Delegation and the regulation of U.S. financial markets

We analyze the institutional determinants of U.S. financial market regulation with a general model of the policy-making process in which legislators delegate authority to regulate financial risk at both the firm and systemic levels. The model explains changes in U.S. financial regulation leading up to the financial crisis. We test the predictions of the general model with a novel, comprehensive data set of financial regulatory laws enacted specifically between 1950 and 2009. The theoretical and empirical analysis finds that economic and political factors impact Congress’ decision to delegate regulatory authority to executive agencies, which in turn impacts the stringency of financial market regulation, and our estimation results indicate that political factors may have been stronger and resulted in inefficiencies.     

Mitigating panic buying behavior in the epidemic: An evolutionary game perspective

The panic buying behavior under public health emergencies will lead to many adverse consequences, such as material waste, price fluctuation and uneven distribution of epidemic prevention materials, which will pose a threat to the social stability and economic development. In this paper, we construct a tripartite game model to explore the strategic choices of the public, merchants and the government in order to effectively respond to the panic buying behavior in the epidemic. The results demonstrate that: (1) Eight evolutionary stable strategies emerge in the panic buying events. The worst scenario can be improved by adjusting some relevant parameters. (2) The probability of the public choosing the strategy of “not involving in panic buying” depends on the potential benefits and losses of snapping up, rather than the extent of price rising. (3) The probability of merchants choosing the strategy of “not bid up price” depends on the intangible benefits. (4) The probability of the government choosing the strategy of “active supervision” depends on the supervision costs and government credibility, rather than the amount of fines. In addition, strategic suggestions to mitigate panic buying behavior are put forward from the perspective of each stakeholder.     

Revisiting the ICAPM under the distortion of risk–return tradeoff in short-horizon stock returns

We suggest that the distortion of the positive risk–return relation in the ICAPM is a consequence of trading by informed investors to exploit mispricing. We hypothesize and demonstrate that a non-positive (strongly positive) risk–return relation following positive (negative) market returns is attributed to short-selling (purchasing) of overpriced (underpriced) stocks along with optimistic (pessimistic) expectations conditional on good (bad) market news. We verify this asymmetry in the risk–return relation through the indirect risk–return relation conditional on good (bad) market news. We also find that the attenuation (reinforcement) of the positive risk–return relation is more profound in high- (low-) sentiment periods.     

Chief Audit Executive as Supervisory Board Member and Executive Compensation Contracts

This paper studies a unique phenomenon in China's corporate governance—that chief audit executives (CAEs) sit on supervisory boards (CAE duality)—and examines its effects on executive compensation contracts. Using a sample of listed firms between 2010 and 2018, we find a significant positive relation between CAE duality and pay-for-performance sensitivity, which suggests that the dual position helps integrate monitoring resources and reduces agency costs. This positive relation is more pronounced when companies face a stricter monitoring environment and in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) than in SOEs. In addition, we find that the recent reforms on compensation strengthen the role of CAE duality in SOEs. Further analysis identifies the reliability of performance information (i.e., earnings quality) and reduced executive self-interested behaviours (i.e., perquisite consumption) as the influencing mechanisms that increase the demand for performance-based compensation and thus improve pay-for-performance sensitivity.     

Obesity of politicians and corruption in Ukraine in 2000–2020– Reply

We collected 469 frontal face images of Ukrainian cabinet ministers who were in office in 2000–2020. For each image, the minister's body mass index was estimated using a computer vision algorithm. The time series of median estimated body mass index of cabinet ministers co-moves over time with two existing measures of corruption – World Bank worldwide governance indicator Control of Corruption, and the discrepancy between the quantity of luxury wristwatches exported from Switzerland to Ukraine (reported by Swiss statistics) and the corresponding quantity imported by Ukraine from Switzerland (reported by Ukrainian statistics).     

Sentiment-scaled CAPM and market mispricing

This study explores the conditional version of the capital asset pricing model on sentiment to provide a behavioural intuition behind the value premium and market mispricing. We find betas (β) and the market risk premium to vary over time across different sentiment indices and portfolios. More importantly, the state β derived from this sentiment-scaled model provides a behavioural explanation of the value premium and a set of anomalies driven by mispricing. Different from the static β–return relation that gives a flat security market line, we document upward security market lines when plotting portfolio returns against their state βs and portfolios with higher state βs earn higher returns.     

Depletion of psychological,financial, and social resources in the hospitality sector during the pandemic

This study details how psychological, financial, and social factors shape employee deviant interpersonal behaviors during a pandemic. Data were collected with a survey of 372 front-line employees of hotels and analyzed with PLS-SEM. The findings showed social disconnectedness and perceived risk of unemployment leads to perceived isolation, which further creates depression in employees. The findings also showed that depression is positively related to employee deviance. Financial strain is a major cause of perceived isolation, depression, and deviant behaviors among front-line employees. Results also proved that social support reduces fear of isolation, depression, and employee deviance. This study provides guidelines that hotels need to understand the psychological stance of employees and design policies to overcome employee perceived fears and psychological disorders.     

从利益共同体到命运共同体:地方政府隐性债务的合作治理

在地方政府性债务的治理中,隐性债务因其增长迅速、规模不清和风险不确定,成为未来债务治理的重点和难点。隐性债务挟裹主体众多,关联利益甚广,因此,基于共同体视角,明确治理主体,有利于化解风险。在隐性债务生产阶段,因利而合的共同体大肆攫取利益导致隐性债务激增;在债务风险凸显阶段,利益共同体的本能选择不是"安危与共",而是"大难临头各自保"。但债务风险的"飞去来器效应"和群体性焦虑,将促使利益共同体走向命运共同体。命运共同体既是利益共同体,更是治理共同体。在隐性债务治理阶段,共同体应形成"共生"意识、采取"共治"行动、构筑"共担"保障,实现有效共治。     

Does local government competition aggravate haze pollution? A new perspective of factor market distortion

Haze pollution has become a new threat to China's sustainable development, but it may be that local government behaviour can play an important role in the prevention and control of pollutants. A dynamic spatial autoregressive (SAR) model is used to study the relationship between local government competition and haze pollution. To further explore the indirect impact of factor market distortion on haze pollution and control potential endogeneity problems, a newly developed intermediary effect model that incorporates the characteristics of the generalized method of moments (GMM) is utilized to explore how factor market distortion indirectly affects haze pollution. The research results show that regional haze pollution in China is characterized by significant spatial correlation, and local government competition has a positive impact on haze pollution; that is, local government competition exacerbates haze pollution. In general, local government competition not only directly leads to an increase in haze pollution but also further intensifies it by distorting the local factor market, and the intermediary role of factor market distortion is approximately 7.04%. The results of the regional inspection found that competition among local governments in the eastern region did not lead to haze pollution, and distortion of the factor market did not exist as an intermediary effect. However, both direct and intermediary effects are significant in the central and western regions. Therefore, an official performance appraisal system that includes ecological constraints should be established to guide the benign transformation of local government competition, and an environmental management mechanism must be developed for joint prevention and control to reduce haze pollution. In addition, the free flow of factors and marketization are equally important.     

优化营商环境,推动发展高质量经济

促进中国经济高质量发展的必由之路是优化营商环境,提升区域竞争力。目前我国面临着国际内外的复杂局势,经济未来的发展趋势不容乐观,为此我们要深入落实新的发展理念,建立新的发展思路,构建新的发展格局。优化营商环境应实现建立服务型政府,实现企业经营环节的全覆盖,降低制度性交易成本、建立完善的商业系统生态链、打造具有中国特色的营商环境。