DETERMINANTS OF SOVEREIGN BONDS RATINGS: A ROBUSTNESS ANALYSIS

Several studies have attempted to deduce the determinants of sovereign bond ratings. In this study, Extreme Bounds Analysis is applied to approximately 30 factors proposed by the literature in order to assess their robustness with a focus on the relative importance that economic and political variables receive in the shaping of the ratings. We find that policies that constrain the public sector are among the most robust. Variables such as rule of law, openness to economic flows, central bank independence, and market friendly policies are found to be more robustly correlated with the ratings than foreign reserves, fiscal deficit, sovereign bond yields, and economic growth.     

英语语言能力与语感的关联性研究

英语语言能力主要包括英语认知、语法等方面的能力.良好的语言能力能够培养出超强的语感,好的语感又有利于英语语言能力的培养和提高.两者不仅在语言的创造性、移位性及传递性方面有密切的联系,在学习的基础内容和方法上也有相通之处.把握好两者之间的关联性,并加以系统的研究和指导,对于提高商务英语专业学生的英语表达能力有重要作用.     

The influence of political risk on the scope of internationalization of regulated companies: Insights from a Spanish sample

Political risk not only constitutes a threat for multinational enterprises but can also be a source of opportunities. Exposure to and accumulated experience dealing with political risk allows firms to better implement a wide set of political actions such as negotiation of entry conditions, lobbying, litigation, campaign contributions and coalition formation, leading to preferential conditions, reduced environmental uncertainty, reduced transaction costs and increased long-term sustainability to the firm. These advantages facilitate investments in countries with higher and more diverse levels of risk and make political risk to be positively associated with the firm's scope of internationalization. This effect is not homogeneous across firms. Drawing from a sample of 164 Spanish companies with investments in 119 countries, we find that the impact is greater for companies in industrial sectors that are the object of greater governmental regulation than it is for firms in non-regulated manufacturing or service sectors, with less frequent interactions with home and host-country institutions.     

How should Engel's law be formulated?

Engel's law expresses a “negative stochastic association” of income and the proportion of income that is spent on food. However, there are many quite different notions of “negative stochastic association” and consequently there are different ways of defining Engel's law. We relate these different concepts to Engel's original statistical analysis and show that one must give credit to Engel for the first non-parametric statistical analysis of budget-data.     

媒体治理、政治关联与研发投资

以深圳证券交易市场2009-2013年创业板上市公司为样本，检验了媒体治理、政治关联与研发投资之间的关系。实证分析结果显示，媒体治理作用越强，公司的研发投资就越多。这表明，媒体能够有效发挥监督治理作用，促进公司创新。进一步分析显示，政治关联对媒体治理与研发投资之间的关系具有明显的反向调节作用。这意味着，政治关联抑制了媒体的治理作用。     

政治关系“力量”与民营企业价值研究:腐败的调节效应

从社会网络理论的强弱关系视角对2012-2014年福布斯中国富豪榜的企业家及其企业进行了政治关系的度量,检验了腐败是否会调节政治关系"力量"对企业价值的影响。研究发现,企业家本身所具有的政治关系对企业价值具有明显的正向影响作用,关系的"力量"越强,对企业价值的正向影响就越大;与此同时,腐败的出现会强化政治关系"力量"对民营企业价值的影响。通过分组验证发现,这种"力量"在腐败程度较高环境下更易对企业价值产生正向影响,但在腐败程度较低的环境中,政治关系对民营企业价值的影响很多时候并不显著。     

Advocacy and political convergence under preference uncertainty

We study the formation of advocacy groups and how they can impact policy outcomes by revealing information about voters׳ preferences to uninformed political candidates. We conduct a laboratory experiment based on a two-candidate spatial electoral competition setting where the policy preferences of voters are (initially) unknown and change over time. In the control treatment candidates learn about the preferred policy of the median voter through the voting outcome of elections. In the advocacy treatments, voters can organize themselves into advocacy groups in order to reveal their policy preferences. We find that voters often overcome the collective action problem of forming an advocacy group. In fact, we observe the formation of both informative advocacy groups, which convey new information, and uninformative advocacy groups, which do not. Overall, advocacy groups significantly speed up the convergence to the preferred policy of the median voter. However, advocacy does not lead to higher earnings as the gains from faster convergence are offset by the costs of group formation.     

政治关联与公司治理有效性——基于上市公司证券违规的数据

管理者政治关联在强化企业竞争优势的同时,也会弱化公司治理机制的有效性.本文基于公司违规行为发生及管理者被迫离职两个方面,利用Bivariate Probit模型和Logit模型研究管理者政治关联对公司治理有效性的影响.研究发现,拥有政治关联的管理者所在企业更加倾向发生违规行为,尤其是民营企业;管理者的政治关联能够降低其违规行为被稽查处理的可能性,尤其是国有企业.政治关联有助于管理者建立职位壕沟,降低管理者被迫离职的概率;而企业违规行为被稽查后,管理者被迫离职的可能性将显著提高.文章的研究结果证明,管理者政治关联会弱化企业发生违规行为的事前监管,同时也会降低企业违规行为的稽查在事后监管中的公司治理效果.     

The effects of bureaucracy on political accountability and electoral selection

This paper examines how bureaucracy affects political accountability and electoral selection, using a three-tier political agency model consisting of voters, politicians and bureaucrats. In the model’s hierarchy, politicians are constrained by elections while bureaucrats are controlled by budgets. If voters and bureaucrats prefer different types of politicians (i.e. they have a conflict of interests), incumbents pass oversized budgets to prevent bureaucrats from engaging in strategic behaviours that damage incumbents’ reputations. If, instead, voters and bureaucrats prefer the same type of politicians (i.e. they have an alignment of interests), bureaucrats cannot obtain a concession from politicians. In the latter case, however, bureaucrats send voters a credible signal regarding an incumbent’s type, which improves electoral selection. This paper also shows that political appointment systems improve political accountability in the conflict-of-interests case while they weaken electoral selection in the alignment-of-interests case.     

Globalization,political institutions,financial liberalization,and performance of the insurance industry

This paper investigates the impacts of globalization, political institutions, and financial liberalization on the performance and risk-taking of insurance firms covering 1324 individual firms in 30 selected OECD countries. We find that greater globalization and a stable political institution lead insurance companies to exhibit a better performance—i.e., insurers adjust their strategies while being aware of institutional changes. By contrast, financial liberalization has an inverse impact on insurance company performance. Thus, greater globalization and a stable political environment both drive less risk-taking for insurers. These findings are particularly important to insurance markets’ competitors and national policymakers.