a yield curve note is approximately twice as great as a fixed-rate note with the same maturity. The unique risk characteristics of yield curve notes make them useful (as liabilities) in immunization strategies for financial institutions. Their usefulness in this regard may be the chief rationale for their development.     

中国上市银行经营效率的影响因素——基于Tobit回归模型的二阶段分析

本文利用数据包络分析(DEA)模型对截至2007年4月底上市的11家全国性商业银行2004～2006年的效率水平进行总体分析与评价,在此基础上对银行经营效率的可能影响因素进行理论假设,并利用二阶段Tobit回归模型对理论假设进行检验.研究结果显示,样本期间内我国上市银行经营效率普遍呈上升趋势,在影响银行经营效率的四个主要因素中,银行资产质量越高,即银行不良贷款比率越低,银行经营效率就越高;银行人均营业费用越高,即银行投入"拥挤程度"越低,银行经营效率就越高;此外,银行清偿能力和"上市"都对银行效率产生显著影响.