探讨基础设施PPP项目的全生命周期的动态项目管理

当前,PPP模式不仅在我国基础设施建设中发展前景良好,同时在很多国家得到了广泛应用。相比传统的工程项目建设模式,PPP项目具有风险因素复杂和风险较大的特征,因此,PPP项目的成功会在很大程度上受动态项目管理的有效性影响。对项目管理来说,尤其是动态项目风险管理,应贯穿于PPP项目的全生命周期,而只有实现全生命周期的动态风险管理,才能使PPP模式在我国基础设施建设领域中成功利用。     

Does corporate social responsibility reduce financial distress risk?

This paper examines how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the level of financial distress risk (FDR). Using a sample of 1201 US-listed firms during 1991–2012, our results indicate that firms with higher CSR levels have lower FDR, suggesting that a better CSR performance makes firms more creditworthy and have better access to financing, which is rewarded with less financial defaults. This finding is robust to using alternative proxies of FDR, to controlling for potential endogeneity, and is mainly driven by the community, diversity, employee relations, and environmental dimensions of CSR. Moreover, this relationship is more prevalent in firms with strong governance mechanisms and high product market competition. It is also more exacerbated for less distressed firms and during non-crisis periods. Overall, our findings suggest that the adoption of CSR practices comes with less distress and default risks, likely leading to a more attractive corporate environment, better financial stability and more crisis-resilient economies.     

The signaling effects of education in the online lending market: Evidence from China

In this study, we use data from an online lending platform named Xinxindai in China to empirically study the signaling effects of education for the default risk of borrowers. Three dependent variables are created, namely, the probability of default, overdue payments and overdue amount, and probit models, count models and Tobit models are employed correspondingly. The number of universities in the “211 Project” of China at the city level is employed as the instrumental variable. The empirical evidence shows that education generally plays a strong signaling role in the identification of borrowers’ default risk in China. The negative marginal effect of education declines as borrowing times increase and as the marketization of regions deepens. This study helps to fill an important gap in the existing literature. Platforms and lenders can use educational level for reference in identifying the default risk of borrowers.     

Insolvency regimes and firms' default risk under economic uncertainty and shocks

One of the arguments often advanced for implementing a stronger insolvency and bankruptcy framework is that it enhances credit discipline among firms. Using a large cross-country firm-level dataset, we empirically test whether a stronger insolvency regime reduces firms' likelihood of defaulting on their debt. In particular, we examine whether it reduces default risk during increased economic uncertainty and various external shocks. Our results confirm that a stronger insolvency regime moderates the adverse effects of economic shocks on firms' default risk. The effects are more pronounced for firms in the top half of the size distribution. We also explore channels through which improved creditor rights influence firms' default risk, including dependence on external finance, corporate leverage, and managerial ethics. Our main results are robust to an alternative measure of default risk, inclusion of currency and sovereign debt crisis episodes, and alternative estimations.     

Inertia Risk: Improving Economic Models of Catastrophes*

We model endogenous catastrophic risk in a new way. We call it “inertia risk”, which accounts for delays between physical variables and the hazard rate – a characteristic often observed in reality. The added realism significantly affects optimal policies relative to the standard model of catastrophic risk. The probability of a catastrophe occurring at some point in time can span the entire interval [0,1], and is not 0 or 1 as is typical in standard models. Inertia risk can also generate path dependences. We illustrate the implications for policy in a simple model of climate change.     

Prospect Theory,Fairness, and the Escalation of Conflict at a Negotiation Impasse*

We study a bilateral negotiation set-up where, at a bargaining impasse, the disadvantaged party chooses whether to escalate the conflict or not. Escalation is costly for both parties, and it results in a random draw of the winner of the escalated conflict. We derive the behavioral predictions of a simple social utility function, which is convex in disadvantageous inequality, thus connecting the inequity aversion and the prospect theory models. Our causal laboratory evidence is, to a large extent, consistent with the predicted effects. Among other things, the model predicts that the escalation rate is higher when escalation outcomes are riskier, and that the disagreement rate is lower when the cost of escalating the conflict is higher.     

金融压力、所有制结构与银行风险承担——基于中国影子银行活动的实证研究*

2008年金融危机之后，监测与防范系统性金融风险、维护金融稳定成为各国监管机构的工作重点。本文构建了一个反映我国系统性金融风险的中国金融压力指数（FSIC）。基于此，本文研究不同所有制结构的商业银行将如何调整影子银行业务以应对系统性金融风险。实证结果表明，当金融压力上升时，相较于国有银行，非国有银行的风险承担水平显著上升。进一步研究发现，这一差异与两类银行对影子银行这一风险业务的调整有关。当金融压力上升时，国有银行会显著减少影子银行业务，而非国有银行的影子银行业务不会减少。本文提出了国有银行的双重职能这一观点来解释实证研究的发现。本文的研究结论对于指导我国金融市场化改革和防范系统性金融风险具有重要启示。     

CEO年龄、风险承担与并购*

本文基于高阶梯队理论，以2008-2017年我国上市公司为研究样本，探讨了CEO年龄影响企业并购决策及其绩效的作用机制与经济后果。研究发现CEO年龄与企业并购倾向、并购后市场反应和并购绩效均存在倒U型关系，企业风险承担是倒U型关系的作用机制。研究结论在考虑了自选择偏差、遗漏变量等导致的内生性问题后依然成立。研究结果进一步丰富了从高管特征角度研究并购行为的现有文献，同时为企业高管考核与激励等制度安排提供了经验证据。     

年轻高管与企业股价崩盘风险：来自“代理冲突观”的证据*

在企业纷纷实施高管年轻化战略的背景下，本文从股价崩盘风险的视角分析和检验了年轻高管风险偏好的经济后果及其作用机理。本文基于“个体认知观”和“代理冲突观”展开理论推演，采用中国沪深A股非金融上市公司的数据，检验发现，年轻高管会显著加剧企业未来的股价崩盘风险，且这种影响主要存在于民营企业，在国有企业并不显著。进一步针对具体作用机制的检验发现，年轻高管在投资决策中选择了更多能迅速提升个人收益的风险性投资项目，但在不能迅速提升个人收益的风险性投资项目上与年长高管没有显著差异。同时，年轻高管对股价崩盘风险的加剧效应仅仅存在于高管在上市公司领取薪酬的样本企业，且更高的独立董事比例能显著抑制年轻高管的股价崩盘风险加剧效应。这表明，年轻高管个体认知层面的风险偏好被其追求个人私利最大化的代理冲突所扭曲，进而为年轻高管风险偏好的“代理冲突观”提供了实证证据。     

CEO age and tax planning

This study investigates the association between CEO age and corporate tax planning. Using a sample of 11,537 firm‐year observations from the fiscal year 1997–2013, I find CEO age exerts an economically significant influence on firms’ tax policies, incremental to economic determinants identified in prior research. Specifically, CEO age is positively related to cash and GAAP effective tax rates, and negatively related to permanent book‐tax difference, suggesting that older CEOs are less likely to take actions to lower tax burden. The results hold across different model specifications and robustness tests to address potential bias arising from endogeneity, sample selection issue, and the confounding effect of CEO tenure.