Intercorporate Ownership,Taxes, and Corporate Payout Choices*

This paper examines whether corporate payout choices (dividends or share repurchases) are associated with intercorporate ownership in a firm. Using the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) and the Inter‐Corporate Ownership (ICO) database from Statistics Canada, I find that intercorporate ownership is positively associated with a firm’s propensity to pay dividends and negatively associated with a firm’s propensity to repurchase shares. The findings are robust to the endogeneity of intercorporate ownership and the inclusion of various control variables such as firm size, risk, liquidity, growth, and profitability.     

Towards a ‘new normal’ growth strategy: China in comparative perspective

China’s move towards a new normal has been motivated by domestic factors and accelerated by the decline in export opportunities to developed countries. This decline, combined with the knock-on effects of China’s growth adjustments, is disrupting the favourable external environment that made developing countries’ export-led development strategies viable. This paper concentrates on a rebalancing of developing countries’ growth strategies towards a greater weight of household consumption as a potential alternative and discusses three challenges – market size, domestic purchasing power and balance-of-payments constraints. Concentrating on the latter, it analyses changes in sectoral compositions of consumer demand and patterns of international trade. Results point to the risk that a shift in growth strategy causes an import surge. The paper’s findings indicate the scope and speed of required product innovation that would prevent a rebalancing of growth strategies towards a greater role of consumption from running into balance-of-payments constraints.     

On estimating long-run effects in models with lagged dependent variables

A common procedure in economics is to estimate long-run effects from models with lagged dependent variables. For example, macro panel studies frequently are concerned with estimating the long-run impacts of fiscal policy, international aid, or foreign investment.Our analysis points out the hazards of this practice. We use Monte Carlo experiments to demonstrate that estimating long-run impacts from dynamic models produces unreliable results.Biases can be substantial, sample ranges very wide, and hypothesis tests can be rendered useless in realistic data environments. There are three reasons for this poor performance. First, OLS estimates of the coefficient of a lagged dependent variable are downwardly biased in finite samples. Second, small biases in the estimate of the lagged, dependent variable coefficient are magnified in the calculation of long-run effects. And third, and perhaps most importantly, the statistical distribution associated with estimates of the LRP is complicated, heavy-tailed, and difficult to use for hypothesis testing. While many of the underlying problems have been long-known in the literature, the continued widespread use of the associated empirical procedures suggests that researchers are unaware of the extent and severity of the estimation problems. This study aims to illustrate their practical importance for applied research.     

Why do commercial banks hold government bonds? The case of Japan

We investigate the determinants of the demand for Japanese government bonds (JGBs) by commercial banks in Japan. In particular, by estimating portfolio equations for JGB demand and bank loans, based on a panel data set from the late 1990s to the 2000s, we rigorously test the popular assertion that the long stagnation of the real economy caused a shift in the portfolios of commercial banks from bank lending to JGBs. We find that the popular assertion is not empirically supported. Rather, the portfolio shift from loans to JGBs has been caused by a fall in the ratio of the loan rate to unit lending costs, or the bank’s price–cost margin for lending.     

绥中地籍登记信息平台构建

地籍登记信息平台的建立能够支持地籍登记工作实现信息实时更新和共享。系统基于C/S架构进行开发,以绥中县为例,建立农村宅基地数据库,集成多源地理空间数据,为用户提供宅基地信息的基本浏览和查询,实现数据的信息化管理,提高土地管理部门的工作效率和服务质量,对当前登记信息平台的建立进行了有益的探索。     

地方人大中的地域代表现象探析——基于五省市人大代表建议的内容分析

本文试图探析在中国地方人大中是否存在地域性代表及其相关因素。通过收集和分析2017年国内五省市人大收到的近四千条代表建议,发现在地方人大代表的履职行为中,一定范围内存在从整体资源中为选区争取利益的现象。进一步回归分析的结果显示:来自经济发展水平相对较低的地区的代表,更倾向于提出地域性建议;由代表联名提出的建议更可能是地域性建议;担任地方党政领导职务的省市人大代表,在提出建议时更倾向于提出地域性建议。上述实证发现对中国地方人大地域性代表的实现机制提供了初步启发性证据,也有助于丰富我们对非竞选体制下的政治代表性和回应性机制的理解。     

供应商集中、公司治理与企业价值 ——基于我国A股制造业上市公司数据

本文通过选取2010—2017年我国A股制造业上市公司的数据,先研究公司供应商集中对于公司价值的直接影响,结论显示公司供应商集中对于企业价值有着负面的影响;然后在进一步研究中,探究了公司治理相关因素以及面临的融资约束情况对于公司供应商集中与公司价值关系的调节作用。实证结果显示,产权性质以及董事会独立性会对两者的关系产生影响;股东间的相互关联以及对于高管薪酬激励都对公司供应商集中与公司价值的关系有着负向的调节作用。与此同时公司面临的融资约束越小,公司供应商集中对于公司价值的负面效应越弱;最后利用多重中介效应模型探究了供应商集中的作用机制。     

农户视角下的面源污染防治政策梳理及完善策略

在供给侧结构性改革背景下,政策是进行面源污染防治的有效工具。市场经济环境下,农户的行为逻辑受多元因素影响。政策作为影响第一产业发展的关键要素,对农户具有制约、引导、激励和调节作用。与此同时,农户也对政策的推行效果具有深刻的影响。本文在进行面源污染防治政策演进分析时,尝试从经济激励引导型、命令控制型以及协同辅助型等不同政策类型入手,重视经济激励和制度激励的作用,收紧面源污染防控的监管口径,建立差别化的污染治理衡量机制,并重视技术推广在污染防控中的作用。提高农户积极性,提升农户对政策的反馈效果,最终提高农户对面源污染防治政策的遵循水平,提升面源污染防治效果。     

Lumpy Investment and Corporate Tax Policy

In the presence of both convex and nonconvex capital adjustment costs in a dynamic general equilibrium model, corporate tax policy generates both intensive and extensive margin effects via the channel of marginal Q. Its impact is determined largely by the strength of the extensive margin effect, which, in turn, depends on the cross‐sectional distribution of firms. Depending on the initial distribution of firms, the economy displays asymmetric responses to tax changes. Moreover, an anticipated increase in the future investment tax credit reduces investment and adjustment rate initially.     

Japan's financial crises and lost decades

In this paper, we explore the role of financial intermediation malfunction in macroeconomic fluctuations in Japan. To this end we estimate, using Japanese data, a financial accelerator model in which the balance sheet conditions of entrepreneurs in a goods-producing sector and those of a financial intermediary affect macroeconomic activity. We find that shocks to the balance sheets of the two sectors have been quantitatively playing important role in macroeconomic fluctuations by affecting lending rates and aggregate investments. Their impacts are prominent in particular during financial crises. Shocks to the entrepreneurs’ balance sheets have played a key role in lowering investment in the bubble burst during the early 1990s and in the global financial crisis during the late 2000s. Shocks to the financial intermediaries’ balance sheets have persistently lowered investment throughout the 1990s.