Is socially responsible investment useful in Mexico? A multi-factor and ex-ante review

The present paper continues the firsts reviews made to socially responsible investment in Mexico. We extended these reviews by using a non-parametric multivariate equality test, along with a multi-factor market cap model, and a Monte Carlo simulation. Our results show that the IPCS index, the IPCcomp and the IPC have a statistically equal mean-variance performance, suggesting that this sort of investment style (SRI) is a good substitute of the broad market investment style in the long term. Among the causes of this finding is the fact that the IPCS and the IPCcomp indexes have almost the same large and small cap stock concentration and the IPC index (a large-cap one) is not as diversified and mean-variance efficient as the former.     

Do Managers of U.S. Defined Benefit Pension Plan Sponsors Use Regulatory Freedom Strategically?

We use historical particularities of pension funding law to investigate whether managers of U.S. corporate defined benefit pension plan sponsors strategically use regulatory freedom to lower the reported value of pension liabilities, and hence required cash contributions. For some years, pension plans were required to estimate two liabilities—one with mandated discount rates and mortality assumptions, and another where these could be chosen freely. Using a sample of 11,963 plans, we find that the regulated liability exceeds the unregulated measure by 10% and the difference further increases for underfunded pension plans. Underfunded plans tend to assume substantially higher discount rates and lower life expectancy. The effect persists both in the cross‐section of plans and over time and it serves to reduce cash contributions. We further show that plan sponsor managers use the freed‐up cash for corporate investment and that credit risk is unlikely to explain the finding.     

Which Part of the Chinese Art Market Is More Worth Investing In? Applying the Quantile Regression to Analyze Chinese Oil Paintings 2000–2014

This article uses a quantile regression approach to analyze the structure of the hedonic characteristics of 12,701 Chinese oil paintings sold at auctions in China and Hong Kong during the period 2000–2014. A hedonic model for both the full sample and the 0.20, 0.40, 0.60, 0.80, and 0.95 quantiles of the price distribution is estimated. The result indicates that noticeable differences exist in painting characteristics across different price ranges. The empirical evidence also suggests that highly priced Chinese oil paintings have both higher expected returns and less risk than those that are priced lower, which appear to be favorable assets to invest in.     

Not Every Kind of Outward FDI Increases Parent Firm Performance: The Case of New EU Member States

Using a large firm-level dataset we investigate what kind of firms from new EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) tend to invest abroad (testing of self-selection hypothesis), and what is the impact of outward FDI on their productivity (testing of learning-by-investing hypothesis). We find that the best firms tend to self-select into outward FDI. There is also a positive effect of outward FDI on productivity growth of investing firms from CEECs, the strongest being in the case of Estonia, Romania, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. The positive impact of becoming a first-time foreign investor is relatively long lasting, but comes into effect only in investments in Western European or other CEECs and in the case of manufacturing subsidiaries.     

境外上市与企业投资效率

截至2021年11月,我国单独境外上市企业占到境外上市企业总数的88.32%,但单独境外上市的研究明显与该数据不匹配,研究数量缺乏。为扩充该方面研究,本文以2012~2020年单独在美国和中国香港上市的中资企业为研究对象,对境外上市与投资效率关系进行检验。实证结果发现,单独境外上市与境内上市企业相比投资效率更低,区分企业上市地点后发现,规模大、信息透明度低、存在代理成本的赴港上市企业比境内上市企业投资效率低,规模小、代理成本高、信息透明度低的赴美上市企业比境内上市企业投资效率低。通过机制分析发现,信息透明度、境外上市和非效率投资三者存在"遮掩效应",境外上市企业未能受到有效的信息约束。     

中国对拉美国家出口贸易影响因素实证分析——基于总量与技术结构视角

本文首先通过计算中国对拉美七国四类制成品出口密集度等,分析中国对拉美地区制成品出口结构;通过考察中国和拉美七国生产要素结构变化情况对中拉要素禀赋差异作深入分析,以期探究中国对拉美制成品出口结构背后深层次原因。然后构建扩展引力模型分别从总量视角和技术结构视角探析中国对拉美货物出口主要影响因素,结果显示拉美国家国内生产总值、中拉要素禀赋差异、中国货币自由度、中国对拉美直接投资水平对中国向拉美出口总量均产生显著促进作用,各影响因素对不同技术类别制成品出口的作用效果存在差异性。为实现中国对拉美出口贸易结构优化升级,推动中国产业结构调整升级,促进拉美地区经济更快发展,研究有针对性地提出了对策建议。     

国有机构投资者持股能提升企业投资效率吗?

具有国资背景的机构投资者,对于资本市场平稳发展具有重要意义。本文基于我国2015—2019年A股上市公司样本,考察持股对企业投资效率的影响。研究发现,持股显著提升了企业投资效率,并且该影响在代理冲突更严重和所处信息环境更不透明的公司中更加显著。机制检验表明,降低企业内外部信息不对称和代理成本是持股提升企业投资效率的重要渠道。进一步研究发现,国有机构投资者持股时间越长,对企业非效率投资的治理效果越好;细分国有机构投资者类型后发现,致力于长期维护资本市场稳定和上市公司长期健康发展的证金公司和汇金公司对企业投资效率的提升作用显著,但没有发现“救市”基金和外管局旗下的投资平台对企业投资效率有提升作用。研究结论从企业投资效率视角为国有机构投资者持股在微观企业日常经营中发挥的治理作用提供了新颖的经验证据,对进一步提高我国上市公司质量具有启示意义。     

基于综合因子分析法的广佛肇经济圈投资环境动态评价

通过构建评价指标体系、方差极大正交旋转和综合因子分析,对广佛肇经济圈投资环境进行动态评价。研究发现:①2008—2016年,广佛肇经济圈的投资环境综合得分呈上升趋势,其中社会性经济实力、经济性基础设施得分增长较快,但是环境质量得分有所下降。②广佛肇经济圈投资环境内部差异较为明显,排名从高到低依次为广州、佛山、肇庆。其中广州的社会性经济实力得分最高,佛山的经济性基础设施得分最高,肇庆的投资环境处于相对劣势的地位。     

Optimal excess-of-loss reinsurance contract with ambiguity aversion in the principal-agent model

ABSTRACT

We discuss an optimal excess-of-loss reinsurance contract in a continuous-time principal-agent framework where the surplus of the insurer (agent/he) is described by a classical Cramér-Lundberg (C-L) model. In addition to reinsurance, the insurer and the reinsurer (principal/she) are both allowed to invest their surpluses into a financial market containing one risk-free asset (e.g. a short-rate account) and one risky asset (e.g. a market index). In this paper, the insurer and the reinsurer are ambiguity averse and have specific modeling risk aversion preferences for the insurance claims (this relates to the jump term in the stochastic models) and the financial market's risk (this encompasses the models' diffusion term). The reinsurer designs a reinsurance contract that maximizes the exponential utility of her terminal wealth under a worst-case scenario which depends on the retention level of the insurer. By employing the dynamic programming approach, we derive the optimal robust reinsurance contract, and the value functions for the reinsurer and the insurer under this contract. In order to provide a more explicit reinsurance contract and to facilitate our quantitative analysis, we discuss the case when the claims follow an exponential distribution; it is then possible to show explicitly the impact of ambiguity aversion on the optimal reinsurance.