Share pledging,payout policy,and the value of cash holdings

Share pledging for insiders’ personal bank loans is associated with the agency problems of insider risk aversion and stock price crash risk. We examine the relation between insider share pledging and the value of cash holdings using the pledging data of listed firms in Taiwan. We find that the value of cash holdings is lower for pledging firms, especially for those that are relatively more risk averse. Pledging firms that repurchase shares have a higher marginal value of cash than those with other payout methods, likely due to the role of repurchases in reducing the stock price crash risk. Our results show how insiders’ personal financing incentives arising from share pledging would affect the value of cash holdings from the perspective of agency problems and payout policy.     

“一带一路”沿线国家贸易开放与劳动收入份额

基于1990~2014年的跨国数据,实证研究贸易开放对"一带一路"沿线国家劳动收入份额的影响。分析发现,"一带一路"沿线国家的劳动收入份额均值下降了5%以上。采用固定效应模型和工具变量法的实证分析表明,整体上贸易开放抑制了"一带一路"沿线国家的劳动收入份额。进一步将"一带一路"沿线国家按照经济发展水平、要素禀赋、制度环境分组研究发现,贸易开放对高经济发展水平国家、资本密集型国家、资源密集型国家、制度环境良好国家的劳动收入份额具有显著负影响,但是对于低经济发展水平国家、劳动密集型国家、制度环境不佳国家的劳动收入份额具有显著正效应。而向中国贸易开放能够提高"一带一路"沿线国家的劳动收入份额,特别是对低经济发展水平国家的积极影响较强。上述实证结果具有稳健性。在此基础上提出了相应的政策建议。     

The impact of IT-enabled customer service systems on service personalization,customer service perceptions,and hotel performance

Customer service is a critical element of a hotel's strategy and an important lever for differentiation of the hotel's offer. Over the last two decades, information systems have contributed to the transformation of customer interactions, enabling an unprecedented scale and scope of service personalization in the tourism industry. This paper reports the results of a mixed method study in a hotel that offers three contributions to the development and refinement of IT-enabled service personalization theory. It explores the role of signifiers in the design of customer service systems, showing that they significantly increase customer preference elicitation during the learning phase of the service personalization process. It then demonstrates that improved preference elicitation translates into higher customer service evaluations and value perceptions of the hotel. Finally, our study shows that IT-enabled service personalization creates financial benefits for the hotel via revenue share-shift from costly intermediated to direct distribution channels.     

Is corporate payout taxation a long run phenomenon? Evidence from international data

This paper examines whether dividend and capital gains taxation influences corporate payout policy using the country level data of 21 countries in panel versions of time series models. We find that dividend relative to capital gains tax penalty is cointegrated with corporate payouts (dividends and share repurchases) i.e. corporate payout taxation may be a long run phenomenon. Further, the cointegrating vector estimates are largely consistent with the traditional view of dividend taxation whereby the tax penalty discourages dividends, while the estimates give limited support to the premise that firms substitute dividends for share repurchases in response to an increase in dividend tax penalty. Long run causality also operates between the tax penalty and payouts in the error correction models. Additionally, dividend tax appears to be more influential than capital gains tax on dividend payout decisions. Lastly, taxation affects dividends more significantly in countries with high investor protection.     

Limited attention,share repurchases,and takeover risk

We hypothesize that announcing open market share repurchases (OMRs) to counter negative valuation shocks reveals repurchasing firms’ lost growth opportunities or underperforming assets to potential bidders, making them more likely to become takeover targets. This also leads their investors to face higher takeover risk, a systematic risk associated with economic fundamentals that drive takeover waves, as proposed by Cremers et al. (2009). Indeed, we find that repurchasing firms tend to face higher takeover probability in the first few years following their OMR announcements, and that the increase in takeover risk can largely explain their post-announcement long-run abnormal returns documented in the literature. The increase in takeover risk is larger for smaller firms, firms with poorer pre-announcement stock performance, and those attracting more attention of market participants. Our results suggest that OMRs, which are used by many firms to counter undervaluation, could make the firms more sensitive to takeover waves and raise their cost of equity capital.     

Multiple store patronage: The effects of store characteristics

The present study contributes to the literature on multiple store patronage in two important directions. First, it examines whether consumers׳ perceived importance of store characteristics have effects on multiple store patronage. Second, it examines the relationship between multiple store patronage and consumers׳ share of wallet at the primary store. Our results show that consumers who attach high value to sales promotions are more likely to visit multiple stores. However, store characteristic factors generally did not exert significant effect on multiple store patronage. Furthermore, we find that multiple store patronage and share of wallet are not interdependent and the profiles of consumers in terms of them do not share many common characteristics.     

Intercorporate Ownership,Taxes, and Corporate Payout Choices*

This paper examines whether corporate payout choices (dividends or share repurchases) are associated with intercorporate ownership in a firm. Using the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) and the Inter‐Corporate Ownership (ICO) database from Statistics Canada, I find that intercorporate ownership is positively associated with a firm’s propensity to pay dividends and negatively associated with a firm’s propensity to repurchase shares. The findings are robust to the endogeneity of intercorporate ownership and the inclusion of various control variables such as firm size, risk, liquidity, growth, and profitability.     

论国有商业银行的双重功能与不良资产的双重成因

国有商业银行所形成的巨额不良资产，需要从其事实上履行的双重功能入手进行解析：国有商业银行在履行基本功能时，由于行业性风险产生的不良资产具有普遍性和内生性；但其在履行公共性功能时。由于承担的政策性风险和支付的履职成本无法分摊导致的超额不良资产，具有特殊性和外生性。因此。降低国有商业银行的不良资产，既要控制行业性风险，更要建立对其履行特殊功能所支付成本的合理分摊机制，并随着市场机制作用的增强从体制上逐步淡化其特殊功能，从根本上解决由外生性原因造成的超额不良资产。     

上海场外交易市场(OTC)发展模式与路径研究

发展OTC市场,是打造无缝隙资本市场体系和上海国际金融中心建设的重要环节。多层次资本市场包括主板市场、创业板市场和场外交易市场,三者相互补充、渗透,为实体经济发展提供资本支持。上海推进OTC市场建设,是积极扶持广大中小高科技企业成长的需要,可为主板和创业板市场提供预备市场及退市通道,以形成无缝对接的资本市场体系。上海OTC市场发展模式选择,应包括OTC市场体系、交易机制、转板及退市、监管设计等方面。     

Market share determination in marketing service industries - A demand side approach∗

A marketing service industry provides its business clients with its services such as advertising media or inbound telecommunication ( i.e. toll free 800 calls) to increase their sales. By extending Dorfman and Steiner (1954) to the world where firms obtain costly marketing services from outside specialized providers, this paper studies the market shares of providers of a marketing service from the perspective of their clients. It derives that at the optimal point for a representative client, a provider's market share equals the ratio of the profits contributed by its service to the total profits contributed by the services of all providers in the market. Under certain conditions, a provider's market share is just a function of quality-price ratios. This result should facilitate choosing a marketing service from alternative providers and analyzing market shares in marketing-service industries.