Do Family Owners Use Firm Hedging Policy to Hedge Personal Undiversified Wealth Risk?

We examine whether family ownership affects the value impact of the operational and financial dimensions of firms’ hedging policies. We show that family firms’ market valuations are higher than those of non‐family firms, consistent with the view that family firms benefit from family owners’ long‐term perspectives and ability to monitor managers. In addition, while both operational and financial hedging policies per se are valuable in non‐family firms, they do not create any value in family firms. These results support the notion that the founding families’ need to hedge the risk of their undiversified personal wealth portfolio leads to suboptimal risk management decisions.     

Dual agency problems in family firms: Evidence from director elections

We use director elections to analyze outsider shareholder perspectives of agency problems in family firms. Compared to nonfamily firms, outsider shareholders in family firms provide weaker support for director slates proposed by the firms’ nominating committees. Outside shareholder support decreases when families receive private benefits of control, when family members serve in leadership roles, or when family members serve on board monitoring committees. We do not find similar results for other actively engaged concentrated owners. Our results provide new insights into outsider shareholders’ satisfaction with family control in publicly held firms and their perceptions of the family-outsider agency conflicts.     

Rent-seeking incentives, corporate political connections, and the control structure of private firms: Chinese evidence

We examine how the rent-seeking incentives of local government motivate private firms¹ listed in China to establish political connections, and whether such connections lead to more concentrated corporate control structures. Our results show that such firms are more likely to establish political connections in regions in which the local economy is less market-oriented or in which the government has more discretion in allocating economic resources. This is consistent with the notion that the presence of incentives for government officials to engage in rent seeking motivates private firms to look for alternative safeguards through political connections. We also find that the controlling owners of politically connected firms tend to concentrate their shareholdings and dominate the board of directors by occupying the position of either chairman or CEO, which supports the conjecture that a concentrated control structure facilitates rent seeking through political connections and allows the controlling owner to retain all of the benefits arising from connections with politicians.     

Family control,multiple institutional block-holders,and informed trading

This paper investigates how large family shareholders and institutional block-holders jointly influence informed trading and firm valuation in the Hong Kong stock market. It combines market microstructure research with studies on the governance roles of multiple block-holders and finds that institutional block-holders rely on their relative controlling power vis-à-vis family owners to mitigate problems associated with informed trading. They also use their ownership rights to improve the structure of informed trading. However, these governance roles are predominantly exercised by pressure-resistant institutional block-holders. Informed trading reduces firm valuation, while an improvement in its structure increases valuation. Therefore, the governance roles of controlling families and pressure-resistant institutional block-holders may have different implications in terms of investors’ perceptions of private information risk.     

宏观调控、所有权结构与商业银行信贷扩张行为

本文结合公司金融和商业银行相关理论,厘清了股权结构对商业银行信贷扩张的作用机理,重点分析政府宏观调控政策目标和意图如何通过股权结构作用于信贷行为。选用21家银行2003-2010年间的面板数据,估计得出中央政府控制、民营化程度低、大股东持股比例高的银行具有更强的信贷扩张冲动;并利用2009年宏观经济扩张政策外生冲击形成的"自然实验"环境,通过双重差分(Difference-in-Difference)估计策略发现,宏观调控对中央政府控制、民营化程度低、大股东持股比例高的银行的信贷行为影响更为显著。本文的研究从政府控制和银行内部治理的视角为信贷扩张的微观机制以及商业银行市场化改革之后政府宏观经济调控的传导渠道提供了一个新的解释。     

市场模式、政府模式与城商行流动性风险化解——一个三期博弈的分析框架

分析城商行流动性风险化解中的政府手段和市场机制,对于下一步规范城商行营商环境、化解流动性风险具有参考意义。本文首先通过银行间的博弈模型,发现政府持股比例越高会增加城商行同业负债比例,进而提高流动性风险发生的可能性;当经济处于下行周期时,全社会资金需求不足,大型银行资金投放的机会成本降低,有利于城商行获得同业负债,但却进一步积累了流动性风险。其次,通过系统GMM对2011—2018年80家城商行的非平衡面板数据进行分析,实证结果验证了理论假说。最后,结合理论与实证分析,进一步提出政府行为边界,破除隐性担保,建立城商行资金内部定价机制以及完善城商行监管体系等方面的政策建议。     

Concentrated control,institutions, and banking sector: An international study

Using a broad sample of listed commercial banks in East Asia and Western Europe, this paper investigates the relations among concentrated control, a set of bank operating characteristics, and legal and regulatory regimes. We find that banks with concentrated control exhibit poorer performance, lower cost efficiency, greater return volatility, and higher insolvency risk, relative to widely held ones. We also document that legal institutions and private monitoring effectively reduce the detrimental effects of concentrated control and that official disciplinary power plays a weak governance role, whereas government intervention exacerbates the adverse effects. Further evidence shows that the relations between control concentration and bank operating characteristics are curvilinear and vary according to the types of controlling owners. Overall, our findings support the contention that country-level institutions play important roles in constraining insider expropriation, and that private monitoring mechanisms are more effective than are public rules and supervision in governing banks.     

Does the type of ownership control matter? Evidence from China’s listed companies

By tracing the identity of large shareholders, we group China’s listed companies into those controlled by state asset management bureaus (SAMBs), state owned enterprises (SOEs) affiliated to the central government (SOECGs), SOEs affiliated to the local government (SOELGs), and Private investors. We argue that these distinct types of owners have different objectives and motivations and this will affect how they exercise their control rights over the firms they invest in. In particular, we contend that private ownership of listed firms in China is not necessarily superior to certain types of state ownership. To test our arguments we investigate the relative efficiency of state versus private ownership of listed firms and the efficiency of various forms of state ownership. The empirical results indicate that the operating efficiency of Chinese listed companies varies across the type of controlling shareholder. SOECG controlled firms perform best and SAMB and Private controlled firms perform worst. SOELG controlled firms are in the middle. The results are consistent with our predictions.     

利率市场化、商业银行信贷与企业融资行为

利率市场化是提升金融资源配置效率的重要手段。本文通过分析利率市场化对商业银行信贷和企业融资行为的影响机制和理论模型,比较利率管制、利差管制和利率市场化条件下资本所有者、资本中介者和资本需求者的行为模式,指出利率市场化对资本所有者的收益、资本中介者的经营效率以及企业的融资结构、企业融资约束的放松都产生了积极正向的效应。"十二五"期间,我国需要有计划、有步骤、坚定不移地推进利率市场化改革,并以此为契机,提升商业银行经营效率,优化企业融资结构,缓解企业尤其是中小企业的融资困境。     

商事信托法律构造研究

商事信托作为商事组织的一种形式,运用传统信托运作方式中所有权形式分割,责任与利益分离,受托人责任与风险承担来实现商事组织的灵活融资经营和受益人的信托收益。商事信托得益于信托的资产分割功能,使商事组织享有独立于信托所有人及其管理人的资产,得以自己名义经营管理、与第三人进行交易,产生独立的法律关系,承担独立法律责任,理应具有商事信托之独立法律主体地位,此乃我国商事信托发展和商事组织法之规范方向。     

Chairman’s government background,excess employment and government subsidies: Evidence from Chinese local state-owned enterprises

Local state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China continue to face government interference in their operations. They are influenced both by the government’s “grabbing hand” and by its “helping hand.” Our study examines how SOE chairmen with connections to government influence their firm’s employment policies and the economic consequences of overstaffing. Using a sample of China’s listed local state-owned enterprises, we find that the scale of overstaffing in these SOEs is negatively related to the firms’ political connections to government. However, this relationship turns positive when the firm’s chairman has a government background. Appointing chairmen who have government backgrounds is a mechanism through which the government can intervene in local SOEs and influence firms’ staffing decisions. We also find that in compensation for the expenses of overstaffing, local SOEs receive more government subsidies and bank loans. However, the chairmen themselves do not get increased pay or promotion opportunities for supporting overstaffing. Further analysis indicates that whereas the “grabbing hand” of government does harm to a firm’s economic performance, the “helping hand” provides only weak positive effects, and such government intervention actually reduces the efficiency of social resource allocation.     

Controllers’ use of informational tactics

Controllers typically have a ‘dual accountability’ towards the finance function and operational management, respectively. This dual accountability at times confronts them with conflicting expectations. In this paper, we suggest that ‘informational tactics’ constitute an important resource which controllers rely on so as to handle these expectations and to successfully present themselves vis-à-vis their different internal stakeholders. Drawing upon interview data, we demonstrate that informational tactics relate to different dimensions of information control (i.e. ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘what’ information is to be exchanged) and that they depend on the respective room for manoeuvre a controller has in a given situation. Overall, our analysis adds a more nuanced picture to the literature on controllers’ handling of information and demonstrates the fundamental role of informational tactics for their everyday work.     

以外储战略性注资推动中国商业银行国际化研究

跨国银行集团是发达国家核心竞争力之一,在历次危机中(尤其是在此次全球金融风暴的冲击下),西方发达国家都大幅注资本国大型金融机构,力图稳定其在国际金融领域的优势地位。中国商业银行经过多年来发展和海外经营,实力明显上升,并多次运用资本市场补充资本金,具备了提升国际化经营水平的基础,目前也迎来了国际化的良机,但仍然面临着资本约束的瓶颈。2003年以来,国家以外汇储备对中国大型商业银行进行的战略性注资,获得的回报远大于投入,并健全了我国的金融体系。从提高我国外汇储备战略性投资作用的角度,建议国家以强国方略再度以外储对大型商业银行进行战略性注资,再辅之以监管部门进一步改革监管和资本账户管制,以及商业银行在国际经营中充分发挥自身的主体作用,多管齐下来共同推动中国商业银行的国际化。     

Paradox,accounting values,and intelligible regulation

Expected utility theory, which includes estimating the probabilities of uncertain future outcomes, is the classical model for rational economic decision making, and, by implication, rational valuation and financial reporting regulation. In Wittgensteinian terms it is a ‘hinge’ of the language game in which these practices are embedded. When rendered explicit, however, this ‘hinge’ appears to be formally incoherent. The exploration of this problem has consequences for all of our arguments over the epistemological underpinnings of accounting reports – whether realist, representational, constructivist, or otherwise.Arguably, there are two complementary primitive models that underlie real-world probability estimation. Taken together, they generate a version of Goodman's inductive paradox (other versions of which also arise for non-inductive empirical generalisation). This, in its turn, is related to Kripke's paradox, which arises when we try to give behavioural accounts of rule following, and so of participation in a language game.This paper explicates this type of paradox in the context of commercial decision making, and considers its consequences. The existence of paradoxes should render the system that generates them completely incoherent, but (paradoxically …) they seem to be generated by any attempt to give complete accounts of some of the normative fundamentals which underlie linguistic practice – such as truth-telling, validity and rule-following.Whether or not these paradoxes represent a serious threat to the coherence of the empirical or behavioural sciences, it might be objected that commercial decision making methods and financial regulation rarely aspire to the kind of rigour that these disciplines attempt to achieve. Part of the argument of this paper will be that the intelligibility of commercial language suggests an approach to these paradoxes which is not obvious from more traditional philosophical perspectives.The intentionality of belief renders certain belief claims by participants in a shared language game incorrigible (within the game), in the sense that they can be doubted only by doubting the seriousness or quality of participation. If certain statements about rule following and word meaning have this same quality, then there is a way of avoiding the consequences of Goodman's and Kripke's paradoxes, and of sterilising the probability estimation paradox for any playable commercial language game.     

Stock‐Based Compensation in a Concentrated Ownership Setting: An Empirical Investigation

Stock‐based compensation has been viewed as an important mechanism for tying managers’ wealth to firm performance, and thus alleviating the agency conflict between the shareholders and the managers when ownership is diffused. However, in a concentrated ownership structure, controlling owners are usually the management of the firm; they can engage in self‐dealing activities to the detriment of minority shareholders’ interests. Yet, outside investors may anticipate the problem and discount the share price for the entrenchment behaviors they observe. In this study, we investigate how controlling owners trade off the benefits and the costs of using stock‐based compensation. Based on a sample of Taiwanese firms, our evidence shows that stock‐based compensation is negatively related to the agency problem embedded in a concentrated ownership structure. This relationship is evident among firms with more frequent equity offerings. Overall, our empirical evidence suggests that controlling owners consider the negative price effects of stock‐based compensation and trade off these costs with the benefits of expropriating minority shareholders’ interests, particularly when firms seek more external equity capital. Our results hold after controlling for selection bias and share collateral by controlling owners.     

Inter‐Organizational Cooperation Challenging Hierarchical Accountability: The Dominated Actors in a Municipal Joint Venture

New public management offers a number of solutions to the kinds of problems that public sector organizations experience. In taking an accountability perspective, this paper elaborates on how two of these – strict responsibility for performance, and inter‐organizational cooperation – may conflict. The setting for this study is a joint venture with a dominant municipality and six dominated municipalities as owners. The article examines how horizontal accountability processes may influence the dominated owners’ hierarchical accountability. The ability to account hierarchically for the quality of service within budgetary parameters is problematized, when dominated owners may dismantle their ability to demand horizontal accountability.     

Ultimate ownership and control in Russia

I investigate ultimate control and ownership patterns in Russian publicly traded companies. I show that these companies are controlled either by the state or by anonymous private owners. Federal and regional governments’ control is exercised through extensive use of pyramids. Private owners widely exploit legal loopholes that allow them to mask their holdings and identities through nominee and foreign offshore arrangements. The comparison of formal and informal ownership disclosure reveals that the typical anonymous owners are insiders and that in virtually all cases the market participants “know” who the real owners are. Collectively, the evidence suggests that the legal weaknesses in disclosure requirements are important determinants of country-specific ownership and control structures.     

Effects of emotional state on behavioral responsiveness to personal risk feedback

The influence of incidental emotion on responsiveness to risk feedback was investigated. One hundred and eighty‐seven male and female undergraduate students experienced a film emotion induction procedure to elicit happiness, sadness, or neutral affect. They then received false feedback indicating that their risk of getting a fictional type of influenza was high or low, and were given the chance to obtain more information about this type of flu and how to prevent it. Among low‐risk participants, experiencing any emotion (happy or sad) resulted in obtaining more information than those in the neutral condition. Conversely, high‐risk participants who experienced any emotion took less information than those in the neutral group. High‐risk feedback produced less positive affect, more negative affect and worry, and higher risk perceptions than low‐risk feedback. The findings have implications for how threatening risk feedback will affect information seeking behavior in the context of an emotional state.     

Do common owners influence corporate social responsibility? Firm-level evidence from China

Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2018, this article explores the influence of common owners on corporate social responsibility (CSR). The results show that common owners significantly promote CSR investment, indicating that increased CSR represents a bright side to common owners, in contrast to their anticompetitive effect. Further analysis shows that the nature of state ownership significantly weakens the positive relationship between common owners and CSR investment. Prospector firms strengthen the positive influence of common owners on CSR investment, whereas defender firms weaken the effect. Moreover, common owners benefit from increasing CSR investment, and co-owned firms benefit by easing their financial constraints when they invest or increase their investment in social responsibility. The findings enhance the outstanding of how common owners affect corporate behavior and enrich the literature on common ownership and CSR investment.     

市场约束、政府干预与城市商业银行风险承担

本文利用2001～2009年中国主要城市商业银行的财务数据,从价格机制和数量机制的角度分析市场约束的有效性,发现市场机制没有有效地约束银行风险,相反政府干预机制显著地增加了银行风险,在一定程度上政府干预机制替代了市场约束机制的作用.在制度环境差、政府干预强的地区,市场约束机制完全失效,而在制度环境好、政府干预相对较弱的...