The impact of direct environmental,social, and governance reporting: Empirical evidence in European-listed companies in the agri-food sector

Companies are continuously pressured for the dissemination of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information, because of the constant debate on the issue of corporate sustainability, considered a critical and very important topic for society; despite this pressure, ESG's disclosure practices vary considerably from company to company, both in quantity and quality. The study aims to address the issue and verify the effectiveness of ESG reporting through the influence that the ESG disclosure has on profitability and value of listed European agri-food companies. The results obtained, studying a sample of 57 European-listed companies (EU28) in the agri-food sector observed in the period 2010–2018, show that the ESG disclosure practices of the companies impact corporate profitability; specifically, evidence is provided for the existence of a positive relationship between profitability and disclosure practices of strictly environmental and social information and a negative effect between company market value and disclosure practices relating to governance. These results suggest that greater transparency and accountability help to improve business profitability.     

Machine learning for financial transaction classification across companies using character-level word embeddings of text fields

An important initial step in accounting is mapping financial transfers to the corresponding accounts. We devised machine-learning-based systems that automate this process. They use word embeddings with character-level features to process transaction texts. When considering 473 companies independently, our approach achieved an average top-1 accuracy of 80.50%, outperforming baselines that exclude the transaction texts or rely on a lexical bag-of-words text representation. We extended the approach to generalizes across companies and even across different corporate sectors. After standardization of the account structures and careful feature engineering, a single classifier trained on 44 companies from 28 sectors achieved a test accuracy of more than 80%. When trained on 43 companies and tested on the remaining one, the system achieved an average performance of 64.62%. This rate increased to nearly 70% when considering only the largest sector.     

Excess corporate payouts and financial distress risk

Firms that follow excessive payout policies (over-payers) are higher on the financial distress spectrum and have lower survival rates than under-payers. In addition, over-payers endure lower future sales and asset growth than under-payers and experience negative abnormal returns in the bond and stock markets. Exogenous import tariff reductions and commodity price jumps reduce the likelihood of overpayment. We interpret this as evidence consistent with financial flexibility considerations, rather than risk-shifting, explaining the decision to overpay. We also find that CEO overconfidence and catering incentives affect overpayment.     

金融素养、家庭财富与家庭创业决策

本文利用2015年中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)数据,分析了金融素养、家庭财富与家庭创业决策三者之间的关系。整体上,金融素养的提高显著增加了家庭参与创业的可能性,但家庭参与创业面临着"财富约束效应";而金融素养对家庭财富具有替代作用,提高金融素养有效缓解了家庭的"财富约束效应",促进家庭参与创业。同时,研究发现家庭财富对家庭创业决策的影响并不存在明显的城乡差异,但金融素养更能缓解农村家庭创业所面临的"财富约束效应"。另外,提高金融素养能有效缓解家庭的信贷约束,增加其风险偏好,间接地促进创业。     

新发展格局视野中的消费券发放问题与重构研究

2020年面对新冠肺炎疫情冲击,各地纷纷发放消费券刺激消费。本轮发放消费券的省市和规模远超以往。考察当前各地消费券的实践,其存在三方面的问题:短期刺激消费与构建发展新格局缺乏衔接、地方各自为政与顶层设计阙如、财政补贴与财政约束的张力。针对这些问题,本文从新发展格局视野提出将当前消费券重构为财政和金融融合的消费金融券,使之成为构建新发展格局中扩大内需的长期政策和重要的宏观调控工具。消费金融券的制度设计要与社会结构新特征和新趋势相契合。针对低收入群体的消费金融券,应以财政补贴为主、以重大生活项目消费的利息补贴与信用担保为辅。针对中等收入群体的消费金融券,应以利息补贴为主,通过消费金融的方式扩大消费。加大消费金融券的全国顶层设计,明确中央和地方财政支持产业的范围和力度。     

对财务会计中重要性原则的探讨

财务会计原则中的重要性原则是属于西方财务会计的一条重要原则。对于重要性原则的正确认识和运用,能够使财务会计工作中核算费用大大降低,同时使财务会计工作数据信息更加准确,对于财务会计人员来讲是非常有利的一项原则。因此,论文就现如今财务会计性原则中的重要性原则作深入论述。     

承接金融服务外包对中国就业的影响

研究以金融行业外包服务数据为样本,沿直接与间接两种影响渠道,分析承接金融服务外包对我国就业数量与就业结构的影响,对就业数量变动的流向与趋势进行测算,深入到了劳动力就业质量层面。实证结果表明,承接金融服务外包可以扩大第三产业的相对就业比重,改善知识结构,有利于就业结构与产业结构之间的平衡。但不熟练工人的金融外包业准入将受到限制,加深了他们的就业困境。如何借此机遇将大量低技术劳工培训成合格人才将成为一个严峻的挑战。研究还提出了针对这一新产业形态未来发展的总结与展望。     

Financial constraints on export market exit of domestic firms versus foreign multinational corporation subsidiaries in South Korea

Using a Korean manufacturing firm-level data set covering a range of years from 2006 to 2013, this study investigates how the financial condition of firms, such as liquidity, leverage, and cash flow ratio, affects exit from export markets. It also analyses whether the financial status of foreign multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries differs from that of domestic firms with respect to the hazard of export market exit, especially during a global financial crisis. The empirical results confirm that, for domestic firms, the hazard of export market exit is affected by the firms’ financial condition only during a financial crisis. In other words, the financial vulnerability of domestic firms increases during the crisis, resulting in the hazard of export market exit. However, financial situations for foreign MNC subsidiaries do not affect exits from export markets, indicating a ‘finance-factor comparative advantage’.     

Lock‐In Effects in Relationship Lending: Evidence from DIP Loans

Do prior lending relationships result in pass‐through savings (lower interest rates) for borrowers, or do they lock in higher costs for borrowers? Theoretical models suggest that when borrowers experience greater information asymmetry, higher switching costs, and limited access to capital markets, they become locked into higher costs from their existing lenders. Firms in Chapter 11 seeking debtor‐in‐possession (DIP) financing often fit this profile. We investigate the presence of lock‐in effects using a sample of 348 DIP loans. We account for endogeneity using the instrument variable (IV) approach and the Heckman selection model and find consistent evidence that prior lending relationship is associated with higher interest costs and the effect is more severe for stronger existing relationships. Our study provides direct evidence that prior lending relationships do create a lock‐in effect under certain circumstances, such as DIP financing.     

The endo–exo problem in high frequency financial price fluctuations and rejecting criticality

The endo–exo problem lies at the heart of statistical identification in many fields of science, and is often plagued by spurious strong-and-long memory due to improper treatment of trends, shocks and shifts in the data. A class of models that has shown to be useful in discerning exogenous and endogenous activity is the Hawkes process. This class of point processes has enjoyed great recent popularity and rapid development within the quantitative finance literature, with particular focus on the study of market microstructure and high frequency price fluctuations. We show that there are important lessons from older fields like time series and econometrics that should also be applied in financial point process modelling. In particular, we emphasize the importance of appropriately treating trends and shocks for the identification of the strength and length of memory in the system. We exploit the powerful Expectation Maximization algorithm and objective statistical criteria (BIC) to select the flexibility of the deterministic background intensity. With these methods, we strongly reject the hypothesis that the considered financial markets are critical at univariate and bivariate microstructural levels.