Microfinance and social capital formation- a social network analysis approach

The microcredit program has emerged as an important poverty alleviation strategy over the last three decades, and several studies have examined its economic impacts on the community well-being. However, far too little attention has been paid to the effects of micro credits on community social connection and solidarity. This paper aims to examine the application of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to explore the impact of the rural microcredit fund on community social capitals. In doing so, the data on interactions of four rural development groups' members before and after the microcredit project implementation were collected using participatory workshops in Neyzar village of Qom province in Iran. The data were analyzed by Ucinet software, and the socio-graphs were produced by the NetDraw application. The results show that, more people have been involved in the social interactions after the project implementation and there was statistically significant increase in density and decrease in centralization of cooperation network. Furthermore, there were no important distinctions in centrality of people with various educational levels before and after the project implementation. Overall, it can be concluded that, the microfinance initiative considerably promotes the community social capital and participation in the rural development activities. Moreover, the SNA techniques are applicable as an impact assessment tool to investigate changes in community social capital.     

财政政策与货币政策的动态调控效应*——基于时变参数向量自回归模型的检验

本文廓清了财政政策与货币政策搭配动态调控宏观经济的机理，揭示了两者协调影响经济的“黑箱”机制及其在经济不同阶段的搭配方式；运用中国2004—2019年的经济季度数据，构建TVP SV VAR模型探究两类政策对宏观经济的调控效应。研究发现：财政政策与货币政策共同把控流动性“闸门”实现互动协调；财政政策搭配货币政策具有时变性，在整体上“同向发力”推动经济发展；两类政策对产出的影响并非始终如理论一致，在结构层面仍有优化靶向性操作的余地。     

Capital gains lock-in and governance choices

Differences in accrued gains and investors’ tax-sensitivity induce variation in a capital gains lock-in effect across mutual funds even for the same stock at the same time. Exploiting this variation, we show this effect influences funds’ governance decisions: higher capital gains decrease the likelihood a fund exits prior to contentious votes and increase the likelihood a fund votes against management. Consistent with tax motivation, these findings are concentrated among funds with tax-sensitive investors. Further, high aggregate capital gains across funds holding a stock predict a higher likelihood management loses a vote and a lower likelihood a contentious vote is proposed.     

Affiliated block shareholders and analyst optimism

We investigate several previously under-documented conflicts of interest that may result in analyst optimism by utilizing two unique features of brokerage firms in China, namely, the dominant ownership of large shareholders within the brokerage firms and the mandatory disclosure of brokerage firms’ commission income derived from each mutual fund client. We show that controlling shareholders of an analyst’s brokerage-firm put pressure on the analyst to report more optimistically biased earnings forecasts and recommendations to the stocks they hold larger positions in. We also find that the magnitude of analyst optimism increases with the shareholdings of the mutual funds that contribute commission fees to the analyst’s brokerage firm. These findings remain robust after incorporating a regulation change that reduces conflicts of interest in the brokerage industry and higher dimensional fixed effects, and thus are unlikely to be driven by reverse causality or omitted variable bias.     

机关运行经费基金化管理的战略构想

政府机关事务的高绩效管理是维护政府高效有序运行的关键,更是实现政府职能、促进社会经济发展、维护社会稳定和提升政府公信力的重要保障。许多先发国家如美国、英国等对机关运行实行了价值化管理改革,以基金作为撬动政府机关运行资金的杠杆,达到了机关服务高效优质、规范有序、监督有效和战略明确的目标。中国机关事务运行正处于由传统的事务性实物管理向现代化的价值治理转变的关键期,借鉴英美等国的基金管理和运行经验对于中国建立机关运行普遍服务基金制度,提高政府效能,实现国家治理体系和治理能力现代化具有重要意义。     

市场环境、企业社会责任与基金安全投资转移

当市场环境不好以及不确定性增加时，基金进行安全投资转移。企业积极履行社会责任所形成的声誉资本具有“类保险”作用，在面临负面事件或不确定性环境冲击时能够防止股价大幅下跌和市值损失；基金是否会在市场环境不好时将投资组合转向社会责任绩效更高的股票进行安全投资转移呢？使用2010—2017年开放式基金样本，实证检验了企业社会责任、市场环境与安全投资转移之间的关系。研究发现，在市场环境表现不佳时，基金避险需求增加，倾向将投资组合更多地转向社会责任绩效高的股票进行安全投资转移；进一步研究发现基金和基金经理特征影响基金的安全投资转移行为，净资金流入较少、历史业绩差、经理选股能力差的基金根据企业社会责任进行安全投资转移的程度大。研究还发现，基金的安全投资转移行为对基金业绩和基金收益波动产生了积极影响。     

住房公积金导致了不平等吗*——来自中国家庭金融调查的证据

住房公积金制度作为一项政策性住房金融制度，能够缓解家庭购房金融约束、稳定住房金融市场，成为实现“房住不炒”的重要政策工具。本文以2015年实施的住房公积金信贷宽松政策作为外生冲击，从财富效应的角度研究了住房公积金制度对不同家庭购房行为的影响。利用双重差分的实证研究方法，本文发现目前住房公积金主要促进了缴存家庭的多套房需求，加大了缴存家庭与非缴存家庭的住房财富差距。住房信贷政策的针对性与多样性急需提升。     

When fund management skill is more valuable?

Does fund management skill allow managers to identify mispriced securities more accurately and thereby make better portfolio choices resulting in superior fund performance when noise trading – a natural setting to detect skill – is more prevalent? We find skilled fund managers with superior past performance to generate persistent excess risk‐adjusted returns and experience significant capital inflows, especially in high sentiment times, high stock dispersion, and economic expansion states when price signals are noisier. This pattern persists after we control for lucky bias, using the ‘false discovery rate’ approach, which permits disentangling manager ‘skill’ from ‘luck.’     

How much does tax erode fund excess returns?

We model the tax drag from active fund management based on reported monthly holdings of active equity funds. Tax drag erodes 65 percent of the 0.74 percent excess return in Broad Market funds, but only 21 percent of the 1.80 percent excess return in Small-Cap funds for Australian superannuation (pension) fund investors. Tax drag varies with investment style; market state, which is most detrimental during bull markets; and fund turnover. For high-income individual investors, tax drag is exacerbated to the extent that active management only generates meaningful after-tax excess return for Small-Cap funds of certain styles.     

Structural holes and hedge fund return comovement: evidence from network-connected stock hedge funds in China

Using data from a new hedge fund database, we examine the impact of social networks on the return comovement of stock hedge funds in China. We use structural holes in the college alumni networks of managers to measure the managers’ social network positions. We perform an empirical analysis on a sample of 3,012 hedge fund products in China from 2010 to 2017. We find that greater structural holes are associated with higher return comovement. The positive impact of the structural holes on return comovement is not affected by market cycles, a manager's major in college, or his or her abilities.