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.     

Who benefits from partial tax coordination?

In this paper, we investigate whether partial tax coordination is beneficial to countries within and outside a tax union, in which countries are supposed to compete in taxes and infrastructure. Our results demonstrate that a subgroup of countries agreeing on a common tax rate can harm both member and nonmember states. This is in contrast to the classical findings that partial tax harmonisation is Pareto improving. When a minimum tax rate is imposed within a tax union, we demonstrate that it does not necessarily improve the welfare of the member countries. Moreover, both the high‐tax and low‐tax countries can be worse off. This conclusion is at odds with the classical result that a high‐tax country benefits from the imposition of a lower tax bound.     

Using a dual-frame design to improve phone surveys on political attitudes: developing a weighting strategy for limited external information in Hong Kong

Quality & Quantity - In recent years, rapid increases in mobile phone ownership and decreases in landline users have led to potential biases in landline phone survey estimations. Mobile-only...     

利用规划放线成果修测城市地形图

一种根据规划放线验线成果修测地形图的方法——内业修测法，它可以及时反映城市地形地物的变化，保持地形图的现势性，较之传统的修测方法省时、省力、经济。     

Contagion or Inductance? Crisis 1997 Reconsidered

We provide the simple example of a refinancing game with incomplete information, where the lack of transparency is both necessary and sufficient for the propagation of local financial distress across disjoint financial networks. JEL Classification Number: F4.
And the truth shall make you free. John 8: 32     

《技术制图》新旧标准对照

以对照方法介绍了《技术制图》与《机械制图》中三个基础标准的适用范围、采标情况及基本内容。     

从市场需求分析电子商务人才的培养

电子商务的发展用一句话来表述就是“时间很短，发展极快”。1997年我国开始出现电子商务，截至目前中国电子商务市场获得了飞速的发展。《2004年中国B2B电子商务研究报告》数据显示，截至2004年底，中国电子商务市场规模已经达到了3200亿元人民币，预计，到2007年中国电子商务市场总体规模将会达到17000亿元人民币。     

Fragmentation, Engel's Law, and Learning

This paper outlines the conditions under which trade is beneficial for a developing country's growth. A developing country suffers from two disadvantages: low income and a comparative disadvantage in the production of modern manufactured goods—goods which allow a high rate of human capital accumulation through learning by doing. Low income together with Engel's law imply that developing countries consume and produce very few modern goods in autarky and hence grow slowly. With international fragmentation of production, a developing country may find comparative advantage in the production of some stages of modern goods despite an absence of comparative advantage in the production of modern goods under “100% local content.” More resources can then be allocated to the modern goods sector leading to greater learning externalities and hence growth under free trade than in autarky.     

The mean-variance investment problem in a constrained financial market

This paper extends the mean-variance analysis and the two-fund separation theorem to a market with some constraints, such as, the incompleteness, prohibition of short-selling, and partial information, with stochastic interest rate, and with stochastic volatility for risky assets. By maximizing a quadratic utility of terminal wealth, we show that the efficient frontier for the problem is a straight line in the mean-standard-deviation diagram. The quadratic utility function exhibits mean-variance efficiency. Our results apply to portfolios of claims in a single period, multiperiod, and continuous time.     

中国西部大学生旅游消费现状调查和对策——以宝鸡市为例

目的:总结西部大学生旅游消费的特点,并据此提出可行的对策;方法:运用问卷调查的方法;过程:以宝鸡市部分在校大学生为研究对象,分析他们旅游意向、旅游时间和地点、旅游消费方式、旅游经费来源、旅游消费结构和旅游消费行为的影响;结论:有以下几点:①大部分大学生打算去旅游,从来没有打算去旅游的人主要是来自农村的学生,主要经济原因;②大学生旅游的目的主要是休闲散心,增长见闻,所以选择的景点主要是自然风景区和民族风情区;③大学生大都选择寒暑假出游;④大学生更愿意与情侣出游,很少人选择与父母出游,而且倾向于自助游;⑤大学生旅游花费来源主要来自父母。