关于当前金融运行中的四个问题

在宏观调控取得明显成效的现实背景下,我国金融运行仍然面临诸多挑战。其中,银行不良贷款的制度刚性、外汇储备增长过快、股票市场持续低迷和部分地区房地产泡沫风险对我国银行业的稳健发展和金融体系安全带来的挑战尤为严峻。本文对这四大挑战的成因、影响和应对策略进行了全面深入地分析。     

与公允价值确认相关的审计证据研究

与公允价值相关的特殊会计业务在新会计准则中占有很重要的地位,也必将对审计业务形成一定程度的冲击。本文着眼于与公允价值相关的会计业务,侧重于政府审计机构,从审计证据的角度对如何实施与此相关的审计业务进行了探讨。本文结合公允价值业务对由此形成的特殊原始凭证及其与政府审计的关系进行了分析;以此为基础,对与公允价值确认有关的审计证据进行了分类分析,对相关审计证据的规范化进行了探讨。     

Reaching out: Access to and use of banking services across countries

This paper is a first attempt at measuring financial sector outreach and investigating its determinants. First, we present new indicators of banking sector outreach across 99 countries, constructed from aggregate data provided by bank regulators. Second, we show that our indicators closely predict harder-to-collect micro-level statistics of household and firm use of banking services, and are associated with measures of firm financing obstacles in the expected way. Finally, we explore the association between our outreach indicators and standard determinants of financial sector depth. We find many similarities but also some differences in the determinants of outreach and depth.     

R&D comes to services. Bank of America's pathbreaking experiments

At the heart of business today lies a dilemma: Our economy is increasingly dependent on services, yet our innovation processes remain oriented toward products. Indeed, we have well-tested, scientific methods for developing and refining manufactured goods, but many of them don't seem applicable to the world of services. In this article, Harvard Business School professor Stefan Thomke points out the challenges of applying the discipline of formal R&D processes to services: Because a service often exists only in the moment of its delivery to a customer, it is difficult to isolate in a traditional laboratory. And since many services are tailored to individual buyers at the point of purchase, they can't be tested through large samples. As a result, experiments with new services are most useful when they are conducted live--with real customers engaged in real transactions. But live tests magnify the cost of failure; an experiment that doesn't work may harm customer relationships and even the brand. Given such challenges, it's no surprise that most service companies have not established rigorous, ongoing R&D processes, Thomke says. Here the author provides an in-depth look at a five-step process that Bank of America has used to create new service concepts for retail banking. The company has turned a set of its branches into, in effect, a laboratory where a corporate research team conducts service experiments with actual customers during regular business hours, compares results with those of control branches, and pinpoints attractive innovations for broader rollout. The author describes the program's workings, its successes, and the obstacles the bank faced. The effort reveals what a true R&D operation might look like inside a service business, he concludes.     

Suboptimal segmentation: Assessing the use of demographics in financial services advertising

Marketers routinely make use of demographic-based segmentation as a means of targeting customers of financial services. This article builds on growing evidence that a demographic-based approach is ill-founded. Using a large sample we investigate whether demographic information is of use in segmenting customers and find little support for existing practice. Implications for researchers and managers are discussed.     

Does Dividend Policy Relate to Cross‐Sectional Variation in Information Asymmetry? Evidence from Returns to Insider Trades

We examine the relation between dividends and information asymmetry by using insider returns as a proxy for information asymmetry. We find that dividends are negatively related to returns to insider trades across firms. Firms that pay consistently high dividends have lower insider returns than do firms that pay consistently low dividends. These results do not support traditional dividend signaling models. Rather, they are consistent with the proposition that firms with the highest dividends have the lowest levels of information asymmetry.     

The value relevance of corporate restructuring charges

We document in this study that investors react positively to restructuring that is expected to be successful in improving firm performance. Investors’ reaction is significantly negative to unsuccessful firms when the magnitude of restructuring charges is high. Our results also show that investors’ reaction is significantly positive to restructuring that is intended to save costs through “workforce reduction” and “facility closings/consolidations”, but it is insignificant when restructuring is undertaken to recognize decline in asset values by asset write-offs and/or write-downs. Investor reaction is measured by 12-month buy-and-hold abnormal returns, whereas successful restructuring to improve the firm performance is based on the change in operating performance, measured by the industry-adjusted return on equity (ROE), over two subsequent years after restructuring.

How to sell services more profitably

When products become commodities, manufacturing companies may seek to differentiate themselves with value-added services--a potentially profitable strategy. Unfortunately, companies often stumble in the effort. Reinartz and Ulaga conducted in-depth studies of 18 leading companies in a broad variety of product markets to learn what distinguished the successes from the rest. They discovered four steps to developing a profitable services capability. RECOGNIZE THAT YOU ALREADY HAVE A SERVICE COMPANY: You can identify and charge for simple services--as Merck did when it stopped quietly absorbing shipping costs. Switching services from free to fee clarifies their value for managers as well as for customers. INDUSTRIALIZE THE BACK OFFICE: To prevent delivery costs from eating up service-offering margins, build flexible service platforms, closely monitor process costs, and exploit new technologies that enable process innovations. The Swedish bearings manufacturer SKF provided off-site access to an online monitoring tool that could warn of potential failure in customers' machines. CREATE A SERVICE-SAVVY SALES FORCE: Services require longer sales cycles and, often, decisions from high up in a customer's hierarchy; what's more, product salespeople may be inimical to change. Schneider-Electric did a major overhaul of its sales organization and trained its people to switch from cost-plus pricing to value-based pricing. FOCUS ON CUSTOMERS' PROCESSES AND THE OPPORTUNITIES THEY AFFORD FOR NEW SERVICE OFFERINGS: You may need to acquire new capabilities to take advantage of those opportunities: The industrial coatings specialist PPG had to learn how painting robots function after it offered to take over Fiat's Torino paint shop. Services can both lock in customers and help acquire new accounts. They should be developed with care and attention.     

A comparison of hospital responses to reimbursement policies for Medicaid psychiatric patients.

Hospital expenditures continue to increase at rates that are higher than that of GNP growth. Policymakers are experimenting with a number of reimbursement methods in an attempt to curtail the growth in hospital costs. This article empirically assesses the impact of various hospital reimbursement methods on the use of hospital services. We specified and estimated a model of hospital duration for Medicaid psychiatric patients. A new semiparametric approach to estimation was implemented for a large national sample of hospital discharges. The empirical findings show significant reductions in hospital duration are associated with per case prospective payment as compared with cost-based reimbursement.     

优质服务便利灾民——交通银行董事长蒋超良、行长李军带领全行员工用优质服务支援地震灾区纪实

5月28日,交通银行出台了有利于灾区金融服务业的新政策：在抗震救灾期间,对地震灾区个人业务减免部分手续费,具体包括：地震灾区客户在交行网点办理个人储蓄存单、存折挂失,以及个人储蓄存单、存折的密码、印鉴挂失,免收手续费;办理太平洋借记卡及准贷记卡卡片挂失、密码挂失,以及太平洋借记卡及准贷记卡卡片重置,免收手续费;申请太平洋借记卡,免收卡片工本费,     

银行间本币交易系统升级到2.3.6版本

为进一步完善本币交易系统功能。全国银行间同业拆借中心于2012年4月13日发布本币交易系统2．3．6版本。     

The decision to outsource risk management services

We apply transaction cost economics to identify factors influencing companies’ decision to internally generate or outsource risk management services. A unique sample is used which combines publicly available data with private information supplied by 281 Australian listed companies. We find that expenditure on research and development, greater technological uncertainty, more competitive environments, more overseas sales and transaction frequency are associated with less outsourcing of risk management services. Uncertainty due to environmental diversity is associated with more outsourcing of risk management services. Companies that outsource risk management services also have lower staff turnover and provide more specialised training and longer contracts for risk management suppliers.     

Preventive medicine for hospital costs.

The reality of soaring health care costs has hospital administrators facing the prospect of mandatory state regulation or voluntary restraint on their financial expenditures. In either event, whether formulated and implemented through external rate setting or internal cost containment, managers should be preparing to adjust their hospitals' management control systems to the emerging requirements of tighter budgetary limitations. The authors discuss the implications such cost-containment programs have for hospital control systems, identify the five cost-influencing variables that must be monitored, and consider the critical importance of incorporating attending physicians into the management control effort.     

中国外汇交易中心进一步完善做市商服务

2011年1月1日起,国家外汇管理局出台的《银行间外汇市场做市商指引》(汇发[2010]46号)正式施行,中国外汇交易中心积极配合做好现有做市商自动承继即期做市商资格工作,并帮助获批远期掉期做市商资格的机构提前完成做市准备等相关工作,同时协助获批的即期尝试做市机构和远期掉期尝试机构进行尝试做市的各     

创新金融服务 推进“三农”建设——北京农村商业银行股份有限公司副行长于辉访谈

对北京农村商业银行股份有限公司（以下简称＂北京农村商业银行＂）而言,2011年意义非凡。它的前身北京市农村信用社联合社始建于1951年,2005年又由信用社转制成为北京农村商业银行,2011年4月经监管部门批准,其简称更改为北京农商银行。历经几番蜕变,60年的积淀已将北京农商银行锤炼为一家实现了商业化经营与政策性支农平衡发展的区域性银行,