The funding of subsidiaries equity,double leverage and the risk of bank holding companies

Banking groups exploit double leverage when ‘debt is issued by the parent company and the proceeds are invested in subsidiaries as equity’. Financial authorities have frequently raised concerns about the issue of double leverage because this type of intra‐firm financing appears to allow for both the arbitrage of capital and the assumption of risk. This article focuses on the relationship between double leverage and risk‐taking within banking groups. First, we discuss this relationship based on an examination of balance sheet figures. Second, we analyze a large sample of United States Bank Holding Companies (BHCs) from 1990–2014. The results show that BHCs are more prone to risk when they increase their double leverage, namely, when the stake of the parent within subsidiaries is larger than the stand‐alone capital of the parent. This paper's primary implication for policymakers is that the regulators of complex financial entities should more efficiently address the issue of double leverage, thereby limiting the potential negative consequences that arise from corporate instability.     

Quality of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure and Cost of Equity Capital: Lessons from China

This article explores the relationship between the quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and the cost of equity capital by analyzing the financial data and CSR reports of A-share listed firms in China from 2008 to 2014. The quality of the CSR disclosure is shown to be negatively related to the cost of equity capital of the listed firms. This negative correlation proves to be more prominent among firms of environmentally sensitive industries. Taking the ownership of the listed firms into consideration, it is further confirmed that the negative relationship between the CSR disclosure and the cost of equity capital is of higher significance for state-owned enterprises. Our findings also empirically demonstrate that the quality of CSR disclosure is more negatively related to the cost of equity capital among the large listed firms than the smaller ones.     

Multidimensional brand equity and asymmetric risk

The authors investigate the extent to which central customer-based brand equity dimensions (Differentiation, Relevance, Esteem, Knowledge, and Energy) influence a firm’s systematic risk (i.e., beta) during both market upturns and downturns. The results demonstrate that aggregating upside and downside beta or different dimensions of brand equity masks the true associations which can be seen only in the disaggregate analyses. The authors find that Relevance and Knowledge play roles as stabilizers, showing negative relationships with both upside gains and downside risk, while Esteem plays the role of protector, showing a negative relationship with only downside losses and not influencing upside gains; Energy acts as a booster, being positively associated with a firm’s potential gains in a period of market growth without increasing the firm’s expected losses during a bad market. The positive relationship of Energy with aggregate risk could be misleading as it hides the beneficial effect of Energy as a booster. The authors also find that Relevance is the most important consideration when people make choices in bad market situations, while Energy becomes the most crucial deciding factor in good market situations. Taking advantage of the multidimensional constructs of brand equity while allowing for the asymmetrical characteristics of risk enables managers to capture the differential role of each brand equity dimension in influencing firm risks, which leads to more sophisticated strategic decisions regarding risk management. In addition to general brand strategy, the authors provide tailored brand strategies to firms from different industries or with different financial characteristics.     

基于跨境社交平台的产品推广模式研究

论文调查分析了近年来热度较高的跨境社交媒体平台以及相关使用数据,利用相关性分析方法分析了多个平台的数据,在此过程中发现了各平台间具有相当高的互惠性,并运用互惠比例和推广方式适配度模型完成了对跨境社交平台的运行模式以及推广方式的对比分析,最终研究得出跨境社交媒体平台的产品推广模式。     

Key drivers of innovation capability in hotels: implications on performance

Innovation capability is critical for the modernization and competitiveness of the hotel industry. This work analyzes the role of hotels' innovative culture, market orientation, and internal marketing as forerunners of innovation capability in hotels, as well as the effect of innovation capability on hotels' performance. The proposed conceptual model is evaluated through structural equation modeling using a sample of 256 Spanish hotels. The results reveal that innovative culture by itself is not a key driver of the hotels' innovation capability. However, internal marketing and market orientation mediate the innovative culture-innovation capability relationship. Innovation capability proves to enhance hotels' market results directly and indirectly through customer equity. Our findings offer hotel managers useful guidance to understand how innovation capability is built within the firm by combining the right organizational culture and practices. Additionally, our study reinforces the financial and non-financial benefits of innovation capability in hotels.     

新业态金融风险的回应性监管——以网络股权众筹平台为例

股权众筹融资模式是一种典型的新业态互联网金融模式。处于股权众筹融资产业链核心的股权众筹平台近年来快速发展,并伴随着道德风险、法律风险、投资风险和管理风险4大风险类别。基于回应性监管原理,对金融新业态的回应性监管,在行业发展初期应该采取超罚策略与鼓励强化自我监管策略同时使用的方法,使全行业树立底线思维,防止大规模道德风险的产生。同时应通过监管逐步升级、引入和加强第三方监管、倡导强化自我监管、加强与行业内发展较快企业的沟通等多种方式建立多方共治的"大监管"格局,防止严重的法律风险、投资风险发生,并改善管理风险。     

Land use regulation and urban land value: Evidence from China

Land use regulation has always been regarded as one of the most crucial means of macro-control of urban growth, which can affect a city’s land values directly and further determine related urban economic well-being. Since the New Type Urbanization Strategy proposed by the government in 2014, China’s mode of urban growth has been transformed from addressing “quantity” to “quality" in the urbanization process. In this case, the regulation of land use by the Chinese government plays a more important role in urban growth. With their planned land regulatory scheme, the various instruments employed by Chinese governments have quite different mechanisms influencing land prices. However, there are no rigorous studies focusing on the land use regulation system and its impact on land values to date, particular in China. This study seeks to explore how land use regulation affects urban land values through the systematic lens. We summarize the main land use regulatory instruments based on the analysis of China’s planned land use system and urban land banking system, including the construction land quota, constraints on the allowed floor area ratio (FAR) of each land transaction parcel, and land supply restrictions. A new dataset based on land transaction data from 2007 to 2016 that covers 286 prefectural cities from the country’s coastal, central, and western regions is used in the empirical analysis. The results show that the effects of the floor area ratio (FAR) on land values are significant and positive, with the residential and commercial land supply ratio being a key factor. Moreover, the results imply that the effects of constraints on FAR and commercial land supply vary between regions. These findings indicate that the Chinese land market is considerably distorted by excessive administrative interventions by local governments, in the stage of urban transition guided, the capable regulatory instruments could play an important role in adjusting urban land prices and hence impact on urban growth.     

Theoretical analysis and model design of search for ecological conservation redlines based on the sensitivity assessment of ecosystem services

Most small-scale social economies are characterised by their deficiency, lack, and/or difficulty in matching natural data. Against this backdrop, this paper builds a relatively uniform theoretical framework and designs a more economical and objective method for demarcating ecological conservation redlines (ECR) based on sensitivity assessment of ecosystem services. The results show that the sensitivity assessment model designed in this study can identify sensitive zones effectively, and that the ECR in Hubei Province are well within the sensitive zones so identified. The delimited areas based on the sensitive assessment of ecosystem services have great similarities (95%) with the actual ECR areas in Hubei Province. The most ecologically important functional zones (EIFZ) can also be identified using the regional ecological sensitivity coefficient. When the threshold of EIFZ is set higher, the probability that it falls within the ecologically sensitive areas is greater and the ECR delimited by the method proposed in this study will be more reliable. Theoretically, the delimitation of ECR can be inserted at any evaluation level with a grid resolution higher than that of the land use data, which can be used as a supplement to the ECR delimitation method in ecology or geography.     

The implied Sharpe ratio

In an incomplete market, including liquidly traded European options in an investment portfolio could potentially improve the expected terminal utility for a risk-averse investor. However, unlike the Sharpe ratio, which provides a concise measure of the relative investment attractiveness of different underlying risky assets, there is no such measure available to help investors choose among the different European options. We introduce a new concept—the implied Sharpe ratio—which allows investors to make such a comparison in an incomplete financial market. Specifically, when comparing various European options, it is the option with the highest implied Sharpe ratio that, if included in an investor's portfolio, will improve his expected utility the most. Through the method of Taylor series expansion of the state-dependent coefficients in a nonlinear partial differential equation, we also establish the behaviour of the implied Sharpe ratio with respect to an investor's risk-aversion parameter. In a series of numerical studies, we compare the investment attractiveness of different European options by studying their implied Sharpe ratio.