经济政策不确定性与企业员工配置——来自沪深上市公司的经验证据

企业员工配置是企业内部管理的重要一环,经济政策不确定性是否会影响企业员工配置?本文以员工数量衡量企业员工配置,利用2010-2018年沪深A股上市企业数据和经济政策不确定性指数建立面板数据模型,考察经济政策不确定性对企业员工配置的影响,实证研究发现:经济政策不确定性会显著增加企业员工配置,且该影响经更换变量、调整样本容量以及内生性处理后依旧显著,该反应在还债能力较弱、盈利能力较差、股权制衡度较高、地区经济发展水平较低的企业中更为明显。文章的研究结论对于企业管理和宏观经济管控有一定的参考价值。     

Does economic policy uncertainty affect cryptocurrency markets? Evidence from Twitter-based uncertainty measures

Using daily data from August 9, 2015, to July 7, 2020, this study examines the effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the returns of four cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple. To this end, two new measures of EPU (Twitter-based economic uncertainty and Twitter-based market uncertainty) are considered. A Granger causality test using the recursive evolving window approach shows a significant causality between the Twitter-based EPU measures and the BTC/USD exchange rate from October 2016 to July 2017. Moreover, a significant causality was noted from the EPU measures to the ETH/USD exchange rate from June 2019 to February 2020 and from the EPU measures to the XRP/USD exchange rate from January 2020 to February 2020. The Twitter-based EPU measures primarily positively affect the returns of the related cryptocurrencies during these periods. These results are robust to different measures of Twitter-based EPU and different econometric techniques. Potential implications, including the COVID-19 era, are also discussed.     

经济政策不确定性与企业投资趋同行为

文章以2003-2017年A股非金融类上市公司为研究样本,考察经济政策不确定性对企业投资趋同行为的影响。研究发现,经济政策不确定性的升高会显著增强企业投资趋同行为,该影响效应在信息优势企业有所减弱,在资产不可逆程度较高企业有所增强。分行业检验发现,在管制性行业以及景气度较低行业中,经济政策不确定性对企业投资趋同行为的影响减弱。进一步研究发现,在经济政策不确定性不断攀升的背景下,实体投资趋同性会带来更为严重的金融化,特别是在行业实体投资总体趋于放缓的情况下,企业金融化现象更加严重。该研究为宏观经济波动下企业投资趋同行为提供了经验证据。     

Do goodwill impairments affect audit opinions? Evidence from China

There has been a steady growth of goodwill impairments in the Chinese stock market since the adoption of the impairment approach in accounting. The influence of goodwill impairments on a firm’s financial position and profitability give reason to doubt its current and future performance. We examine whether auditors, as a crucial external monitor, identify the information risks of goodwill impairments and express their concerns about financial reporting quality in their audit opinions. Using a sample of firms listed on China’s A-share market from 2007 to 2017, we test the association between goodwill impairments and the type of audit opinion received in the same financial period. Our findings are as follows. First, the probability of receiving a modified opinion increases with the amount of goodwill impairments. Second, the positive association between goodwill impairments and modified audit opinions is driven primarily by earnings management risks. Third, this positive association is more salient when auditors are industry experts and there is no auditor–client mismatch. Fourth, auditors are more sensitive to the amount of goodwill impairments than to their mere existence. Overall, we document that auditors perceive goodwill impairments as a signal of information risks and communicate their concerns to investors to avoid litigation.     

The finance-growth nexus: The role of banks

We contribute to the finance-growth nexus literature by showing that credit origin, bank ownership, type of credit, and bank type matter in economic growth. We use a unique dataset covering 5555 cities in Brazil, with granular information on credit characteristics. We find that non-earmarked credit to the corporate sector is associated with municipal economic growth more strongly than earmarked credit, despite the increase in the relevance of the latter after the global financial crisis. We also find that the type of credit—whether the loans are general purpose or for a specific purpose—is associated with economic growth in different ways. Overall, credit provided to the corporate sector by domestic private banks is correlated with higher economic growth rates. In contrast, the relationship between credit from state-owned banks and economic growth becomes statistically significant only after the crisis. Although we follow the finance-growth literature in our empirical exercises using internal instruments in generalized method of moments (GMM) estimations, we also conduct robustness tests using two additional external instruments: the number of complaints filed against each bank and local credit accessibility. Our findings with external instruments are the same with respect to the use of traditional internal instruments in GMM estimations.     

Efficiency drivers of international airports: A worldwide benchmarking study

The main purpose of these work was to identify operational efficiency drivers of international airports. In order to achieve this, a two-step quantitative-qualitative research approach was conducted. In the first step, a two-stage DEA model was used, and it was possible to identify, within a sample of the 60 biggest airports from the six Airport Council International (ACI) regions, the most efficient airports of the world: Beijing International Airport, Heathrow International Airport, Dubai International Airport, and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. In the second step of the research, four airports were selected in order to search for the efficiency drivers. In this context, Heathrow International Airport was considered to be a benchmark and presented most of the identified efficiency drivers (27 of 31). Standing out were Just-in-Time (JIT) and Total Quality Management (TQM) principles and also Passenger boarding optimization, besides the presence of almost all of the most relevant efficiency drivers, according to airport managers.     

Individually rational rules for the division problem when the number of units to be allotted is endogenous

We study individually rational rules to be used to allot, among a group of agents, a perfectly divisible good that is freely available only in whole units. A rule is individually rational if, at each preference profile, each agent finds that her allotment is at least as good as any whole unit of the good. We study and characterize two individually rational and efficient families of rules, whenever agents' preferences are symmetric single-peaked on the set of possible allotments. Rules in the two families are in addition envy-free, but they differ on whether envy-freeness is considered on losses or on awards. Our main result states that (a) the family of constrained equal losses rules coincides with the class of all individually rational and efficient rules that satisfy justified envy-freeness on losses and (b) the family of constrained equal awards rules coincides with the class of all individually rational and efficient rules that satisfy envy-freeness on awards.     

Natural disasters and economic growth: The role of banking market structure

Following a natural disaster, the rate of economic growth recovers faster in less competitive banking markets. A 10% reduction in competition increases the rate of economic growth by 0.3%. In less competitive markets, banks respond to a disaster by increasing the supply of real estate credit by refinancing mortgage loans, but do not lend more to businesses or consumers. Instead, government agencies provide disaster loans to affected businesses and households. Smaller, profitable and well-capitalized institutions that rely more on traditional retail banking originate most mortgage credit.     

Financial development and economic growth in a microfounded small open economy model

The global financial crisis since 2008 revived the debate on whether or not and to what extent financial development contributes to economic growth. This paper reviews different theoretical schools of thought and empirical findings on this nexus, building on which we aim to develop a unified, microfounded model in a small open economy setting to accommodate various theoretical possibilities and empirical observations. The model is then calibrated to match some well-documented stylized facts. Numerical simulations show that, in the long run, the welfare-maximizing level of financial develop is lower than the growth-maximizing level. In the short run, the price channel (through world interest rate) dominates the quantity-channel (through financial productivity), suggesting a vital role of international cooperation in tackling systemic risk of the global financial system.     

BEYOND THE STARS

It is frequent to hear in economic seminars or read in academic papers that an effect is economically significant or economically important. Yet, the economic literature is vague on what economic importance means and how it should be measured. In this paper, I show that existing measures of economic importance are flawed and misused. I derive a new metric that measures, in percentage terms, the contribution of each explanatory variable to deviations in the dependent variable, ceteris paribus. As an illustration, the method is applied to study the determinants of migration and the determinants of fertility.