产品市场竞争、董事会结构与公司绩效——基于中国上市公司的实证分析

本文采用沪、深两市10大行业共计525个样本公司数据,对处于不同竞争度的产品市场的上市公司,就其董事会规模、独立董事比例、总经理与董事长是否两职合一与公司绩效间关系进行实证检验。结果表明:在不同竞争度的产品市场中,董事会发挥的治理功能也不相同。在产品市场竞争度低的行业中,由于外部市场监管不便或不利,客观上需要董事会发挥其应有的监管作用;而在产品市场竞争度高的行业中,市场能够起到较好的监督作用,董事会仅起到一定的辅助监管作用。从我国的实际情况来看,产品市场竞争度有待进一步提高,强化董事会的监管作用有利于完善公司治理,提高公司绩效。  

超额现金持有水平与产品市场竞争优势——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

有关企业持现动机及其经济后果的已有研究较少关注现金持有的战略效应。本文借鉴公司战略经济学理论,探索性地研究了企业超额持现对产品市场竞争优势的影响,为企业财务决策与产品市场竞争之间的紧密联系提供了新的经验证据。我们研究发现,企业超额持现具有战略效应,且超额持现水平与产品市场竞争优势呈倒U型关系。进一步的研究显示,与民营企业相比,国有企业在相对较低的超额持现水平上出现对产品市场竞争优势影响的负向净效应。  

Product market competition and earnings management: Evidence from discretionary accruals and real activity manipulation

We examine the association between product market competition and earnings management activities. We use the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), a widely used measure for market concentration, as a proxy for product market competition. We examine two forms of earnings management: accrual-based and real activity-based. Our results are mixed, but generally suggest that both income-increasing accrual manipulation and real activity-based manipulation are more prevalent among firms in low competition industries than those in high competition industries. Our findings are robust to various measures of earnings management, alternative measures of product market competitions, and different subsamples. We further explore the reasons why firms in low competition industries are more inclined to manage earnings and find that the market consequences of missing important earnings targets are more severe among firms in low competition industries than those in high competition industries.  

IPO waves, product market competition, and the going public decision: Theory and evidence

We develop a new rationale for initial public offering (IPO) waves based on product market considerations. Two firms, with differing productivity levels, compete in an industry with a significant probability of a positive productivity shock. Going public, though costly, not only allows a firm to raise external capital cheaply, but also enables it to grab market share from its private competitors. We solve for the decision of each firm to go public versus remain private, and the optimal timing of going public. In equilibrium, even firms with sufficient internal capital to fund their new investment may go public, driven by the possibility of their product market competitors going public. IPO waves may arise in equilibrium even in industries which do not experience a productivity shock. Our model predicts that firms going public during an IPO wave will have lower productivity and post-IPO profitability but larger cash holdings than those going public off the wave; it makes similar predictions for firms going public later versus earlier in an IPO wave. We empirically test and find support for these predictions.  

Strategic IPOs and product market competition

We examine firms' incentives to go public in the presence of product market competition. As a result of their greater ability to diversify idiosyncratic risk in the capital market, public firms' owners tolerate higher profit variability than owners of private firms. Consequently, public firms adopt riskier and more aggressive output market strategies than private firms, which improves the competitive position of the former vis-à-vis the latter. This strategic benefit of being public, and thus, the proportion of public firms in an industry, is shown to be positively related to the degree of competitive interaction among firms in the output market, to demand uncertainty, and to the idiosyncratic portion of this uncertainty. Additional empirical predictions concern the effect of a firm's initial public offering on its market share and on its rivals' valuations. We test the model's predictions and find empirical support for most of them.  

企业环境信息披露影响因素实证分析:2010~2011年A股重污染行业上市公司观察

以2010～2011年A股重污染行业上市公司作为研究对象，从产品市场竞争、公司治理角度考察了企业环境信息披露的影响因素。结果显示：公司治理结构的合理安排能够对提升企业环境信息披露质量产生一定的积极作用，但是产品市场竞争与公司治理机制之间的关系尚不明确。本文的研究结论意味着，在我国当前的制度背景下，要提高企业环境信息披露水平，保护利益相关者利益，有必要继续完善上市公司治理结构；同时，本研究也说明产品市场竞争并不能解释重污染行业企业环境信息披露的动机。  

Does corporate governance matter in competitive industries?

By reducing the threat of a hostile takeover, business combination (BC) laws weaken corporate governance and increase the opportunity for managerial slack. Consistent with the notion that competition mitigates managerial slack, we find that while firms in non-competitive industries experience a significant drop in operating performance after the laws’ passage, firms in competitive industries experience no significant effect. When we examine which agency problem competition mitigates, we find evidence in support of a “quiet-life” hypothesis. Input costs, wages, and overhead costs all increase after the laws’ passage, and only so in non-competitive industries. Similarly, when we conduct event studies around the dates of the first newspaper reports about the BC laws, we find that while firms in non-competitive industries experience a significant stock price decline, firms in competitive industries experience a small and insignificant stock price impact.  

产品市场竞争对上市公司股利政策的影响

本文选用2009-2012年的1469家中国上市公司的平衡面板数据，检验了产品市场竞争与上市公司股利政策的相关性。研究发现在其他条件一定的情况下，产品市场竞争程度与上市公司股利支付倾向和支付力度呈现正相关关系。  

Threat of entry and the use of discretion in banks’ financial reporting

This paper studies managers’ use of accounting discretion to deter entry. Using state-level changes in branching regulation under the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act, I find geographically-constrained community banks increased their loan loss provisions to appear less profitable when faced with the threat of entry by competitors. Additional tests rule out alternative explanations that firm economics or regulators drove the increase. I complement my analyses with survey-based evidence. Findings from the survey confirm that banks prefer to locate in markets where incumbents have high profitability and low credit losses, and that banks use competitors’ financial statements to analyze competition.  

Product market competition and earnings management: A firm‐level analysis

In this paper, we employ a firm‐level measure of product market competition constructed from the textual analysis of firms’ 10‐K filings to examine the relationship between managers’ perceived competition pressure and earnings management. We find that accounting irregularities and accrual‐based earnings management are positively related to product market competition. This finding is consistent with the notion that competition pressure increases managerial incentives to manage earnings, due to their career concerns. We also find that real earnings management is negatively related to product market competition. This finding suggests that real earnings management involves actions that decrease firms’ competitiveness and thus is costly for firms confronted with high competition pressure.