论教授终身制及其在中国高校的应用问题

自20世纪初美国大学建立终身教授制度以来,该制度在维护学术自由、平衡行政权力与学术权力等方面发挥了重要作用,促进了美国高等教育的繁荣发展。中国高校有与之相似的终身制度———职称终身制,但是在实际应用过程中出现了概念不清、大学教师为职称而研究等问题,为此,国内一直在进行教师聘任制度的改革。     

What tenure security? The case for a tripartite view

In the face of advancing urban informality in the developing world there appears to be increasing consensus that tenure security is an important engine driving settlement development. This has, however, not led to a consensus about what tenure security exactly entails. In both theory and policy, the idea of tenure security for low-income settlement dwellers is encountered in three distinct forms: tenure security as perceived by dwellers, tenure security as a legal construct and de facto tenure security. The main argument of this paper is that much controversy that surrounds the debate arises precisely as a consequence of the indiscriminate use of these different kinds of tenure security. To address this problem, a tripartite conceptualization of tenure security that incorporates its three constituent components (perception, de jure, de facto) and clarifies their interrelations is presented.     

Land rental market, off-farm employment and agricultural production in Southeast China: A plot-level case study

This paper performs a plot-level analysis of the impact of land rental market participation and off-farm employment on land investment, input use, and rice yields for 215 plots cultivated by 52 households in three villages in Northeast Jiangxi Province. Our findings show that households that rent extra land are relatively more productive, but contradict results of earlier studies which found that tenure status of plots affects the level of land investments. We further find that off-farm employment does not significantly affect rice yields. This result contradicts those of earlier studies which found that the negative lost-labor effect of off-farm employment dominates the positive income effect. Another novel finding is that people working locally off-farm tend to switch from green manure planting towards the use of organic manure on their rice plots. We conclude that policies that will further stimulate the development of land rental markets, which is still in its infancy, can contribute significantly to higher rice production in Southeast China. Another implication of our results is that worries about the negative impact that the continuously growing off-farm employment may have on China's goal to remain self-sufficient in grain production are less relevant at the moment for the region examined in our study.     

Charisma and Compassion – Cheng Yen and the Buddhist Tzu Chi Movement by Huang,C. J.

The authors investigate the relationship between board ethnic diversity, ethnicity and market, and book measures of firm financial performance using Malaysian data. This represents a departure from prior studies that focused on White countries whose people remain culturally indistinct. Ethnic diversity is measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index; ethnicity is the largest representation of a single race. Controlling for firm- and board-specific attributes, the authors find a significant positive relationship between ethnic diversity and firm financial performance and that financial performance of companies differ between ethnicities. The results suggest that despite modernization and homogenization, corporate Malaysia is still divided along racial lines.     

The Value of the Rent Control Option

In this paper, we combine direct arbitrage arguments and an option-pricing approach to develop a method of pricing the option for rent control. For a lump-sum payment of key money, a tenant acquires the right to rent a real estate unit for an exogenously determined controlled rent, as opposed to paying the free-market rent. The tenant may continue exercising this right as long as he or she lives. Alternatively, the tenant may sell the right to occupy the controlled rent unit and receive a fraction of the key money paid by the subsequent tenant. We value the equilibrium key money, in a representative agents partial equilibrium, while endogenously determining the expected tenure duration in a controlled rent unit. We propose a procedure for valuing rent control options different from the representative agents. Our analysis shows that under real-world levels of conditional life expectancy, the level of the fraction of the key money retained by a departing tenant has an insignificant effect on the expected tenure duration in a controlled rent unit and on the level of key money.     

从证券交易所的视角看独立董事制度的完善

独立董事制度作为我国新近引进的制度，旨在解决我国上市公司特殊历史条件下产生的“一股独大”问题，规范和约束上市公司行为，切实保护中小投资者权益。独立董事制度在我国实施五年多来，成效显著，但也存在一些亟待解决的问题．本文试从证券交易所的视角探讨我国上市公司独立董事制度的不足与完善。     

中国上市银行独立董事制度的运行效率

以往的公司治理研究并没有考虑银行业的特殊性,因此对银行的治理问题不能简单地套用以往的研究结论.本文在充分考虑银行业治理的特殊性基础上,通过建立模型实证考察独立董事在银行中的运行效率.研究证实,由于银行股权制衡能力比较强,独立董事的监督职能被弱化,但是银行独立董事由于其专业背景以及广泛的社会关系,能够提高董事会决策效率,促进银行业绩的提升.研究还发现,独立董事的作用是有滞后性的.当期的独立董事能够明显地促进银行下一期的绩效.独立董事制度在国内上市银行中具有效率,能够促进银行的进一步发展.     

我国上市公司主动设立独立董事的动机分析

在我国独立董事制度的强制性制度变迁过程中,部分上市公司出现了主动设立独立董事的"自愿行为"。针对引发自愿行为的动机进行理论分析,并以沪深两市主动设立与非主动设立各50家上市公司为样本进行实证检验,结果表明我国上市公司中存在主动设立独立董事的"监督的动机"和"顾问的动机"。该研究为我国上市公司从强制合规到步入主动守规的自主治理阶段以及如何改革独立董事制度等方面提供了经验支持。     

Land rights in postwar Liberia: The volatile part of the peace process

The end to the war in Liberia, along with quality leadership and a large UN presence has laid the foundation for a successful peace process. Now the delicate part of the process is underway—building viable, equitable, and durable social relations, institutions and legal constructs. A potentially volatile part of any postwar scenario is the inability of land rights institutions to perform in an effective, legitimate, equitable manner. Reform of land tenure via policies, laws, institutions, and capacity, needs to happen in a manner that is able to attend to both the land rights related causes of conflict, and the tangle of land problems brought on by the war itself. This article reports on the current situation in Liberia, and examines the primary set of land tenure problems in the country. The article concludes with a series of suggestions for dealing with the unique circumstances of postwar land tenure, and the Liberian case.