War and economy. Rediscovering the eighteenth-century military entrepreneur

Abstract

The detrimental effects traditionally assigned to warfare in the development of pre-industrial economies have obscured the prominent role that military entrepreneurs played in economic development in this period. Historiography minimises the extent to which war and the concomitant strengthening of the central state provided a whole new range of opportunities for capital investment, a tendency that has been strengthened by the paradigm of Redlich’s ‘decline of the soldier-entrepreneur’ and the technological determinism of the debate on the Military Revolution among others. The aim of this introduction is to look into the background of this relative lack of interest and to reaffirm the mutual dependence of eighteenth-century state-formation and the business of war.     

Media coverage and investment efficiency

We examine the effect of media coverage on firm-level investment efficiency. We find that media coverage reduces under-investment but increases over-investment. The negative effect of media coverage on under-investment is more pronounced in firms affected by greater information asymmetry and poorer corporate governance. The positive effect of media coverage on over-investment is driven by media-induced CEO overconfidence. Additional results show that both investment- and non-investment-related news coverage decrease under-investment, while non-investment-related news coverage is more influential in increasing over-investment. In general, higher news optimism is associated with less under-investment but more over-investment. Moreover, media coverage affects investment efficiency through its information dissemination rather than information creation function. Collectively, our results suggest that firms’ media visibility promotes more over-investment than under-investment.     

新时代背景下创建党建引领基层社会治理新模式的探索——以兰州市城关区为例

随着我国社会发展的不断推进与创新,对于执政基础的巩固、在最大限度内保证党的执政能力等均成为使基层党建可以获得良好效果的主要手段,并且使工作在不断的实践探索中获得更好的成效。但是,以党建引领基层社会治理的过程仍然存在众多问题,其中包括形式化严重以及做表面功夫等。因此,如何在新时代的背景下,通过党的全面领导将党与群众紧密地联系在一起,从而确保党建工作可以在基层发挥更强的社会治理职能,已成为基层社会治理模式探索并创新的主要内容。     

基于帕特南理论的空心村治理绩效评价——理论框架与指标体系构建

研究目的:治理绩效评价本应与空心村规划、实施过程成为空心村治理前、中、后的有机环节,遗憾的是在实践和学术中均对这一重要环节没有足够的重视,部分影响了空心村的治理绩效。本文立足于空心村治理的实际过程和关键因素,借鉴帕特南制度绩效理论,探索构建空心村治理评价的理论框架和初步指标体系。研究方法:演绎归纳法、实地调查法和比较研究法。研究结果:(1)本文围绕空心村治理绩效的测量视角、测量维度、统计学解释和理论蕴意4个方面,构建了全面、整体、可靠、一致的空心村治理评价的理论框架;(2)紧扣空间结构优化和治理结构优化两个核心维度构建了三级指标体系,涵盖了评价空心村治理的16项指标;(3)4个空心村的实证对比研究,客观反映了治理的实际绩效,弥补了空心村治理后期评估的过程缺失,体现空心村治理的价值、目标和未来导向。研究结论:基于帕特南理论的空心村治理绩效评价框架和指标评价体系反映了空心村整治的本质属性和治理过程,为绩效评价提供了一个新的理论视角。     

Activist‐impelled divestitures and shareholder value

Research Summary : This study analyzes how the divestitures that are impelled by activist investors in their campaigns against public corporations affect shareholder value. Using hand‐collected data on the activist campaigns that were launched against and the divestitures that were undertaken by Fortune 500 companies between 2007 and 2015, we find that activist‐impelled divestitures are more positively associated with immediate and longer‐term measures of shareholder value than comparable manager‐led divestitures. These performance differences persist for nearly two years after the completion of these deals. Our results empirically test the idea that firms with agency problems unlock shareholder value when they divest, and support the notion that activist investors fulfill an important external governance function. Our work also opens new research opportunities and offers practical implications as well. Managerial Summary : This study investigates how divestitures that are undertaken at the behest of activist investors affect shareholder value. We find that divestitures that were undertaken under pressure from activist investors are associated with more positive shareholder returns than comparable divestitures that were undertaken voluntarily by managers. These performance differences persist for nearly two years after the completion of these deals, alleviating concerns about the purported short‐termism of activist investors. Our findings suggest that activist investors may fulfill an important governance function by inducing managers to undertake strategies that they might not otherwise pursue, thereby unlocking shareholder value.     

公司治理结构与会计信息失真防范

我国会计信息失真严重,与其自身的背景有相当大的关系,部分是技术上的原因,大部分则是制度或体制上的原因,公司治理不完善就是一个最重要的方面,因此,仅仅靠会计是不能从根本上解决会计信息失真问题的,而必须完善我国的公司治理结构。     

简析加强非国有企业档案管理的重要性

阐述了中国“入世”后，档案工作在非国有企业的生存发展中所起的基础性作用和保护企业知识产权的重要性，提出了非国有企业档案工作改革的新思路。     

Why Money Growth Determines Inflation in the Long Run: Answering the Woodford Critique

Woodford argues that it is not appropriate to regard inflation in the steady state of New Keynesian models as determined by steady‐state money growth. Woodford instead argues that the intercept term in the monetary authority's interest rate policy rule determines steady‐state inflation. In this paper, I offer an alternative interpretation of steady‐state behavior, according to which it is appropriate to regard steady‐state inflation as determined by steady‐state money growth. The argument relies on traditional interpretations of the central bank's power in the long run and appeals to model properties that are common to textbook and New Keynesian analysis. According to this argument, the only way the central bank can control interest rates in the long run is via affecting inflation, and its only means available for determining inflation is by determining the money growth rate.     

How Has Rural Tax Reform Affected Farmers and Local Governance in China？

Using nationally representative data, the present paper examines the impact of China's ongoing rural tax reform on farmers. The difficulties in further local governance restructuring are also discussed. It is argued that the issues associated with rural taxation and local governance in China result from inherent tension between an increasingly liberalized economic system and a still centralized political system. Although rural tax reform has helped to reduce farmers' tax burdens in the short term, the establishment of an effective local governance regime requires coordinated reforms to downsize local bureaucracy by providing social security for laid-off cadres, to strengthen local accountability by granting higher local formal tax autonomy, and to promote meaningful participation by expanding local democracy.     

On the test of the correction mechanism for mis-pricing between assets using a statistical yield spread model

This paper investigates the existence of a correction mechanism for mis-pricing between Japanese stock and bond. By this correction mechanism we mean that when deviations occur from the equilibrium levels of the expected return differentials between stock and bond — the risk premium differentials, the market will tend to correct the mis-pricing and bring the expected return differentials back to the equilibrium levels. We assume that the yield spread between the predicted earnings price ratio of stock and the yield to maturity of bond reflects the risk premium between stock and bond, and estimate the equilibrium risk premium differentials and mis-prices between stock and bond by modelling their behaviors with a statistical yield spread model (SYS). Empirical results strongly indicate the existence of the mis-pricing correction mechanism, suggesting the inefficiency of securities markets.