A comparison of the performance of open-and closed-end investment companies

This paper investigates the impact of corporate structure on the return performance and related operational characteristics of open- and closed-end investment companies. A statistical model is used to test for differences in several characteristics of these two different types of funds. The results show that there are differences in the returns of open-and closed-end funds, as well as differences in turnover and expenses of funds with different corporate structures. Moreover, the results are surprising in that they are significantly affected by the type of security held in the funds.     

政府投资工程总承包项目设计优化认定与收益归属研究

工程总承包模式以设计与施工的高度融合,日益在建筑业受到青睐。但由于政府投资项目中存在有关结余资金上缴国库等规定,容易导致政府投资工程总承包项目下设计优化产生的成果是进行分成或作为结余资金上缴界定不清。鉴于此,本文通过政策文件,并结合政府投资项目特点,分析政府投资工程总承包项目设计优化的情形认定以及在不同结算依据和合同计价方式下设计优化收益归属的界定,为有效激励总承包单位积极进行设计优化奠定基础。     

Looking for sustainable development: Socially responsible mutual funds and the low-carbon economy

Sustainable investment responds to demands for carbon and climate-neutral societies. To address the urgency around climate change and provide investors with more qualified information, Morningstar has developed the Low Carbon Designation (LCD) to indicate that the companies held in a portfolio are in general alignment with the transition to a low-carbon economy. The designation is given to portfolios that have low carbon risk and fossil fuel exposure scores. The present study builds on the LCD by examining the relationship between these scores and financial performance. With this aim, we analyze 3920 socially responsible mutual funds from across the world. Results show differences in financial performance according to scores and investment areas. We find evidence that funds considered to have higher levels of sustainability achieved better performance than funds with higher exposure to companies involved in carbon and fossil fuel industries. We provide insights on the informativeness of these new scores with a focus on climate change and their relevance in helping investors to identify climate-aware funds. This study highlights the importance of introducing strategies to develop green finance; the analysis confirms that sustainability improves performance. Finally, the LCD indicator is shown to be relevant for making fairer comparisons among socially responsible funds and, ultimately, for developing low-carbon economies.     

Institutional investors,corporate governance and the performance of the corporate sector

Proportions of equity held by institutional investors—pension funds, insurance companies and mutual funds—are rising across all OECD countries. Meanwhile institutions are becoming more influential in corporate governance, even in bank-dominated countries, inter alia due to international investment, pension reform and EMU. We provide two forms of evidence on the effects of institutional corporate governance on corporate performance. First we offer a literature survey on micro evidence, the outcome of which is mixed, but on balance suggesting a positive effect on equity returns. We contend that these micro studies face a difficulty that they cannot capture effects of governance initiatives whose effects go wider than “target firms”. Accordingly, we present results for the reduced form empirical relationship between institutional share holding and corporate sector performance at an economy-wide level. These are consistent with significant effects which differ between “Anglo-Saxon” and “relationship banking” countries. For example, institutions appear to accompany lower investment and higher dividends in the former.     

Corporate governance and firm performance relationship: Implications for risk‐adjusted return behavior

We examine the impact of corporate governance on firm performance and stock return behavior using panel data for Indian listed firms for 2006 to 2015. Our results suggest that corporate governance improves firm performance. However, corporate governance information fails to provide excess risk‐adjusted returns to investors, as governance information is well assimilated in prevailing stock prices. In addition to extending the scant literature focused on emerging markets, our findings will prove useful to investors, fund managers, and rating agencies in making investment decisions and regulators in assessing the impact of governance norms.     

社会责任投资与价值投资相悖吗?——基于国际经验的比较

社会责任投资促进了公司绩效评价模式的变革。从美国和亚太地区的经验来看,社会责任投资的整体表现更好;社会责任形象较好公司股票价格表现更佳;强有效的资本市场一方面将推动社会责任形象好的公司股票获得更高估值,另一方面也将促使上市公司在社会责任领域投入更多资源。长远来看,社会责任投资与价值投资并不相悖。社会责任投资在中国的发展之路还属于起步阶段,中国上市公司对企业社会责任持有非常积极的观点,但中国资本市场并没有给企业社会责任积极评价。     

R&D investment and future firm performance: The role of managerial overconfidence and government ownership

We investigate the relationship among managerial overconfidence (MO), government ownership, and research and development (R&D) investment using data from Vietnamese public companies for the period 2007–2016. We also investigate how R&D investment, given MO and government ownership, affect future firm performance. Our results indicate that MO and government ownership are positively related to R&D investment. Conceptually, this study investigates novel factors affecting of R&D investment and their role in improving firm performance. Overall, this study emphasizes the importance of R&D investment in the corporate world, improving firm performance and, ultimately, economic prosperity.     

证券投资基金业绩度量模型探析

证券投资基金是中国资本市场上一支重要的力量,对其业绩进行客观评价是一项极其复杂的系统工程。本文试图运用风险调整收益的思想,分别选取风险价值VAR与尾条件期望CVAR的加权平均、以及ARCH模型计算出来的条件异方差作为风险测度指标,建立基金业绩评价模型。     

The role of mutual funds in the sustainable energy sector

The integration of renewable energy criteria in mutual fund investment decisions could channel private resources into the funding of environmentally related projects implemented by firms contributing to sustainable development. This paper examines the performance of European renewable energy funds that invest globally by comparing their risk‐adjusted returns with those achieved by black energy and conventional mutual funds. It uses Carhart's model on a sample of 81 renewable energy funds, 125 black energy funds, and 4,337 conventional mutual funds. The results indicate that 32.1% of renewable mutual funds—most of which adopt energy producers, renewable energy technology, and energy efficiency‐focused criteria—perform significantly better than the S&P Clean Energy market benchmark, this percentage being affected by the different states of the economy. However, none of them are able to beat the fossil fuel energy (S&P Global 1200 Energy Index) or conventional market benchmarks (S&P Global 1200 Index). Furthermore, 37.04% of renewable energy funds significantly underperform the S&P Global 1200 benchmark. Therefore, the investment in renewable energy funds has a financial cost for investors in relation to conventional fund investors.     

非效率投资、公司业绩及其影响因素研究

本文利用我国上市公司的数据,对非效率投资与公司业绩的关系及其影响因素进行了研究。结果显示,投资不足和过度投资均对公司业绩造成了负面影响,但相对而言,投资不足对公司业绩的负面影响更严重。从对非效率投资影响因素检验来看,自由现金流量多的公司,成长机会低的公司,银行负债高的公司,以及国有控股公司更可能出现过度投资。相反,总经理为女性的公司更容易出现投资不足。     

北京市中等职业教育财政专项投入的现状与需求

职业教育的大力发展离不开充足经费的保障。近年来,北京市高度重视中等职业教育的发展,政府财政在增加职业学校日常办学经费的基础上,逐年加大财政专项经费的支持力度。随着中等职业教育事业发展的推进,专项经费投入的方向和模式需要加以研究并适时调整。     

Optimal Hedging Strategies and Interactions between Firms

This paper studies corporate risk management in a context of financial constraints and imperfect competition in the product market. The paper shows that interactions between firms affect their hedging strategies. As a general rule, firms’ hedging demands decrease with the correlation between their internal funds and investment opportunities. Moreover, when a firm’s hedging demand is high in the case where investments are strategic substitutes, its hedging demand is low in the case where investments are strategic complements and vice versa.     

我国市场短期负债筹资的影响因素研究

通过对相关文献以及市场最新信息的收集,分析了企业短期负债筹资的影响因素,从而为企业筹措短期资金提供借鉴,以期增强企业在运营时对短期资金财务风险与规划的管理。     

证券投资基金委托代理问题的国内外研究现状综述

随着我国资本市场的不断完善,证券投资基金在我国的金融领域也蓬勃发展起来。由于信息不对称的存在,所以证券投资基金存在着典型的委托代理关系问题。本文主要是对证券投资基金中的委托代理问题的研究状况进行归纳总结,为今后进一步研究证券投资基金的委托代理问题奠定基础。     

Are gilts ethical investments?

In the light of the rolling bandwagon of socially responsible investment (SRI), this paper attacks gilt-edged securities as highly unethical investments. With gilts not conforming to the rules laid down by the government for the private sector, the author invites the pension funds to shake off this anachronism in favour of expansion of the corporate bond market     

政府补助与公司投资行为——基于中国上市公司的数据

基于公司投资视角,以2007—2012年我国资本市场上A股上市公司为样本,研究政府补助对公司投资行为的影响,结果显示：政府补助越多,公司投资支出水平越高;政府补助对非国有公司的投资激励作用比国有公司更有效;公司产权性质差异会影响政府补助的投资激励效应;市场化程度越低、经济增长越缓慢的地区,政府补助对公司投资支出的影响越敏感;上市公司的非效率投资问题比较突出,政府补助加剧了上市公司的过度投资行为。因此,政府应根据微观企业主体的差异性来制定和实施相应的补助政策,以实现预期效果。     

Cross-hedging minimum return guarantees: Basis and liquidity risks

We reveal pitfalls in the hedging of insurance contracts with a minimum return guarantee on the underlying investment, e.g. an external mutual fund. We analyze basis risk entailed by hedging the guarantee with a dynamic portfolio of proxy assets for the funds. We also take account of liquidity risk which arises since the insurer may need to advance funds for performing the hedge. Based on a least-squares Monte Carlo simulation, we study the economic implications of basis and liquidity risks. We demonstrate that both risks may be surprisingly high and show how the design of the contract and the hedging strategy may help to alleviate them.     

国有产业投资基金的投资后续管理要点分析

投资后续管理是产业投资的重要环节,主要包括监控管理和增值服务两方面内容。国有产业投资基金大部分为政府主导,投资后续管理存在着代理风险、增值服务欠缺、政府干预较多、管理人才缺失、管理水平较低等问题。建议设置特殊股权安排等激励和约束机制,降低代理风险;引入和充分调动社会资源为企业提供增值服务;加速推广有限合伙制,设立专门委员会等降低政府干预;与外资投资基金合作,加强内部学习,提高投资后续管理水平。     

Biting the hand that fed it: Did the stock market boom of the late 1990s impede investment in manufacturing?

The stock market increase in the 1990s may have diverted funds from fixed investments in manufacturing to other investiments, such as share repurchases, and to firms with faster stock price gains. We find that overall investment remained lower than it could have been without the stock price appreciation. We also find that manufacturing investment was impeded by the developments in the stock market. Based on our results, the policy focus should be on offering incentives for corporate decision makers to prioritize productive investments over other uses of funds instead of means to entice lenders to increase lending to manufacturing firms.     

Who Builds Cities in China? How Urban Investment and Development Companies Have Transformed Shanghai

While there is general acceptance that urban governance in China is entrepreneurial in nature, little has been written about the precise ways in which Chinese cities implement entrepreneurial policies. In this article we argue that the primary agents of urban entrepreneurialism in China are urban investment and development companies (UIDCs), known in Chinese as chengtou for short. We start by defining UIDCs as a category of state-owned enterprise, but one that is wholly owned by local (often city) governments. We note that in the literature UIDCs are generally recognized for their involvement in raising funds for projects and piling up hidden debts, but their multiple roles in urban development tend to be neglected. We introduce here four UIDCs that have been largely responsible for the transformation of Shanghai into a modern city spearheading Chinese state entrepreneurialism, and in doing so we delineate the full range of the activities of these urban business empires. We argue in particular that they represent a corporate involvement by the state in urban development—the state presenting itself in the guise of a market player, a corporate entity able to raise funds and act as if it were a private company. UIDCs are the driving force behind China's urban entrepreneurialism and are without a clear parallel elsewhere.