内部控制信息披露质量与代理成本相关性研究——基于沪市2007年上市公司的经验数据

内部控制信息披露与公司治理密不可分、双向互动,并对公司代理成本有着直接的影响。本文以2008年6月财政部会同证监会、审计署、银监会、保监会颁发的《企业内部控制基本规范》为依据,设计了内部控制信息披露质量的评价指标体系,构建了内部控制信息披露指数(ICIDI),并对内部控制信息披露指数和代理成本之间的相关性进行了检验,结果表明内部控制信息披露指数与显性代理成本呈不显著负相关关系,与隐性代理成本变量总资产周转率呈显著正相关关系,与作为内部控制信息披露可观测的财务绩效变量ROA和ROE均显著正相关,即内部控制信息披露对显性代理成本抑制作用不显著,对隐性代理成本有明显抑制作用,对显性代理成本和隐性代理成本具有综合抑制作用。  

现代资本结构理论

自Modigliani和Miller提出MM理论以来,资本结构问题一直是理论界和实务界关注的焦点.本文从MM理论及其修正--基于税差的分析、基于权衡理论的资本结构理论、信息不对称条件下的资本结构理论、资本结构的实证研究四个方面阐述了自20世纪50年代以来资本结构理论的发展和研究成果,试图为我国学者开展资本结构研究提供借鉴.  

Trade-off Model of Debt Maturity Structure

In this paper, we suggest the trade-off model to explain the choice of debt maturity. This model is based on balancing between risk and reward of using shorter-term loans. Shorter-term loans have cost advantage over, but incur higher refinancing and interest rate risk than longer-term loans. Using the Compustat data, we show that the principal components of financial attributes are financial flexibility and financial strength. Therefore, only firms with greater financial flexibility and financial strength can use proportionately more short-term loans. We also document that financially strong firms take advantage of lower interest rates of short-term debt. They use proportionately more short-term loans when the term premium is high. The results of our study also provide evidence supporting the agency cost hypothesis, which is strongly supported by current literature.  

对中国上市公司债务期限影响因素的实证研究——基于面板数据的因子分析和回归分析

国内外诸多学者已经开始从代理成本、税盾作用、信息不对称等角度来研究影响债务融资期限的各种因素。但综合各种因素来考察企业融资期限结构影响的研究却相对较弱。以中国546家A股的上市公司最近9年相关数据为样本,从企业规模、财务杠杆、债务税率、清算比率和资产期限等因素对企业融资期限结构的影响做因子分析和回归分析后,指出代理成本等理论对中国上市公司债务期限解释是有限的。  

独立审计对债权人的保护作用——来自债务代理成本的证据

债权人是公司重要的投资者,对其利益的保护关系到国民经济的健康发展。独立审计是降低债务代理成本的机制,可以起到保护债权人的作用。高质量审计能给债权人更好的保护;审计意见具有预警作用,债权人可以利用审计意见所传递的信息,采取自我保护措施。本文的实证检验结果表明,审计意见具有预警作用,而国际四大与本土五大会计师事务所并不能给债权人更强的保护。  

Debt, Agency, and Management Contracts in REITs: The External Advisor Puzzle

This study investigates why externally advised real estate investment trusts (REITs) underperform their internally managed counterparts. Consistent with previous studies, we find that REITs managed by external advisors underperform internally managed ones by over 7 percent per year. Property-level cash-flow yields are similar between the two managerial forms, but corporate-level expenses and especially interest expenses are responsible for lower levels of cash available to shareholders in externally advised REITs. We document that the higher-interest expenses are due to both higher levels of debt and to higher debt yields for externally advised REITs. We posit that compensating managers based on either assets under management or on property-level cash flows creates incentives for managers to increase the asset base by issuing debt even if the interest costs are unfavorable.  

Managerial Ownership and Accounting Disclosures: An Empirical Study

This study examines empirically the effect of managerial ownership on firms' disclosures. Agency theory predicts that investors' information requirements increase with the agency costs of the firm. Managerial ownership mitigates agency costs and therefore should reduce investors' information needs. This study tests the hypothesis that firms with lower levels of managerial ownership provide more extensive disclosures by examining analysts' ratings of firms' disclosures. In contrast to the proxies used in prior studies that test this relationship, such as the earnings-return correlation and management earnings forecasts, these ratings provide a more direct measure of firms' overall disclosure practices.I find that the relationship between managerial holdings and disclosures depends on the type of disclosure. Consistent with the hypothesis of this study, firms with lower levels of managerial ownership are more likely to receive higher ratings for the disclosures provided in their annual and quarterly reports, even after controlling for size, performance, volatility of returns, the frequency of securities offerings and proprietary costs. The more informal and flexible aspects of disclosures, however, as measured by the investor relations rating, are not influenced by the level of managerial ownership. These results are consistent with prior research that predicts that firms lower their costs of capital by signaling a commitment to maintain a more open disclosure policy. Because annual and quarterly reports are less flexible, and therefore less likely to change, they may represent a more credible commitment to provide more informative disclosures.  

Large Shareholder Entrenchment and Performance: Empirical Evidence from Canada

Abstract:  Recent empirical evidence indicates that the largest publicly traded companies throughout the world have concentrated ownership. This is the case in Canada where voting rights are often concentrated in the hands of large shareholders, mostly wealthy families. Such concentrated ownership structures can generate specific agency problems, such as large shareholders expropriating wealth from minority shareholders. These costs are aggravated when large shareholders don't bear the full costs of their decisions because of the presence of mechanisms (dual class voting shares, pyramids) which lead to voting rights being greater than the cash flow rights (separation). We assess the impact of separation on various performance metrics while controlling for situations when the large shareholder has (1) the opportunity to expropriate (high free cash flows in the firm) and (2) the incentive to expropriate (low cash flow rights). We also control for when the large shareholder has the power to expropriate (high voting rights, outright control and insider management) and for the presence of family ownership. The results support our hypotheses and indicate that firm performance is lower when large shareholders have both the incentives and the opportunity to expropriate minority shareholders.  

Capital Structure and Firm Efficiency

Abstract:  This paper investigates the relationship between firm efficiency and leverage. We consider both the effect of leverage on firm performance as well as the reverse causality relationship. In particular, we address the following questions: Does higher leverage lead to better firm performance? Does efficiency exert a significant effect on leverage over and above that of traditional financial measures of capital structure? Is the effect of efficiency on leverage similar across different capital structures? What is the signalling role of efficiency to creditors or investors? Using a sample of 12,240 New Zealand firms we find evidence supporting the theoretical predictions of the Jensen and Meckling (1976) agency cost model. Efficiency measured as the distance from the industry's 'best practice' production frontier is positively related to leverage over the entire range of observed data. The frontier is constructed using the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. Using quantile regression analysis we show that the reverse causality effect of efficiency on leverage is positive at low to mid-leverage levels and negative at high leverage ratios. Firm size also has a non-monotonic effect on leverage: negative at low debt ratios and positive at mid to high debt ratios. The effect of tangibles and profitability on leverage is positive while intangibles and other assets are negatively related to leverage.