双边投资协定与中国企业海外并购——来自准自然实验的证据

双边投资协定旨在为企业跨境投资活动提供制度性保障作用,在双边国际投资中扮演着重要角色.文章以双边投资协定的签订与实施作为一项准自然实验,采用2004?2018年140个国家的国别面板数据,基于渐进型双重差分模型,考察双边投资协定对中国企业海外并购的影响效应.研究发现:(1)双边投资协定显著促进了中国企业的意愿并购,并提升了并购成功数量.(2)在动态效应上,双边投资协定的促进效应具有长期性,且促进幅度逐步提升.(3)双边投资协定的促进效应具有显著异质性,双边投资协定的促进效应在亚洲和非洲地区更为显著,对高制度质量国家和发达国家的促进效应更强,且对非国有企业的促进作用更强.(4)拓展性检验发现,双边投资协定的文本质量对中国海外并购具有显著促进效应.(5)内在机制检验发现,通过对投资协定具体条款进行分解和量化后,"投资定义与范畴""公平公正待遇"和"最惠国待遇"是影响双边投资协定促进中国海外并购的关键性条款.文章丰富了双边投资协定与海外并购关系领域的理论研究,并为中国企业海外并购及新一轮双边投资协定实践提供了政策启示,为全球经济治理贡献了中国智慧.     

Lopsided inclusion: The impact of multi-employer bargaining and class-based unionism on non-regular employment in South Korea

This study examines the impact of multi-employer bargaining on non-regular workers across different unions and types of non-regular employment. Using national representative survey data from South Korea, I find that multi-employer bargaining increases the likelihood that a workplace union would address a pay increase for non-regular workers when the union was affiliated with a confederation espousing class-based as opposed to business-unionism. However, such a relationship was weaker for temporary agency workers and subcontractors than for direct-hire fixed-term workers. This mechanism is further illustrated through a second round of data collection and analysis, namely in-depth interviews. I identify two factors that characterize the class-based confederation: (1) centralized pressure from the union and (2) activists and their identity work. Altogether, these results further an understanding of how the identities of national union confederations can influence local representatives’ approach to representing non-regular workers and how those influences are manifested through workplace-level collective bargaining.     

Efficiency and Ethically Responsible Management

One common justification for the pursuit of profit by business firms within a market economy is that profit is not an end in itself but a means to more efficiently produce and allocate resources. Profit, in short, is a mechanism that serves the market’s purpose of producing Pareto superior outcomes for society. This discussion examines whether such a justification, if correct, requires business managers to remain attentive to how their firm’s operation impacts the market’s purpose. In particular, it is argued that the value of efficiency, despite views to the contrary, cannot be fully separated from the planning and intentions of business managers as long as those managers direct their firms in an ethically responsible fashion. This position is inspired by, and serves as a supportive clarification of Joseph Heath’s so-called “market failures approach” to business ethics.     

Expert and entrepreneur: the unique research domain of professional service entrepreneurs

Professionals are knowledge experts who create customized solutions for clients. Many professionals practice in the context of strong professional institutions that prescribe intense socialization and codes and norms. While some professionals work as employees, many start their own firms in order to practice. Firm start-up for professionals is more prevalent than for most other occupations. While professional institutions often constraint their activities, firm start-up for professional service entrepreneurs (PSEs) involves similar entrepreneurial activities as other entrepreneurs, creating an interesting paradox worth investigating. This paper explores the uniqueness of PSEs and the firms they start, and the distinctiveness and value of research in the context of PSEs and professional service firms.     

An experimental analysis of tax avoidance policies

Policies to reduce aggressive tax avoidance are increasingly being implemented or discussed in many countries around the world. Tax authorities hope that such policies will generate new tax revenue by increasing overall tax compliance. We present an experimental design to investigate the effect of a stylized anti-avoidance tax policy on tax compliance behavior. We highlight that anti-avoidance tax policies that reduce tax avoidance can also induce an increase in tax evasion (“substitution effect”), which limits the additional tax revenue these policies will generate. We show that the degree of substitution depends crucially on behavioral factors such as tax morale. Policymakers therefore also need to consider behavioral features while designing such policies and estimating their potential effects.     

Towards an Understanding of Social Responsibility Within the Church of England

This research explores the interplay of individual, organisational and institutional variables that produce the current pattern of social responsibility practices within a specific religious organisation, namely the Church of England. By combining elements primarily of neo-institutional theory with Bourdieu’s theory of practice, we construct a theoretical framework to examine the extent to which social responsibility activity is modified or informed by a distinctive faith perspective. Given that neo-institutional theory predicts a convergence of structures and practices between different organisations operating in the same institutional sector, this research draws on a single case study focusing on social responsibility activity in six different Church of England dioceses and shows that the opposite is actually the case: there is evidence of a significant degree of divergence in terms of organisational practice within the same institutional structure. Reasons for that were found to be the impact of human agency and loose institutional structures. This paper thus contributes to the understanding of social responsibility in religious organisations by exploring the dynamics between institutional pressures, organisational context and individual agents operating in the field of faith-based social responsibility. It thereby also contributes to neo-institutional theory.     

Box-Behnken响应面法优化徐长卿配方颗粒挥发油-β-CD包合物制备工艺

为了解决徐长卿挥发油加油难及加入后的稳定性问题,采用Box-Behnken响应面法,优选出徐长卿配方颗粒挥发油-β-CD包合物的制备工艺。在单因素试验的基础上,采用3因素3水平Box-Behnken设计对徐长卿配方颗粒挥发油-β-CD包合工艺进行优选,以挥发油包合率及包合物收率为考察指标,考察挥发油与β-CD比例、包合温度、包合时间对结果的影响。结果表明:优选的包合工艺条件为挥发油与β-CD质量比为1∶8.34,包合温度为50.2℃,包合时间为2.17 h。在此条件下,挥发油包合率为72.19%,包合物收率为75.06%,综合评分为96.41,RSD值为1.1%。优选的包合工艺包合率高,工艺稳定可行,可为配方颗粒挥发油的工业化生产提供数据支持。     

Liquidity and Pricing of Credit Default Swaps in Japan: Evidence from a Benchmark Index for Corporate Debt Claims

This article is a contribution towards the growing empirical literature on the relationship between liquidity and pricing of credit default swaps (CDSs). To the best of my knowledge, the article becomes the first to show that market liquidity does matter to CDS pricing in Japan, by looking into a sole benchmark index of CDS trading for investment-grade debt claims, or the Markit iTraxx Japan (MiJ). The impact of illiquidity on MiJ premia has declined since the International Swaps and Derivatives Association introduced new trade practices in April 2009. The liquidity of the MiJ has increased since the Japan Securities Clearing Corporation started operating as a central counterpart for the MiJ in July 2011. The price discovery ability of the MiJ has also increased since then.