The governmentality and accountability of UK national museums and art galleries

This study furthers our understanding of the role of governmentality mechanisms in relation to other-forming and self-forming accounts of art organisations, by using empirical data collected from interviews with senior managers of UK national museums and art galleries (MAGs) and from secondary published sources. The findings highlight how governmentality mechanisms had power-effects through the creation of knowledge about MAGs and the resistance strategies of MAGs. Whilst the governmentality mechanisms were expected to ensure the automatic functioning of disciplinary power, in some instances the government directly intervened to over-ride decisions taken by senior managers when these conflicted with political imperatives.     

Local Government Debt,Factor Misallocation and Regional Economic Performance in China

This paper examines total factor efficiency and productivity performance by taking into account local government debt (LGD) in 31 Chinese provincial regions for the period 2000–2013. The results show that neglecting LGD may overstate economic performance in Chinese provinces. The eastern region shows better performance in single factor efficiency and total factor efficiency than the non‐eastern regions. The western region shows the worst total factor performance. The north‐eastern region is the only region that has experienced a decline in total factor performance. The state‐dominated, investment‐driven development model may help technological progress across Chinese regions but could lead to significant factor misallocation. We argue that biases towards more state‐dominated investment and land supply in less productive western, central and north‐eastern regions, at the expense of investment and land supply in more productive eastern regions, have contributed to the recent slowdown in economic growth in China. Therefore, further market‐oriented reforms in factor markets should be considered in the future.     

Public Disclosure of Audit Fees and Bargaining Power between the Client and Auditor: Evidence from China

Before the public disclosure of audit fees was mandated, it was unlikely for an audit client to have accurate information about how much other companies were charged by their auditors. Public fee disclosure decreases the cost of auditees' access to audit fee information for the auditor's portfolio of clients and is thus likely to increase the relative bargaining power of auditees over auditors when they negotiate audit fees. Using both proprietary and public audit fee data before and after public fee disclosure was mandated in China, we provide evidence consistent with the preceding conjecture. We find that public fee disclosure reinforces the magnitude of audit fee decreases for overcharged clients and weakens auditors' ability to raise audit fees for undercharged clients. These findings suggest the existence of unintended consequences of public fee disclosure regulation, the original rationale of which was a concern about audit pricing practices that could undermine auditor independence.     

New development: Local government ethics in England: how is local ownership working?

With the abolition of the Audit Commission and the Standards Board for England, and the emphasis in the Localism Act 2011 on local ownership in England for standards, research was undertaken into a group of councils to assess their legislative compliance arrangements and the development of organizational ethical cultures. The research argues that the delivery of the former is a work-in-progress and that there is little evidence of the latter.     

Transformational change and the vacuum of performance measurement: How a story of success became a failure

Some local government organisations stand out in terms of their capability to adopt and use management accounting innovations and become a model for those struggling with issues such as performance measurement (PM). But what happens to the innovations if the organisation is forced into transformational change? This longitudinal case study is based on the theory that the use and impact of PM is influenced by (a) its contractibility and (b) how the performance management systems in place are configured and used. One conclusion is that transformational change can result in a vacuum of PM, even with a high degree of contractibility.     

走向经典:庞德英译《长干行》的接受研究

庞德英译《长干行》被视为创作作品而纳入美国诗歌经典系列。这首译诗被美国文学接受在于其本身所具备的独特品格和审美价值。     

异质性机构投资者差异化作用于双元创新投资吗 ——基于注意力基础观与市场迎合理论双重视角

基于2011-2020年沪深A股高新技术企业样本,探究公司治理框架下异质性机构投资者对企业双元创新投资的差异化作用机理,得出如下结论：①异质性机构投资者对于双元创新投资具有差异化影响,其中,专注型机构投资者更有利于双元创新投资;②专注型机构投资者影响决策者注意力资源配置,使其更注重探索性创新投资,临时型机构投资者基于市场迎合动机作用于开发性创新投资,且当管理层业绩和外部监管压力较大时,其对开发性创新投资的迎合动机更明显;③专注型机构投资者通过监督和激励管理层、提升企业风险承担水平作用于企业双元创新投资,临时型机构投资者通过丰富投资者情绪作用于开发性创新投资未得到验证;④产业政策有助于增强专注型机构投资者对决策者注意力的影响,使其更专注于探索性创新投资,同时也有助于提高临时型机构投资者的开发性创新迎合投资动机。研究结论为理解机构投资者差异化治理角色提供了一种新视角。     

Ethnic identities,public spending and political regimes

Do democracies discriminate less against minorities as compared to non-democracies? How does the dominance of an ethnic group affect discrimination under various political regimes? We build a theory to analyse such questions. In our model, political leaders (democratically elected or not) decide on the allocation of spending on different types of public goods: a general public good and an ethnically-targetable public good which benefits the majority ethnic group while imposing a cost on the other minorities. We show that, under democracy, lower ethnic dominance leads to greater provision of the general public good while higher dominance implies higher provision of the ethnically-targetable good. Interestingly, the opposite relation obtains under dictatorship. This implies that political regime changes can favour or disfavour minorities based on the ambient level of ethnic dominance. Several historical events involving regime changes can be analysed within our framework and are consistent with our results.     

中国对外直接投资有助于沿线国家绿色技术创新吗——基于“一带一路”沿线国家数据的检验

“一带一路”沿线国家的绿色转型给中国承担新使命、促进国内国际双循环和绿色发展创造了新机遇。基于中国对外直接投资（OFDI）特征,研究其对“一带一路”沿线国家绿色技术创新的影响及作用机制。研究发现,中国OFDI主要通过绿色技术溢出机制、增长机制影响“一带一路”沿线国家绿色技术创新;该绿色技术创新效应随着互联互通合作水平提升而显著增强,且对沿线国家绿色技术创新的改善效果主要体现在高收入组国家。