中国公共预算约束软化的体制成因：理论分析与实证检验

科学和民主的预算管理制度建立前,税制和分税制对政府预算约束有重要作用。中国税制和分税制缺乏内生约束机制,地方政府有空间和激励突破预算框架参与过度财政竞争,使公共预算约束软化。根据公共预算软约束的估计和面板 probit模型,1994年的税制和分税制改革整体硬化了全国预算收入约束,但导致东部的预算收入约束软化,且未改善预算支出约束。现行税制和分税制下,不规范的税收优惠政策、投资扩张冲动和专项转移支出依赖是导致公共预算约束软化的重要机制。     

Interregional Income Redistribution and Convergence in a Model with Perfect Capital Mobility and Unionized Labor Markets

The model presents a general equilibrium dynamic model of an economy consisting of many regions. Capital is perfectly mobile and labor is immobile across regions. Wages are determined by local unions. There is training on the job and strategic complementarity between investment in physical capital by firms and investment in becoming “trainable’’ by workers. Structurally similar regional economies preserve forever their differences in per capita output and employment rate, if the workers’ non-labor income is equalized across regions by interregional income redistribution operated via central budget. Regional decentralization of income redistribution allows convergence in per capita output and employment rate.     

Foreign direct investment and forward hedging

This paper examines the behavior of a risk-averse multinational firm (MNF) making investment in a foreign country under exchange rate uncertainty. To hedge the exchange rate risk, the MNF has access to an unbiased currency forward market. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is irreversible and sequential in that the MNF can acquire additional capital after the exchange rate uncertainty is completely resolved. The MNF as such possesses a real (call) option that is rationally exercised whenever the foreign currency has been substantially appreciated relative to the domestic currency. We show that the MNF's optimal initial level of sequential FDI is always lower than that of lumpy FDI, while the expected optimal aggregate level of sequential FDI can be higher or lower than that of lumpy FDI. We further show that the presence of the currency forward market improves the MNF's incentives to make FDI, both ex-ante and ex-post.     

Liquidity-adjusted Intraday Value at Risk modeling and risk management: An application to data from Deutsche Börse

This paper develops a high-frequency risk measure: the Liquidity-adjusted Intraday Value at Risk (LIVaR). Our objective is to explicitly consider the endogenous liquidity dimension associated with order size. By reconstructing the open Limit Order Book of Deutsche Börse, changes in the tick-by-tick (ex-ante) frictionless return and actual return are modeled jointly. The risk related to the ex-ante liquidity premium is then quantified. Our model can be used to identify the impact of ex-ante liquidity risk on total risk, and to provide an estimation of the VaR for the actual return at a point in time. In our sample, liquidity risk can account for up to 32% of total risk depending on order size.     

Normative portfolio theory

In this paper, we correct the adverse impact of estimation risk on both portfolio weights and performance with two new equity allocation methods we implement with estimation-free and estimated ex-ante returns. Portfolios with estimation-free ex-ante returns and systematic-to-unsystematic risk weights have statistically higher Sharpe ratios than both similar portfolios with estimated ex-ante returns and 1/N′th portfolios. Optimal portfolio methods with well-behaved weights guide investors in a way not hitherto possible (normative portfolio theory).     

Repricing of executive stock options

The main purpose of this paper is to extend the model of Acharya et al. (J Financ Econ 57:65–101, 2000) to examine the ex-ante optimality of repricing of executive stock options while considering dilution effects and the tax effects of new accounting rules associated with repricing. Although there has been a body of empirical literature on repricing, the optimality of repricing after considering the economic impact of changing accounting rules has not been addressed in an ex-ante contracting setting. We find that traditional repricing loses its ex-ante dominance over the do-nothing strategy after we incorporate the tax effects of new accounting rules. The theoretical predictions of our paper shed light on this controversial practice and lay a foundation for evaluating repricing alternatives.     

Toward a conceptual framework of the harmonization of bank financial reporting standards in transition economies: The case of Mexico

In recent years banks in emerging and transition economies throughout the world have been compelled to change lending and financial reporting practices in response to the economic transition of their countries. Correspondingly, on the basis of the theory of soft budget constraints (SBC), economists have studied the relationship between economic development, banks' lending practices, and banks' penchant to overstate loans. However, very little research has been performed by accounting researchers regarding the nature of bank loan overstatement during times of financial crisis in emerging markets. Accordingly, this paper uses the theory of soft budget constraints to develop a four stage conceptual framework of the harmonization of bank financial reporting standards during times of economic transition. Emphasis is placed on using the theory of soft budget constraints to characterize the harmonization of standards and practices with respect to bank loan overstatement. The framework is applied to the harmonization of Mexican bank financial reporting during the country's economic transition of the late 1990s. The Mexican harmonization process during this period generally followed the framework.     

International variations in expected equity premia: Role of financial architecture and governance

Estimates of ex-ante equity premia are important in planning investments in pension funds, life insurance pools, and for other long-term financial obligations or goals. However, while global cross-border investment positions and flows have been rising, there is little research on non-US ex-ante equity premia or on their determinants in a global setting. This paper uses data on a recent 8-year period from 33 countries and models simultaneously our estimate of the ex-ante equity premium as a dependent variable and our measure of financial architecture as an instrumental variable. We document that ex-ante equity premia are larger in countries that have a more bank-oriented financial architecture, are wealthier, and have better governance. These results are robust to alternative model specifications and estimation techniques. Given the importance of equity premia and financial architecture, these results should be of much interest to scholars, managers, regulators, and policy makers.     

Sub-nationals' risk premia in fiscal federations: Fiscal performance and institutional design

The recent debt crisis in Europe highlighted the importance of institutional design and, in particular, bail-out clauses in determining States' risk premia in fiscal or quasi-fiscal federations. This paper examines the determinants of sub-national governments' risk premia in fiscal federations using secondary market data for the USA, Canada, Australia and Germany. It finds that, as for central governments, fiscal fundamentals matter in the pricing of risk, and sub-national governments with higher public debt and larger deficits pay higher premia. However, this relationship is not uniform across federations and it differs with institutional arrangements. In particular, market pricing mechanisms are less effective in presence of explicit or implicit guarantees from the central government. We show that when sub-national governments depend on high transfers from the central government (i.e., when there is some form of implicit guarantee from the center), markets are less responsive to sub-national governments' fiscal fundamentals. Using primary market data, the paper also shows that high transfer dependency lowers the probability of sub-national governments to borrow on capital markets.     

反垄断监管与事前监管——互联网平台监管模式的二元建构

反垄断监管是一种典型的事后监管,表现为禁止性规范为主的立法模式、合理原则为主的分析模式和消极性义务为主的救济措施,应用于平台监管中存在滞后性、威慑效果不佳等不足,反垄断法内部变革举措的实际效果也较为有限。相较反垄断监管的事后属性,事前监管通过创设积极性法律义务,实现对垄断结构引致不可逆损害的风险预防。为避免“假阳性”错误,引入事前监管须证明细分市场存在高而持续性的进入壁垒、欠缺有效竞争的动态趋势、事前监管收益大于成本三个累积性标准。平台事前监管的总体目标是推动市场从封闭到开放的回归,监管主体上成立专门事前监管机构并且采取合作制监管架构,监管对象的选取遵循“相关市场分析+显著市场力量确定”的基本框架,监管措施包括服务互操作、开放特定数据、平等对待不同主体提供的服务等。与反垄断监管的衔接包括建立分工监管的机制和可反驳的违法推定规则。     

The impacts of “shock therapy” on large and small clients: Experiences from two large bank failures in Japan

A “shock therapy” might have different impacts between large and small firms. In this paper, we focus on the clients of two large failed Japanese banks; LTCB and NCB. We first show that subsequent events after the bank failures allowed new LTCB to adopt a “shock therapy” but new NCB to keep “soft budget constraints”. We then show that the different therapies made performances of these two banks' customers very different. Under the shock therapy, large firms showed significant recovery of their profits but small firms did not. In contrast, under the soft budget constraints, large firms did not show recovery and small firms terminated the relationship by the new bank experienced significant decline in their profits.     

Bailouts in a Federation

The recent move towards decentralization in countries such as Spain, Hungary, and South Africa and the difficulties that central governments have had in dealing with fiscal irresponsibility on the part of regional governments in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and India has made the study of transfer systems one of the most important areas of research in federalism today. A model of a federation is developed in which regional governments act as Nash competitors with each other but are first-movers in a Stackelberg game with the central government. The central government finds that it will maximize its expected votes by increasing transfers as regions borrow. This bail out of regional governments creates a regional soft budget constraint and results in two incentive effects, a common pool effect on tax payments and an opportunity cost effect. The soft budget constraint lowers the opportunity cost of borrowing for the region, but also increases the tax-cost since a portion of the borrowing must be paid for through increased taxes. The common property problem associated with tax payments implies that the increased tax cost must be less than the decrease in the opportunity cost (leading to excessive borrowing) unless the central government increases grants to other regions when it institutes a bailout. Somewhat surprisingly, in the latter case the additional increased taxes may increase costs enough to offset the lower opportunity cost resulting from the bailout, leading to efficient borrowing decisions as in the case of a hard budget constraint. The results are also useful for understanding the empirical estimation of soft budget constraints.     

Flypaper Effect and Sluggishness: Evidence from Regional Health Expenditure in Italy

In Italy, public expenditure reduction is achieved through a revision of social security and health care programs. In particular, public health expenditure control has been implemented through a reform that imposes more stringent budget rules to local governments and a considerable reduction in grants-in-aid from the central government. This paper investigates empirically whether the response to this decrease in categorical lump-sum grants from the central to local governments results in an asymmetric response to intergovernmental grants. Hard budget and soft budget constraint hypotheses are estimated by using a sample of cross-sectional and time observations covering the 20 Italian regions over the period 1989–1993. The main finding is the existence of a standard and a super flypaper effect in both models. The introduction of the soft-budget constraint hypothesis results in a stronger effect of grants and a lower response of own resources which shows that local governments prefer to incur some deficit instead of reducing health care expenditure.     

Fiscal equalisation schemes under competition

This paper considers optimal fiscal equalisation in a federation that competes with other federations for business tax base. It formalises the argument that, under certain circumstances, federations have an incentive to foster tax competition among their subunits in order to attract tax base from other federations. We show that optimal fiscal equalisation serves the purpose of redistributing income from rich to poor subunits and of choosing an optimal level of tax competition. The latter is chosen as a trade-off between three goals. First, decentralised tax rate setting has positive fiscal externalities within the federation and, thus, tax rates are inefficiently low. Second, in the presence of hold-up problems in investment, tax rates may be inefficiently high. Then, tax competition serves as a commitment device for low future tax rates and is, thus, welfare enhancing. Third, generous fiscal equalisation within the federation is a commitment to not aggressively compete with subunits outside the federation for tax base; as a consequence, with optimal equalisation, equilibrium tax rates are higher within and outside the federation—and even higher than in the case of centralised (i.e. federal level) tax rate setting.     

Who gets credit after bankruptcy and why? An information channel

Conventional wisdom holds that individuals find it difficult to obtain new credit post-bankruptcy. Using credit bureau data, we test this hypothesis and show that more than 90% of bankrupt individuals receive credit shortly after filing. Individuals with good credit history prior to filing have reduced credit availability after bankruptcy while those with ex-ante low credit quality receive more credit. We show that credit supplied to low quality individuals is severely curtailed during the financial crisis. We also find that the default probability on new debt increases after bankruptcy, especially among individuals with high ex-ante credit score. These findings are consistent with an information channel, in which bankruptcy reveals new information about a borrower’s credit quality.     

Covered Purchasing Power Parity, Ex-ante PPP and Risk Aversion

The standard expectations augmented theory of ex-ante Purchasing Power Parity which was first developed by Roll assumes that agents are risk neutral. A Covered Purchasing Power Condition is developed which holds for the general case of risk aversion. A risk augmented form of ex-ante PPP is then derived using a consumption-based asset pricing framework. This is tested for the post-Bretton woods period for the group of seven main industrial countries. The results suggest that risk aversion has a part to play in explaining deviations from PPP.     

产品内国际分工、区际一体化与生产性服务业集聚——基于我国1995~2011年省级面板数据的研究

基于我国30个省市1995~2011年的数据,从全国和区域两个层面就产品内国际分工、区际一体化对中国生产性服务业集聚的影响进行的实证分析显示：相较于区际一体化,产品内国际分工对我国生产性服务业集聚的促进作用较小,而且这一促进作用目前只在东部地区有所显现。这说明现阶段我国整体仍处于全球价值链低端的情况下,生产性服务业集聚发展更大程度上依赖于国内区域市场的整合;产品内国际分工与区际一体化对生产性服务业集聚的影响,在总体上呈现出相互促进和加强的关系。这意味着随着国内区际一体化进程的不断推进和地区间分工合作关系的进一步增强,产品内国际分工对我国各地区生产性服务业集聚发展的促进作用将得到更充分发挥。     

现实政府供给公共物品的困惑——从公共物品供给效率的考察

以一个仁慈的、完全信息型政府供给公共物品的效率标准模型为基准,就不同预算约束下公共物品政府供给的效率及原因进行分析.比较不同预算约束、经济人假设情况下政府供给的效率.在经济人政府假设下,不论软预算约束还是硬预算约束,政府提供公共物品都存在效率问题:会出现过多和过少的供给,从而产生公共物品的供给浪费或不足,政府难以提供最适的公共物品水平.     

Spot asset carry cost rates and futures hedge ratios

Since the 1970s, futures hedge ratios have traditionally been calculated ex-post via economically structure-less statistical analyses. This paper proposes an ex-ante, more efficient, computationally simpler, general “carry cost rate” hedge ratio. The proposed hedge ratio is biased, but its bias is readily mitigatable via a stationary Bias Adjustment Multiplier (BAM). The 2-part intuition for the BAM and its stationarity is as follows. First, the paper reasons that the “traditional” hedge ratio should uncover the carry cost rate and shows that it does, albeit inefficiently. Then, since both the “traditional” and “carry cost rate” hedge ratios are driven by the carry cost rate, it may be that their ratio (for implementation in the same prior periods) is stationary and useful as an ex-ante BAM for the “carry cost rate” hedge ratio; the paper tests these conjectures and finds support for both. Specifically, the paper shows that the “bias-adjusted carry cost rate” hedge ratio, defined as the average product of the ex-post BAMs from prior periods and the current ex-ante “carry cost rate” hedge ratio, has higher hedge-effectiveness than that for either the “traditional” or “naive” benchmark hedge ratios in diverse real and simulated markets.

     

When It Pays to Pay Your Investment Banker: New Evidence on the Role of Financial Advisors in M&As

We provide new evidence on the role of financial advisors in M&As. Contrary to prior studies, top‐tier advisors deliver higher bidder returns than their non‐top‐tier counterparts but in public acquisitions only, where the advisor reputational exposure and required skills set are relatively larger. This translates into a $65.83 million shareholder gain for an average bidder. The improvement comes from top‐tier advisors' ability to identify more synergistic combinations and to get a larger share of synergies to accrue to bidders. Consistent with the premium price–premium quality equilibrium, top‐tier advisors charge premium fees in these transactions.