CEO任期与企业资本投资

本文基于管理者在一定约束条件下追求自身利益最大化的逻辑思路,分析管理者任期与企业资本投资之间的关系,重点检验我国上市公司CEO的既有任期和预期任期对企业投资水平和投资效率的影响。研究结果发现,在管理者任期与投资水平的关系上,国有企业与非国有企业表现一致:CEO的既有任期越长,企业的投资水平越高;CEO的预期任期越短,企业的投资水平越低。在管理者任期与投资效率的关系上,国有企业与非国有企业表现不同:非国有企业的过度投资程度与CEO的既有任期及预期任期无关,而国有企业CEO的既有任期越长,过度投资问题越严重;CEO的预期任期越短,过度投资问题越能得到缓解。     

银行监管与信贷歧视——从会计稳健性的视角

本文以2001-2010年沪深A股上市公司为研究对象,从稳健性的角度,探讨了贷款方式和企业性质对银行监管的影响。实证结果显示:(1)担保借款对稳健性的需求明显高于信用借款。(2)银行在事后风险控制过程中,信贷歧视现象仍然存在,具体表现为:在国有企业里,信用借款比例越高,企业稳健性越低;在非国有企业里,二者显著正相关。进一步地,结合货币政策的变动,研究发现该歧视行为主要体现在货币政策紧缩的年份。     

Does banks’ dual holding affect bank lending and firms’ investment decisions? Evidence from China

This study investigates the effect of banks’ dual holding on bank lending and firms’ investment decisions using a sample of listed firms in China. We find that dual holding leads to easier access to bank loans, a result that is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) than SOEs. We also find that dual holding distorts banks’ lending decisions and harms the investment efficiency for SOEs, while resulting in optimal lending decisions and enhanced investment efficiency for non-SOEs. For non-SOEs, further analysis suggests that optimal lending decisions and efficient investment can be achieved for firms with higher ownership concentration, and firms in which the family and foreign investors are the controlling shareholders. We argue that, in emerging markets, whether a bank plays a monitoring role by directly holding the debt and equity claims of companies relies heavily on whether the potential collusion between firm executives and bank managers can be averted, which in turn is determined by the firms’ governance framework and ownership structure.     

State ownership and abnormal accruals in highly-valued firms: Evidence from China

We examine how state ownership affects Chinese firms’ abnormal accruals during a period of high valuation. We find the magnitude of abnormal accruals first increases for up to three years of high valuation, and then reduces after the fourth year. We also find that managers turn to using abnormal real transactions after four consecutive years of high valuation. Next, we examine whether the degree of abnormal accruals in highly-valued firms differs between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-NSOEs. Supporting the view that SOE managers have less incentive to sustain high stock prices, we find evidence that highly-valued SOEs have significantly lower levels of abnormal accruals than highly-valued NSOEs during the period of high valuation. Our findings contribute to the literature on the cross-sectional variation in the relation between managers’ pressure to sustain high stock prices and their accounting choices in firms with different ownership structures.     

Government Credit,a Double‐Edged Sword: Evidence from the China Development Bank

Using proprietary data from the China Development Bank (CDB), this paper examines the effects of government credit on firm activities. Tracing the effects of government credit across different levels of the supply chain, I find that CDB industrial loans to state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) crowd out private firms in the same industry but crowd in private firms in downstream industries. On average, a $1 increase in CDB SOE loans leads to a $0.20 decrease in private firms' assets. Moreover, CDB infrastructure loans crowd in private firms. I use exogenous timing of municipal politicians' turnover as an instrument for CDB credit flows.     

Institutional investors,controlling shareholders and CEO pay‐performance relationship: evidence from China

Using a large sample of China’s listed firms between 2005 and 2015, we find that domestic mutual funds have a positive effect on the CEO pay‐performance relationship, and this effect becomes stronger when their ownership is higher and closer to the controlling shareholder’s ownership. This effect is stronger in non‐state‐owned enterprises (non‐SOEs), firms facing weaker industry competition incentives, and firms located in more developed regions. However, Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFIIs) do not have such an influence. Overall, our study contends that the effectiveness of institutional investors’ monitoring role is subject to their identity, controlling shareholders and institutional environments.     

Monitoring or colluding: the role of venture capital investors in the IPO process

We argue and provide evidence that instead of playing a monitoring role, venture capital (VC) investors collude with controlling shareholders in the IPO process of Chinese non‐state‐owned enterprises (non‐SOEs). We show that VC‐backed IPOs’ applications are more likely to be approved by regulators, especially in firms with excess control rights, but have worse post‐IPO performance. Through investing in firms with excess control rights, VC investors are able to make higher exit returns. We further document that VC investors’ role in the IPO process is stronger when they have political connections, hold higher ownership, and when they make pre‐IPO investment.     

Does banking deregulation affect accounting conservatism?

This study examines the effect of banking competition on borrowing firms’ conditional accounting conservatism (i.e., asymmetric timely loss recognition). The context of the study is the staggered passage of the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act (IBBEA), the deregulation that permits banks to establish branches across state lines and increases bank competition. I find that firms report less conservatively after the passage of the IBBEA in their headquarter states. The effect on conditional conservatism is stronger for firms in states with a greater increase in competition among banks, firms that are more likely to borrow from in-state banks, firms with greater financial constraint, and firms subject to less external monitoring. Additional tests confirm that the decline in conditional conservatism is observed only after the adoption of IBBEA and lasts for two years. The findings indicate that banks tend to “lowball” borrowers when competition arises by relaxing their demand for conservative reporting. Overall, this study highlights the unintended impacts of banking competition on borrowing firms’ financial reporting.     

Agency costs and tax planning when the government is a major Shareholder

In state owned enterprises (SOEs), taxes are a dividend to the controlling shareholder, the state, but a cost to other shareholders. We examine publicly traded firms in China and find significantly lower tax avoidance by SOEs relative to non-SOEs. The differences are pronounced for locally versus centrally-owned SOEs and during the year of SOE term performance evaluations. We link our results to managerial incentives through promotion tests, finding that higher SOE tax rates are associated with higher promotion frequencies of SOE managers. Our results suggest managerial incentives and tax reporting are conditional on the ownership structure of the firm.     

国企混合所有制能治疗僵尸企业吗？ —— 一个混合所有制类啄序逻辑

本文使用1998-2013年中国工业企业数据库,采用国际前沿方法识别出僵尸企业,然后比较了国企控股、国企参股以及转制民企这三种混合所有制改革策略治疗僵尸国企的效果。实证结果表明:相对于纯国企,混合所有制改革对僵尸国企具有显著的治疗效果;在多种混合所有制改革策略中,转制民企优于国企参股,国企参股优于国企控股,这形成了一种“国企混改类啄序”现象;然而,上述“啄序”现象并非对所有国企都适用,对于那些所处行业垄断程度高、企业政治级别高的国企,单纯民营化导向的混改对僵尸企业治愈的效果较差;最后,混合所有制改革治疗僵尸国企的主要渠道,是降低了国企的期间费用(主要是管理费用)。本文的结果为处置僵尸企业和渐进式改革提供了重要的理论依据。     

Corporate Lobbying,Visibility and Accounting Conservatism

In this study, we examine the relationship between a firm's lobbying activities and financial reporting quality using a US setting where public scrutiny of corporate political activities is high. More importantly, we examine whether and how a firm's visibility shapes the relationship between its corporate lobbying activities and accounting conservatism. Adopting annual lobbying expenditure data to measure firms’ lobbying activities, and using a propensity‐score‐matching methodology to control for differences in firm characteristics between lobbying and non‐lobbying firms, we find a positive relationship between a firm's lobbying intensity and the degree of accounting conservatism in its financial reporting. We further find this positive relationship to be more pronounced in lobbying firms with a higher level of visibility. These results are robust after controlling for a firm's political connections, across various conditional conservatism measures, and across a number of visibility measures including firm size, the number of analysts following the firm, the age of the firm, the number of foreign stock exchanges that the firm is cross‐listed in, and the level of the firm's media coverage. Together, our findings add to the literature on how firms’ political activities shape their accounting practices in general, and accounting conservatism in particular. More importantly, our findings suggest that the heightened public attention paid to political activities in the US yields incentives for firms to be more conservative in their accounting practices.     

Government Intervention and Investment Comovement: Chinese Evidence

This study examines whether government intervention affects corporate investment comovement, and whether this impact varies across firms with different types of ownership. We use a large Chinese sample to investigate these questions, and perform a regional as well as firm‐level analysis. We show that government intervention is positively and significantly associated with investment comovement. We also find that the impact of government intervention on investment comovement is higher and more significant for state‐owned firms than for domestic private and foreign firms. Finally, we show that investment comovement hinders corporate performance for state‐owned and domestic private firms but not for foreign firms.     

Does Internal Corporate Governance Complement or Substitute for External Auditing? Evidence from China's Anti‐corruption Campaign

Two competing hypotheses have been developed for the relationship between internal corporate governance and external auditing. One proposes a complementary relationship, while the other suggests it is substitutable. This study takes advantage of China's recent anti‐corruption campaign as a quasi‐natural experiment to explore this relationship. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach, we find that, after the campaign, internal corporate governance improved more in SOEs (state‐owned enterprises) than in non‐SOEs. SOEs were less likely to choose Big 10 auditors after the campaign, while audit firms assigned less experienced auditors to their SOE client firms and charged lower audit fees. These effects were more pronounced in SOEs that exhibited greater improvement in corporate governance. Overall, we find the anti‐corruption campaign improved corporate governance in SOEs but, at the same time, reduced external audit quality, which supports the substitution view. We argue that this result might be driven by the fact that SOEs have limited demand for high‐quality accounting information because the Chinese government maintains strong control over the capital markets.     

Ownership and performance in Chinese manufacturing industry

The relation between various ownership types and performance measures for 1036 firms in China is examined. State owned enterprises (SOE) are consistently less profitable than mixed enterprises (ME), collective owned enterprises (COE), joint ventures (JV), and foreign owned enterprises (FOE). The SOEs and FOEs are also less productive than MEs, COEs and JVs. The surprisingly low productivity for FOEs may result from the learning curve for international investors doing business in China. Owned by local governments, COEs are more profitable and productive than the central government owned SOEs, possibly because of closer monitoring and harder budget constraints, and better employees and management. The performance of MEs, mostly newly privatized firms, is weaker when related to assets, possibly due to the anomaly that capital investments following their public offerings are not yet on line. The co-existence of economies of scale and over-employment is also evident among Chinese enterprises.     

Corporate Governance and Accounting Conservatism in China

A principal-agent relationship exists among creditors, shareholders and management, and information asymmetry among them leads to asymmetric loss functions, which induces conservative accounting. This paper investigates the determinants of accounting conservatism using accrual-based measures and data from 2001 to 2006 in China. We find that a higher degree of leverage, lower level of control of ultimate shareholders and lower level of management ownership lead to more conservative financial reporting. We also find that political concerns and pressures among state-owned enterprises are greater than those among non-state owned enterprises, which leads to more conservative financial reporting among the former. However, a decrease in such concerns leads to a decrease in accounting conservatism. Overall, we find that among the determinants of conservatism in China, debt is the most important, followed by ownership, and that board has little influence.     

Is conservative reporting attractive to foreign institutional investors? Evidence from an emerging market

This study investigates the relation between conservative reporting and foreign institutional ownership using a unique dataset of firms in Turkey. In doing so, we distinguish between foreign funds and corporations. Contrary to prior findings, our analysis shows that conservative reporting is not necessarily a desirable accounting feature for foreign institutional investors. We also find that the interplay between conservative reporting and ownership is significantly different between foreign funds and corporations. The estimated negative relation holds only for foreign funds. Further analysis reveals that foreign funds do not find conservative reporting desirable in low-asymmetric information firms and reduce ownership with greater accounting conservatism in such firms. The analysis sheds significant lights on the relevance of conservative reporting in alleviating the negative consequences of asymmetric information.     

The decreasing value of non‐SOEs’ political connections during China’s anti‐corruption campaign: evidence and mechanism

In this paper, we find that China’s anti‐corruption campaign since 2012 significantly reduces the value of political connections for non‐state‐owned enterprises (non‐SOEs). We provide evidence showing that the decline of the value of political connections for non‐SOEs is attributed mainly to the decreasing return from political connections, instead of increasing political risk. We further find that the decreasing return of the politically connected firms is driven mainly by the disappearance of the ‘resource effect’ of political connection in facilitating access to bank credit and government subsidies, but not due to the increasing cost of maintaining political connections.     

The Choice of Debt Source by UK Firms

We examine the choice of borrowing source among public debt, syndicated bank loans, bilateral bank loans and non‐bank private debt. Using a sample of 400 non‐financial firms over the period 2000–2012, we find strong support for the reputational theory of borrowing source. Larger firms are more likely to borrow in public debt markets. Bank dependent firms are less likely to borrow in public debt markets and choose between bank and non‐bank private debt based on maturity, collateral available to lenders and other firm characteristics. These results are consistent with the role of borrower reputation being the primary determinant of borrowing source for UK listed firms.     

The International Transmission of Bank Liquidity Shocks: Evidence from an Emerging Market

I exploit the 1998 Russian default as a negative liquidity shock to international banks and analyze its transmission to Peru. I find that after the shock international banks reduce bank‐to‐bank lending to Peruvian banks and Peruvian banks reduce lending to Peruvian firms. The effect is strongest for domestically owned banks that borrow internationally, intermediate for foreign‐owned banks, and weakest for locally funded banks. I control for credit demand by examining firms that borrow from several banks. These results suggest that international banks transmit liquidity shocks across countries and that negative liquidity shocks reduce bank lending in affected countries.     

Ownership–efficiency relationship and the measurement selection bias

This study analyses the bias in the selection of performance measures for ownership comparisons, which depends on the specific objectives of the firms being compared. Our sample includes 13 Canadian state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), commercialized and/or privatized between 1976 and 2001. To replace profitability measures and reduce biases, we propose the use of technical efficiency, which provides for SOEs’ specificities. Overall, the results clearly support the view that privatization has no impact on a firm's technical efficiency, the only positive impact being related to a change in the objectives of the firm while using profitability measures. The results of this study raise the question of the validity of comparisons between SOEs and private firms when using profitability indicators. The potential bias in favour of the private firms contributes to a misleading image of the public sector being presented as inferior and inefficient. The use of more sophisticated measures, such as data envelopment analysis, suggests conflicting conclusions. This study also casts doubt on the legitimacy of the privatization program initiated around the world and more specifically in Canada in which the main justification for such a reform has been to increase the performance of SOEs.