Does educational diversity of managers matter for the performance of team‐managed funds?

We study the effect of the educational diversity of managers on the performance of team‐managed mutual funds using a large sample of U.S. equity funds from 1994 to 2013. We consider diversity in terms of both final educational degree and field of educational specialisation. We find that, in general, both types of diversity have a positive impact on fund performance, and our results are robust over a wide range of performance metrics and changes in market conditions.     

Unfolding the impact of leadership and management on sustainability performance: Green and lean practices and guanxi as the dual mediators

This study aims to empirically evaluate the predictors that influence sustainability performance among manufacturing firms. Leadership and management, green and lean practices, and guanxi were examined to determine whether these predictors are directly and/or indirectly affecting sustainability performance; 160 valid responses were collected and partial-least-squares-structural-equation-modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The results showed that leadership and management positively influenced green and lean practices and green and lean practices positively influenced sustainability performance. Leadership and management also positively influenced guanxi. Interestingly, leadership and management and guanxi do not exert a significant direct influence on sustainability performance. The findings contributed to the development of the resource-based-view theory further by empirically exploring the significance of leadership and management coupled with green and lean practices as competencies and capability to drive sustainability performance. The testing of the dual mediators' effects further added value to this study.     

“三型”体系建设对高校学生党支部组织力提升的实践研究

在学生党支部建设的过程中,通过建立"学习型"体系框架、推进"服务型"一体化建设、完善"创新型"机制等措施,逐步形成"三型"协作、优势互补的新格局。高校学生党支部以"三型"体系建设为着力点,引领学生党员在"学习"中筑牢思想根基,在"服务"中巩固群众基础,在"创新"中提升能力水平,全面有效提升高校学生党支部的组织力。     

Contracting and Reporting Conservatism around a Change in Fiduciary Duties*

We exploit an influential 1991 Delaware court ruling to examine simultaneously two types of conservatism that play important roles in resolving creditor–owner agency conflicts: contracting conservatism and reporting conservatism. The ruling expanded managerial fiduciary duties in favor of creditors for Delaware-incorporated firms in the vicinity of insolvency. In those firms, following the ruling, debt contracts are less likely to include conservative adjustments to accounting numbers used for covenant compliance (i.e., contracting conservatism decreases), while public financial reporting becomes more conservative (i.e., reporting conservatism increases). The decrease in contracting conservatism is concentrated in firms that exhibit a greater increase in reporting conservatism, suggesting that reporting conservatism is more cost-effective in resolving agency conflicts. In addition, the substitution effect is more pronounced in firms facing greater business uncertainty and firms with greater board independence.     

Abuse of Market Dominance Under China’s Anti-Monopoly Law: The Case of Tetra Pak

Review of Industrial Organization - In this paper, we analyze a recent antitrust case of abuse of dominance that was decided by a Chinese administrative enforcement agency under China’s...     

Non-GAAP reporting following debt covenant violations

Review of Accounting Studies - We investigate whether firms change their non-GAAP reporting practices after debt covenant violations. We find that the likelihood that a firm will disclose non-GAAP...     

When Do Qualitative Risk Disclosures Backfire? The Effects of a Mismatch in Hedge Disclosure Formats on Investors' Judgments

Disclosure standards mandate the quantitative disclosure of hedging‐instrument‐related risks but not the disclosure of hedged‐item‐related risks. We examine how a match (mismatch) in formats, caused by making quantitative (qualitative) hedged item disclosures alongside quantitative hedging instrument disclosures, affects investors' integration of information from these two related disclosures. Our first experiment varies the hedged item disclosure format (quantitative or qualitative) and the portion of risk hedged (small or large). We find that when disclosure formats are mismatched, the less comparable nature of the two disclosures caused investors to neglect the offsetting relationship when assessing net risks. As a result, risk and investment judgments were influenced by the more prominent quantitative hedging instrument disclosures. Our second experiment finds that the use of a qualitative debiaser that clarifies the relationship between the two disclosures led to the integration of information and mitigated this effect.     

Getting the Most Out of a Mandatory Subordinated Debt Requirement

Recent advances in asset pricing—the reduced-form approach to pricing risky debt and derivatives—are used to quantitatively evaluate several proposals for mandatory bank issue of subordinated debt. We find that credit spreads on both fixed- and floating-rate subordinated debt provide relatively clean signals of bank risk and are not unduly influenced by nonrisk factors. Fixed-rate debt with a put is unacceptable, but making the putable debt floating resolves most problems. Our approach also helps to clarify several different notions of “bank risk.”     

城市房屋拆迁中的公共利益在程序法上的界定——兼评《城市房屋拆迁管理条例》第十六条

公共利益内涵在立法上的缺失,造成大量个人利益被侵犯的案例,在城市房屋拆迁中尤其突出。本文通过探讨如何从程序上赋予受公共利益影响者参与对公共利益内涵的确定以及在个人利益受到侵犯时给予司法救济的途径的问题,试图从法律程序上限制政府对公共利益的滥用,并最大程度地维护公民的个人利益,以此暂时回避对公共利益内涵问题的探讨。