“土地财政”谁之过

从个人与国家财富划分层面而言:改革开放30年社会物质财富急速增加,但如此庞大的物质财富却并没有进行合理的分配!一个不争的事实是当前的中国人看不起病、买不起房、上不起学、死不起人。伴随着社会财富的增加,民众反而整日生活在焦灼之中,幸福感丝毫没有提升!     

The economics of hedge funds

Hedge fund managers trade off the benefits of leveraging on the alpha-generating strategy against the costs of inefficient fund liquidation. In contrast to the standard risk-seeking intuition, even with a constant-return-to-scale alpha-generating strategy, a risk-neutral manager becomes endogenously risk-averse and decreases leverage following poor performance to increase the fund's survival likelihood. Our calibration suggests that management fees are the majority of the total compensation. Money flows, managerial restart options, and management ownership increase the importance of high-water-mark-based incentive fees but management fees remain the majority. Investors' valuation of fees are highly sensitive to their assessments of the manager's skill.     

The economics of politically-connected firms

Political connections between firms and autocratic regimes are not secret and often even publicly displayed in many developing economies. We argue that tying a firm’s available rent to a regime’s survival acts as a credible commitment forcing entrepreneurs to support the government and to exert effort in its stabilization. In return, politically-connected firms get access to profitable markets and are exempted from the regime’s extortion. We show that such a gift exchange between government and politically-connected firms can only exist if certain institutional conditions are met. In particular, the stability of the regime has to be sufficiently low and the regime needs the power to exploit independent firms. We also show that building up a network of politically-connected firms acts as a substitute for investments in autonomous stability (such as spending on military and police force). The indirect strategy of stabilizing a regime via politically-connected firms gradually becomes inferior when a regime’s exploitative power rises.     

The law and economics of self-dealing

We present a new measure of legal protection of minority shareholders against expropriation by corporate insiders: the anti-self-dealing index. Assembled with the help of Lex Mundi law firms, the index is calculated for 72 countries based on legal rules prevailing in 2003, and focuses on private enforcement mechanisms, such as disclosure, approval, and litigation, that govern a specific self-dealing transaction. This theoretically grounded index predicts a variety of stock market outcomes, and generally works better than the previously introduced index of anti-director rights.     

The economics of external reporting: Three frameworks for the classroom

In this paper three frameworks are presented that can be used by accounting instructors to explain some of the economic issues surrounding the external reporting process. The first framework explains accounting numbers in terms of the relationships among capital providers, managers, and auditors. The second framework explains external reporting in terms of its role in determining capital market allocations. The third framework focuses on the policymaking process and the notion of “economic consequences.” In each case the framework is first described and then some suggestions are provided on how it might be used in the classroom. The frameworks have been developed for use in introductory, intermediate, and advanced accounting courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level.     

中国团购网站“乱象丛生”的五大现状

时至今日,据不完全统计,截止到2011年3月,中国团购网站仍多达3600家,月增长速度接近30%。一些新的团购网站仍然如雨后春笋般出现,团购市场是＂欣欣向荣＂还是＂乱象丛生＂？现状如何？     

The politics and economics of offshore outsourcing

This paper reviews the political uproar over offshore outsourcing connected with the release of the Economic Report of the President (ERP) in February 2004, examines the differing ways in which economists and non-economists talk about offshore outsourcing, and assesses the empirical evidence on the importance of offshore outsourcing in accounting for the weak labor market from 2001 to 2004. Even with important gaps in the data, the empirical literature is able to conclude that offshore outsourcing is unlikely to have accounted for a meaningful part of the job losses in the recent downturn or contributed much to the slow labor market rebound. The empirical evidence to date, while still tentative, actually suggests that increased employment in the overseas affiliates of US multinationals is associated with more employment in the US parent rather than less.     

The evolution and future of the BRICS: Unbundling politics from economics

Under the current global forces, economics muddled with politics is exerting undue pressures on the BRICS countries and is challenging the sustainability of their accord. Unanticipated problems are increasingly inhibiting economic and social prosperity. This paper analyzes the current difficulties that the BRICS are facing, scrutinizes their unique individual economic and political environments, and ventures to anticipate their prospects. Our consensus is that the future prosperity of these countries depends not only on their individual political and economic environments, but also on the major global powers. Furthermore, the current inevitable interconnectivity of politics and economics provides foresight into their future role on the world stage.     

最终控制人利益侵占的条件分析——对LLSV模型的扩展

本文以少数所有权控制结构(controlling minority structure)形成的最终控制人所有权与控制权分离为研究对象,通过对LLSV模型的扩展,分析最终控制人在什么条件下会实施侵占少数股东利益的经济行为。模型分析结果显示,投资者法律保护程度、相对所有权和相对投资收益率是最终控制人实施利益侵占与否以及利益侵占程度的重要影响因素。本文模型的分析结论与已有公司治理经验研究的发现一致。     

The economics of options-implied inflation probability density functions

Recently a market in options based on consumer price index inflation (inflation caps and floors) has emerged in the US. This paper uses quotes on these derivatives to construct probability densities for inflation. We study how these probability density functions respond to news announcements and find that the implied odds of deflation are sensitive to certain macroeconomic news releases. We also estimate empirical pricing kernels using these option prices along with time series models fitted to inflation. The options-implied densities assign considerably more mass to extreme inflation outcomes (either deflation or high inflation) than do their time series counterparts. This yields a U-shaped empirical pricing kernel, with investors having high marginal utility in states of the world characterized by either deflation or high inflation.     

The economics of club bidding and value creation

Many acquisitions are conducted by clubs, i.e., coalitions of acquirers that submit a single bid. We present a novel analysis of club bidding where the club creates value by aggregating, at least partially, bidders' values. We show that club formation can lead to higher acquisition prices when the number of bidders is exogenously fixed and large. However, when entry costs require bidders to optimize their participation decisions, club formation acts as an endogenous limit on competition and reduces the target's premium. In contrast, social efficiency with club bidding is always higher. Our findings can reconcile the contradictory evidence on club bidding.     

The economics of land transfer and title insurance

In the presence of uncertainty over the title of land (due to fraud or error), a legal system can protect either the current (innocent) owner, or a previous owner who claims title. The predominant system in the United States generally awards title to the latter in the event of legitimate claim. Thus, current owners frequently purchase title insurance to provide indemnification in the event of a loss. In contrast, the Torrens system awards title to the current owner, but provides for indemnification of any legitimate claimants. We evaluate these two systems and argue that if transaction costs are low, both promote efficient assignment of title (according to the Coase Theorem), but if transaction costs are high, the Torrens system is more likely to award title to the party that values it the most (namely, the current possessor).     

Hedging derivatives in the banking industry: Evidence of investor confusion

Hedging derivatives are complex instruments that require particular scrutiny by bank regulators to ensure that a bank’s risk profile is consistent with sound banking practices. The Basel II agreement envisions a system of banking oversight that includes market discipline as a key element of the regulatory framework. A necessary condition in achieving market discipline is that market participants must be able to decipher the underlying conditions from reported results. We examine the relationship between investor confusion and the income effects arising from fair value recognition of hedging derivatives in the banking industry. We use abnormal trading volume as a proxy for investor confusion, and we find a positive and significant relationship between fair value accounting incomes and two alternative measures of abnormal trading volume. The findings suggest that accounting requirements alone may be insufficient to communicate the complexities of hedging derivatives to investors in a way that achieves the market discipline prescribed by Basel II. Bank regulators may need to augment extant efforts for transparency to ensure that risks are adequately communicated to the market.     

The surprising economics of a "people business"

When people are your most important asset, some standard performance measures and management practices become misleading or irrelevant. This is a danger for any business whose people costs are greater than its capital costs-that is, businesses in most industries. But it is particularly true for what the authors call "people businesses": operations with high employee costs, low capital investment, and limited spending on activities, such as R&D, that are aimed at generating future revenue. If you run a people business-or a company that includes one or more of them how do you measure its true performance? Avoid the trap of relying on capital-oriented metrics, such as return on assets and return on equity. They won't help much, as they'll tend to mask weak performance or indicate volatility where it doesn't exist. Replace them with financially rigorous people-oriented metrics-for example, a reformulation of a conventional calculation of economic profit, such as EVA, so that you gauge people, rather than capital, productivity. Once you have assessed the business's true performance, you need to enhance it operationally (be aware that relatively small changes in productivity can have a major impact on shareholder returns); reward it appropriately (push performance-related variable compensation schemes down into the organization); and price it advantageously (because economies of scale and experience tend to be less significant in people businesses, price products or services in ways that capture a share of the additional value created for customers).     

The economics of Bitcoin and similar private digital currencies

Recent innovations have made it feasible to transfer private digital currency without the intervention of an organization such as a bank. Any currency must prevent users from spending their balances more than once, which is easier said than done with purely digital currencies. Current digital currencies such as Bitcoin use peer-to-peer networks and open source software to stop double spending and create finality of transactions. This paper explains how the use of these technologies and limitation of the quantity produced can create an equilibrium in which a digital currency has a positive value. This paper also summarizes the rise of 24/7 trading on computerized markets in Bitcoin in which there are no brokers or other agents. The average monthly volatility of returns on Bitcoin is higher than for gold or a set of foreign currencies in dollars, but the lowest monthly volatilities for Bitcoin are less than the highest monthly volatilities for gold and the foreign currencies.