Estimation of Implicit Bankruptcy Costs

This paper presents a new methodology, quasilinear estimation, for efficiently estimating economic variables reflected in the prices of corporate securities. For example, ex ante bankruptcy costs are not directly observable, however, if these costs are sufficiently large, then current security prices are affected and bankruptcy costs can be indirectly measured. When bankruptcy costs and other relevant parameters are known, there are many numerical solution techniques that can be used to determine security prices. One technique, the method of lines, is compatible with quasilinear estimation, which has been employed extensively in the physical sciences for the estimation of coefficients in differential equation models. We demonstrate that quasilinear estimation is a potentially reliable and efficient technique for the estimation of corporate bankruptcy costs and the asset variance from security prices.     

Corporate Bankruptcy and Managers' Self-Serving Behavior

We investigate whether insiders of bankrupt firms hold less stock or reduce their stockholdings compared to what we observed for insiders of similar firms that do not go bankrupt. We find little evidence of such time-series and cross-sectional differences in spite of the fact that the stock value of bankrupt firms falls by more than ninety percent in the five years preceding bankruptcy. One implication of our results is that the amount of stock owned and the magnitude of the trades undertaken by corporate insiders of both bankrupt and nonbankrupt firms appear to provide no information about firm value.     

破产企业治理结构与破产会计信息质量监控

本文以新破产法 (草案) 的基本框架为依托, 将破产企业分为破产和解企业、破产重整企业和破产清算企业三类, 探讨了不同类型破产企业的治理结构及其会计信息的特点, 提出了明确破产会计信息质量的监控目标、建立全面的破产会计制度规范、构建完整的破产会计信息质量监控体系、提高破产相关人员的综合素质等监控破产会计信息质量的基本思路。     

企业破产法存在的问题与完善建议

破产是一种企业无力偿还债务的事实状态，是将债务人的全部财产对所有债权人公平清偿为目的的程序。它的内涵是随着破产法的演进而不断丰富和发展的。破产法不再是单纯的清算法。它还担负起救助债务人特别是拯救困境企业的任务。     

Ex Ante Costs of Violating Absolute Priority in Bankruptcy

A basic question for the design of bankruptcy law concerns whether value should be divided in accordance with absolute priority. Research done in the past decade has suggested that deviations from absolute priority have beneficial ex ante effects. In contrast, this paper shows that ex post deviations from absolute priority also have negative effects on ex ante decisions taken by shareholders. Such deviations aggravate the moral hazard problem with respect to project choice—increasing the equityholders' incentive to favor risky projects—as well as with respect to borrowing and dividend decisions.     

Direct Bankruptcy Costs: Evidence from the Trucking Industry

Direct costs of bankruptcy are measured for a sample of firms in the trucking industry that petitioned for bankruptcy protection from 1970 to 1985. Average direct bankruptcy costs represent 9.12 percent of the book value of total assets as of the year before filing. These costs are large compared with those reported in prior studies: 3.39 percent of book value of assets for retail firms, 4.31 percent for industrials, and .53 percent for railroads. We also find evidence of substantial economies of scale in bankruptcy costs in the trucking sample.     

论破产清算企业的内部控制

企业内部控制无处不在,无论持续经营企业还是破产清算企业都是如此。本文以我国企业破产清算过程中暴露出的内控问题为背景,以新破产法和企业内部控制基本规范为依托,探讨了构建破产清算企业内部控制制度的必要性,总结了我国企业破产清算中所出现的问题,提出了基于广义和狭义角度的我国破产清算企业内控架构,分析了破产清算企业内部控制的主要难点及其对策。     

企业融资成本为何难降?——解析融资体系的结构问题

债务高企和融资难已成为我国当前宏观经济最大的纠结点,融资市场结构扭曲是我国债务循环面临的最大问题。本文着重探析我国融资体系的结构性问题,寻找融资成本高企的症结所在,从而对未来政策走向和效果进行理性推断。     

Corporate Fraud and Corporate Bond Costs: Evidence from China

This study investigates the relationship between corporate fraud and four typical components of costs associated with corporate bonds. Based on data from a booming corporate bond market in China, we confirm that fraudulent issuers have higher corporate bond costs. Specifically, they are more likely to push upward price revisions, pay higher issue fees and coupon spreads, and encounter larger underpricing after issuance. Moreover, we demonstrate that severe corporate fraud is also significantly related to the costs of corporate bonds. Furthermore, we find that investors pay more attention to fraud in accounting information and disclosure. These results remain robust to a strand of endogeneity and through the robustness tests. In additional research, we find that bonds issued by fraudulent firms tend to receive lower ratings and show inferior performance after issuance. We also demonstrate that the effects of corporate fraud on bond costs erode as time passes, although the mitigation speed is slow. Finally, we find that hiring reputable financial intermediaries can partially mitigate the negative effects of corporate fraud.     

员工持股计划与企业创新

本文以2014-2017年我国沪深A股上市公司为研究样本,对上市公司实施员工持股计划与企业创新之间的关系进行了探讨。研究发现,相比未实施员工持股计划的上市公司,实施了员工持股计划的上市公司创新产出更高,员工持股计划有利于促进企业创新。进一步地,员工持股计划持有人数越多,资金规模越大,资金来源于员工薪酬及自筹资金,高管认购比例越高,锁定期越长,越能增加企业发明专利和实用新型专利申请数量,提升创新能力。员工持股计划主要通过降低代理成本、提高企业风险承担能力来促进企业创新。与国有企业相比,非国有企业实施员工持股计划更能增加企业创新产出。论文的研究结论为提高企业创新能力,建设创新型国家提供了经验证据。     

Predicting Corporate Bankruptcy: An Evaluation of Alternative Statistical Frameworks

Corporate bankruptcy prediction has attracted significant research attention from business academics, regulators and financial economists over the past five decades. However, much of this literature has relied on quite simplistic classifiers such as logistic regression and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Based on a large sample of US corporate bankruptcies, we examine the predictive performance of 16 classifiers, ranging from the most restrictive classifiers (such as logit, probit and linear discriminant analysis) to more advanced techniques such as neural networks, support vector machines (SVMs) and “new age” statistical learning models including generalised boosting, AdaBoost and random forests. Consistent with the findings of Jones et al. ( 2015 ), we show that quite simple classifiers such as logit and LDA perform reasonably well in bankruptcy prediction. However, we recommend the use of “new age” classifiers in corporate bankruptcy modelling because: (1) they predict significantly better than all other classifiers on both the cross‐sectional and longitudinal test samples; (2) the models may have considerable practical appeal because they are relatively easy to estimate and implement (for instance, they require minimal researcher intervention for data preparation, variable selection and model architecture specification); and (3) while the underlying model structures can be very complex, we demonstrate that “new age” classifiers have a reasonably good level of interpretability through such metrics as relative variable importances (RVIs).     

Corporate Bond Market Transaction Costs and Transparency

Using a complete record of U.S. over‐the‐counter (OTC) secondary trades in corporate bonds, we estimate average transaction costs as a function of trade size for each bond that traded more than nine times between January 2003 and January 2005. We find that transaction costs decrease significantly with trade size. Highly rated bonds, recently issued bonds, and bonds close to maturity have lower transaction costs than do other bonds. Costs are lower for bonds with transparent trade prices, and they drop when the TRACE system starts to publicly disseminate their prices. The results suggest that public traders benefit significantly from price transparency.     

Dividends,Corporate Monitors and Agency Costs

We report new evidence on the hypothesis that dividends reduce agency costs. Consistent with dividends as a mechanism to reduce agency costs, we find that, on average, firms with a majority of strict outside directors on their boards experience significantly lower mean abnormal returns around the announcements of sizeable dividend increases. Our results are robust to multivariate controls for firm size, leverage, ownership, growth options, and change in dividend yield. However, we find no evidence that dividend increases reduce agency costs as measured by poison pills or outside blockholdings.     

Corporate risk management: Costs and benefits

This paper establishes a framework within which the costs and the benefits of corporate risk management decisions can be analyzed. The most important conclusion is that risk management strategies should be pursued to enhance shareholder value. Although systematic hedging of all variation in the net cashflows may be in the best interest of the management, such behavior is inconsistent with maximizing firm and shareholder value. The extant empirical evidence cited is supportive of the notion that the strongest motive for risk management behavior is the avoidance of financial distress. However, there are offsetting costs to consider as well. The existence of these costs makes it imperative that shareholders understand the risk management process.     

The Costs of Bankruptcy: Chapter 7 Liquidation versus Chapter 11 Reorganization

Our paper explores a comprehensive sample of small and large corporate bankruptcies in Arizona and New York from 1995 to 2001. Bankruptcy costs are very heterogeneous and sensitive to the measurement method used. We find that Chapter 7 liquidations appear to be no faster or cheaper (in terms of direct expense) than Chapter 11 reorganizations. However, Chapter 11 seems to preserve assets better, thereby allowing creditors to recover relatively more. Our paper also provides a large number of further empirical regularities.     

Compliance Costs of Corporate Income Taxation in Singapore

This study is the second in a series of studies investigating tax compliance costs incurred by public-listed companies. We found evidence of a size effect which is a predominant finding of similar studies. The size effect was more pronounced when absolute measures of costs were used than when a relative measure, cost/sales turnover, was used. Additional evidence was found of limited success relating to the IRAS's moves to simplify the tax system. Specifically, only large companies with sales turnover exceeding $500m benefited and considerably reduced their overall compliance costs. Most of the decrease was a result of the computational component of compliance costs. This resulted in the gap in absolute costs narrowing between Group 3 and any of the other categories of companies. There was also greater reliance on external professionals, the smaller the company. Views elicited indicate that more could be done to increase accessibility to IRAS publications for Group 1 and Group 2 companies.