Models of Capital Investments with Private Information and Incentives: a Selective Review

The purpose of this paper is to selectively review research that addresses capital budgeting decisions in settings characterized by dispersed information and incentive problems. The papers are theoretical; they formulate and analyze models that vary in the number of periods considered, the number of economic actors involved, and the number of alternative projects available. The aims of the review are to describe some of the formulations that have been studied, to highlight their key economic and mathematical properties, to reveal their common economic forces, and to collect and organize their basic results.     

Capital Structure, Information Acquisition and Investment Decisions in an Industry Framework

This paper analyzes the relationship between a firm's capital structure and its information acquisition prior to capital budgeting decisions. It is found that low-growth industries can sustain a large number of levered firms. In these industries, leverage is negatively related to a firm's incentive to acquire information during the capital budgeting process. In contrast, high-growth industries only sustain a small number of levered firms. In these industries, levered firms acquire more information than all-equity financed firms. The model yields empirical predictions regarding the effects of leverage on the expected amount and the volatility of corporate investment. While leverage does not affect firm value, highly levered firms generate a more volatile cash flow than firms with low debt levels.     

民间资本反哺实业的金融特区构想

在中小企业融资难与民间资本投资无门并存的背景下,引导民间资本反哺实业,为解决民间投资问题、扶持实体经济的发展提供了新思路。本文构想建立金融特区,架构资金融通的桥梁,以引导民间资金投资实体产业;同时,设计多样化的金融手段,打破以往对金融机构营运的限制,以平衡资金供求关系;并实行独特的运行机制,加大对实体产业的经济支持,以提升民间资本服务实体经济的能力,旨在为全国金融改革提供政策建议,从而为国民经济的健康、稳定发展做出贡献。     

Venture Capital and Private Equity: A Review and Synthesis

This paper reviews the existing literature on venture capital and private equity. The paper emphasises the importance of examining venture capital in the light of recent developments in corporate finance and its distinctiveness from other forms of finance. In order to understand current developments, the paper adopts a framework which combines industry/market and firm levels of analysis. Existing literature is reviewed using this framework. Industry level issues relate to rivalry between firms, the power of suppliers and customers, and the threats from new entrants and substitutes. Firm level issues concern deal generation, initial and second screening, valuation and due diligence, deal approval and structuring, post-contractual monitoring, investment realisation, and entrepreneurs' exit and recontracting with venture capitalists. This is followed by a review of the evidence on the performance of venture capital firms. The paper suggests potentially fruitful areas for further research including the extension of analysis to cover all stages of venture capital investment, examination of the inter-linkages between industry and firm level issues and between stages in the venture capital process, as well as further analysis of deal structuring issues and investment realisation and recontracting.     

A Survey of Managerial Incentives and Investment Bias — Common Structure but Differing Assumptions

Recent models within the agency framework concerning investment bias are reviewed, based upon a simplified structure of the pertinent information asymmetry. Tabulated overviews of contractual structures, critical assumptions, main and ancillary results, implications for future research and management are provided. As a general conclusion, the theoretical case of investment bias is rich and wide-ranging. It is now of interest to develop models and perspectives that focus more on economic fundamentals rather than pursuing additional variations of particular assumptions. Moreover, further research is needed in empirical testing and case studies. In particular, the framework promises to bring new perspectives and managerial implications on the administrative use of capital budgeting methods.     

改革开放:中国私营资本原始积累的大环境

始于20世纪70年代末的改革开放,为中国私营资本原始积累的产生与发展营造了良好的大环境。农村承包制改革、国有企业改革、引进外资政策的施行,都在解放与促进我国社会生产力的迅速发展,同时也促进了私营资本原始积累的产生与发展。允许一部分地区和一部分人先富起来的政策更是加速中国私营资本原始积累的巨大推动力量。     

Reporting Frequency, Information Precision and Private Information Acquisition

Abstract:  This study examines whether the choice between quarterly and semiannual reporting affects the precision of investors' information and their private information acquisition activities. In the first part of this study, we show that a firm's reporting frequency has no effect on the average precision of investors' information. However, our analysis of announcement-period price variance and share turnover shows that an increase in reporting frequency does make interim and annual financial reports a more important component of investors' information set, relative to other sources of information. In particular, the results of this analysis suggest that investors of semiannual reporters hold more precise pre-announcement information than investors of quarterly reporters. In the second part of our study, we test one explanation for this finding. We argue that an increase in a firm's reporting frequency reduces investors' incentives to acquire private information between consecutive announcement dates and, consequently, should reduce information asymmetry among investors, increase share liquidity, and stimulate trading. Consistent with this reasoning, we find that quarterly reporters have lower average bid-ask spreads and higher abnormal share turnover than semiannual reporters.     

Capital budgeting with multiple criteria and multiple decision makers

In this article, we propose a model that incorporates the preferences of multiple decision makers into a decison-making process using (1) The analytical hierarchy process (AHP); and (2) multiple criteria and multiple constraint levels (MC²) linear programming in a capital budgeting context. Our model can foster strategic and nonfinancial factors that are important in the capital budgeting problems of the current business environment. The two-phased solution framework proposed in this article is sufficiently flexible to reach a compromise among decision makers. Our method also facilitates collection of decision makers' preferences to minimize suboptimization of overall company's goals. In addition, application of AHP to derive weights to decision makers' preferences for resource availability decreases the solution complexity. All these characteristics represent a significant improvement compared with previous linear or goal programming approaches to capital budgeting problems.     

民间资本参与社会养老服务提供的制度政策分析

我国人口老龄化发展速度加快,社会养老服务供需不平衡的矛盾凸显。机构养老的“补充”地位已经远远不能满足养老服务的实际需求。民间资本在市场需求和政府政策激励下,正越来越多地投入到社会养老服务提供中。但民间资本在参与养老服务提供的过程中面临一系列制度和政策方面的问题,影响了其参与养老服务提供的积极性。本文在对内蒙古部分民办养老机构实地调查的基础上,对相关问题进行了分析,并提出了一些对策和建议。     

民营资本与经济增长——宁波市体外循环资金的基本状况及管理对策

本课题以宁波地区体外循环资金为研究对象,分析了体外循环资金的主要形式、特点、产生的原因及对整个社会经济产生的积极影响和消极影响。在此基础上,文章提出相应的政策建议:在宏观层面,国家要对体外循环资金进行正确引导,疏堵结合,积极拓宽投融资渠道,优化融资环境,平抑体外循环资金的过渡发展;在中观层面,地方政府要适合本地经济特点,切实转变职能,积极为中小企业发展创造良好的社会环境;在微观层面,工商银行要进一步提升服务水平,有效吸收民间闲散资金,削减民间借贷的资金供给,为抑制体外循环资金的过度发展做出积极的贡献。     

Communication in Private-Information Models: Theory and Computation

Communication and no-communication versions of a two-stage principal-agent model are compared. The models contain a risk-averse agent and two sources of private information, a shock to preferences followed by a productive action. Both models are formulated as linear programs, which are then used to compute solutions to examples. For the communication model, an alternative method of accounting for the utility from off-equilibrium strategies is derived. This method greatly reduces the size of the linear program. For the no-communication model a Revelation-Principle like proof is provided. In simple cases, a sufficient condition for communication to be valuable is derived. In these cases, communication improves risk-sharing in bad states of the world. In more complicated cases, computed examples demonstrate how communication may also alter labor supply. Further examples demonstrate how action and consumption lotteries may separate agents by their shock.     

Growth Opportunities and Investment Decisions: A New Perspective on the Cost of Capital

This paper shows that it is not always correct to make an upward adjustment to the stock beta in calculating the hurdle rate for capital budgeting even when the project under consideration is riskier than existing assets. The paper also shows that the correct hurdle rate is smaller than the market capitalization rate calculated from the firm's stock beta when the project under consideration has the same risk as existing assets. In addition, it is shown that the market capitalization rate will be an underestimate (overestimate) of the correct hurdle rate when the risk of future assets is greater (smaller) than both the risk of assets in place and that of future capital expenditures. These new results are direct consequences of the insight that the firm's investment opportunities are in fact real call options written on underlying assets.     

Market Performance Measures and Disclosure of Private Management Information in Capital Markets

Thispaper examines the optimal disclosure policyin a principal/agent setting in which investors and a managerdirectly receive pre-decision, non-contractible signals. Themanager's signal is more informative than the investors' signal.Under no disclosure, the market price provides contractible informationabout the investors' signal, whereas it does not reveal the investors'signal if the manager fully and truthfully discloses his signal.The Revelation Principle does not apply and we identify conditionsunder which no disclosure dominates full disclosure, and providea ``hurdle' model in which partial disclosure strictly dominatesboth no and full disclosure.     

对资产证券化会计问题的探讨

资产证券化是国际资本市场上创新金融革命的一部分。作为一种创新的融资手段,资产证券化给会计带来了冲击和挑战。到目前为止,我国还没有关于资产证券化信息披露全面、系统的规定。我国应在借鉴国际惯例的基础上,尽量按照我国会计的传统习惯做出相应的规定,以便指导我国资产证券化的会计实践,促进我国资产证券市场的发展。     

Accruals Quality, Information Risk and Cost of Capital: Evidence from Australia

Abstract:  Recent theoretical work argues that information risk is a non-diversifiable risk factor that is priced in the capital market. Using accruals quality to proxy for information risk, Francis et al. (2005) provide empirical support for this argument using a sample of US firms. This paper re-examines the interplay of accruals quality, information risk and cost of capital in Australia, where a number of important institutional and regulatory differences are hypothesized to affect the relation between accruals quality and cost of capital. The results suggest that, while accruals quality impacts on the cost of capital for Australian firms, some salient differences exist. In contrast to findings for US firms, the costs of debt and equity for Australian firms are largely influenced by accruals quality arising from economic fundamentals (i.e., innate accrual quality) but not discretionary reporting choices (i.e., discretionary accrual quality). This finding is consistent with our predictions based on the Australian institutional and regulatory environment. In addition, using both the asset pricing tests in Francis et al. (2005) and Core et al. (2008) , we provide evidence consistent with accruals quality being a priced risk factor.     

Investment Opportunities,Free Cash Flow and Stock Valuation Effects of Corporate Investments: The Case of Taiwanese Investments in China

This paper examines the importance of investment opportunities and free cash flow in assessing the stock market reaction to announcements of cross-border investments in China by Taiwanese firms. Our results support the investment opportunities hypothesis that Taiwanese firms with favorable investment opportunities have significantly positive response to the announcements of their investments in China whereas firms with poor investment opportunities have negative response to such announcements. In contrast, we find no support for the free cash flow hypothesis. Our findings add to the understanding of the determinants of the wealth effect of cross-border investment decisions in the Asia-Pacific region.     

Debt vs. Equity and Asymmetric Information: A Review

Recent Nobel Prizes to Akerlof, Spence, and Stiglitz motivate this review of basic concepts and empirical evidence on information asymmetry and the choice of debt vs. equity. We first review the literature that holds investment fixed. Then we review capital structure issues related to the adverse investment selection problem of Myers–Majluf. Finally, we discuss the timing hypothesis of capital structure. Empirical studies do not consistently support one theory of capital structure under information asymmetry over the others. Thus, the review suggests that additional theoretical contributions are needed to help understand and explain findings in the empirical literature.     

Information and the Cost of Capital in a Mean‐Variance Efficient Market

Before information ? arrives, market observers must be uncertain whether the stock price conditioned on ? will be higher or lower than the current price. Otherwise there is an obvious arbitrage opportunity. By assuming this minimal condition of efficient markets, it is shown under the mean‐variance CAPM that information that leaves the future value of a firm more certain, in the sense that its perceived covariance with the market is reduced towards zero, can lead to a higher expected return on that asset. A further result is that it is theoretically possible that the required return on the stock will necessarily fall after observing signal ?, or (in other circumstances) that it will necessarily rise. In general, information that allows better discrimination between firms leads some firms to have higher costs of capital and other firms to have lower costs of capital. Less obviously, better discrimination between firms can induce a higher average cost of capital across the market.     

Firm Value,Information Problems and the Internal Capital Market

We examine how information problems between the firm and the investor affect the value of an internal capital market. While the extant literature finds that, on average, the diversified firm's access to an internal capital market is positively related to firm value, this paper finds that the results hold only for firms which face low levels of information problems. Firms facing the high levels of information problems realize no value from internal capital market access, consistent with the Jensen Free Cash Flow hypothesis. When information problems are large, agency costs dominate any savings that result from using an internal capital market to avoid selling under-priced securities in the external capital markets.     

Asymmetric Information and the Market Structure of the Venture Capital Industry

In this paper we study a horizontally differentiated market for financial intermediation and develop a simple explanation for concentration in the financial intermediation industry. We show that under asymmetric information, if the demand for funds is not perfectly elastic, the heterogeneity of entrepreneurs in need of financing translates into a barrier to entry. That is, we do not need to resort to learning, weak property rights or exogenous costs of entry to generate this result.