Securitization: A Financing Vehicle for All Seasons?

Securitization is considered to be one of the biggest financial innovations of the last century. It is also regarded as both a catalyst and a solution to the 2008 financial crisis. Once a popular method of financing the mortgage and consumer credit markets, aspects of the global securitization market are now struggling to revive. In this paper, I discuss the role that ethics played in securitization prior to the 2008 financial crisis and find that it is not an obvious story of moral failures, but rather that it lies in more subtle elements of the financial system. The ethics uncertainty role in the securitization story is one of flawed incentives and the shifting of responsibility for handling risk. The role of securitization and the ethics of risk transfer have rarely been discussed explicitly in the literature. The historical origins of securitization and lessons learned from previous flawed uses of the process are also provided. I also detail the various global institutional reform proposals that have taken place. Moving forward, it is crucial to understand the causes, consequences, and ethical implications of securitization in the financial crisis so as to help individuals and managers better assess risk, align incentives, and design appropriate policy responses.     

Financing in an emerging economy: Does financial development or financial structure matter?

This paper investigates the effects of the financial system on a firm's investment decisions using data from 404 Brazilian firms over the 1998–2006 period. We also use country-level data and classify firms as financially constrained and unconstrained according to the KZ and WW indexes. The results show that financial development has a significant impact on a firm's investment. Furthermore, the financial structure has an effect on the investment behavior of constrained firms even after controlling for the level of financial development. This finding points to a market-based financial system in order to reduce the constrained firms' dependence on internal resources.     

Donors’ Mechanisms for Financing International and National Public Goods: Loans or Grants?

This paper investigates whether three classes of donors – multilateral organisations, regional institutions and bilateral donors – tailor their mix of grants and loans to reflect international benefit spillovers and recipient‐specific benefits, derived from aid‐funded activities in developing and transition countries. To account for recipient benefit shares, donors should use a greater share of grants when supported activities yield a larger portion of international public benefits. A greater reliance on loans is appropriate when a large portion of recipient‐specific benefits are associated with the assistance. By reflecting recipient benefit shares in the grant‐loan mix, donors’ assistance also promotes allocative efficiency. Using the Credit Reporting System (CRS) database from OECD for 1980–2000, our analysis establishes that various donor classes apply different grant‐loan mixtures when supporting the environment, health, knowledge and governance sectors of recipient countries. We employ analysis of variance and other statistical comparisons of the means to investigate differences among donor classes. We demonstrate that bilateral donors do the best job in tailoring their grant‐loan mix to accord with the extent of international public good benefits embodied in the aid‐supported activity. Multilateral organisations’ grant‐loan mix is intermediate of the three types of donors, with some evidence of them relying more on grants to finance activities that possess a larger share of international public good spillovers. Regional institutions, however, do not discriminate their grant‐loan mix by either sectors or the associated public good spillovers. This finding suggests that regional development banks need to adjust their grant‐loan mix to better account for international benefit spillovers if these institutions are to warrant the increased funds to underwrite regional public goods that they have been seeking. If, however, their mix is institutionally set, then the stakeholders must give these institutions greater flexibility to tailor their grants and loans to who benefits from the aid‐supported public goods. This is the first paper to empirically ascertain whether the grant‐loan mix is tied to the inherent publicness of the aid‐funded activities.     

Financing health care: out of whose pocket?

Health expenditures have grown steadily in the United States, but though United States spending is the highest in the world, it may not be as far out of line as is often assumed. However, although the economy is capable of absorbing an increasing amount of health care without reducing other consumption, financing mechanisms are breaking down. That part of Medicare financed through payroll taxes will be insolvent by the year 2003; the rest of Medicare and all of Medicaid adds to a growing budget deficit. And, the free market fails to provide rational long-term financing of long-term care.     

Rational Thinking of the Debt of Local Government Financing Vehicle （LGFV）

2009年10月以后,有关地方政府融资平台债务的论题充斥于学界和媒体,但其中有着太多的不清之处。“地方政府融资平台”不是一个科学范畴,从各项文件的界定看,它在内容和范围上并不一致;对地方政府融资平台的作用认识存在严重分歧;在全国各地方并不存在一家挂着“地方政府融资平台”的机构。地方政府融资平台“债务风险”的种种依据并不可靠,其中,债务风险、对银行贷款风险的评估并不确实,对偿还贷款的估算缺乏财务常识,债务特性不清;“土地财政”是个错误用语,地方政府担保含义不清。要真正解决各地方政府拓展城镇化建设资金不足的问题,需要从改革财政体制入手,处理好相关关系。     

Thirsty for More Financing Channels?

Accompanied by continually raining,over 300 financial experts and entrepreneurs gath- ered in Yianjin for"2008 Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Finance Summit & Tianjin Investment Finance Business Forum"on September 24,which was sponsored by the First Finance Daily, and organized by a professional invest- ment service institute Zonghengheli.     

Financing technology-based small firms in Europe: what do we know?

This paper reviews the evidence on financing technology-based small firms (TBSFs) in Europe. European TBSFs finance new investments by relying primarily on internal funds, due to capital market failures induced by asymmetric information. European venture capital has caught up with US venture capital, but this is mainly because of the growth in UK venture investments. It is unclear whether European venture capital has been able to certify the quality and enhance the growth of funded companies. Compared with the NASDAQ, there is little development of trading in high-tech stocks in Europe: the so-called New Markets established in the 1990s collapsed in the wake of the Internet bubble crash. Public venture capital and research and development (R&D) tax incentives seem to have positively affected high-tech firms.     

Boards of Directors’ Self Interest: Expanding for Pay in Corporate Acquisitions?

Director compensation can potentially represent an ethical minefield. When faced with supporting strategic decisions that can lead to an increase in director pay, directors may consider their own interests and not solely those of the shareholders to whom they are legally bound to represent. In such cases, directors essentially become agents, rather than those installed to protect principals (shareholders) from agents. Using acquisitions as a study context, we employ a matched-pair design and find a statistically significant difference in outside director compensation between acquiring and control firms. Outside directors of acquiring firms earn more than twice as much as their counterparts in the matched-sample. S. Trevis Certo is an associate professor and Mays Research Fellow in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His research focuses on corporate governance (boards of directors, ownership structure, and CEO compensation), top management teams, initial public offerings (IPOs), and research methodology. Richard H. Lester is a clinical associate professor and Director of Academic Entrepreneurship Programs in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Strategic Management from the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. His current research interests focus on corporate governance, upper echelons and entrepreneurship. Catherine M. Dalton holds the David H. Jacobs Chair of Strategic Management in the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. She also serves as Editor of Business Horizons, as Research Director of the Institute for Corporate Governance, and as a Fellow in the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence. She received her Ph.D. degree in Strategic Management from the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Professor Dalton's research is in corporate governance, with particular expertise in board composition, board leadership structure, executive and director compensation, and firms' ownership structures. Her research spans all types of organizations, including entrepreneurial firms, small businesses, large public corporations, and private organizations. Dan R. Dalton is the founding Director of the Institute for Corporate Governance, Dean Emeritus, and the Harold A. Poling Chair of Strategic Management in the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. He is a Fellow of the Management in the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. He is a fellow of the Academy of Management and an inaugural member of its Journals Hall of Fame. Professor Dalton is widely published, with over 280 articles in corporate governance, business strategy, law, and ethics. Additionally, his work has been frequently featured in the business and financial press including, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Economist, Financial Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and the Washington Post. Professor Dalton regularly addresses public, corporate, and industry groups on corporate governance issues.     

Deepfakes: Trick or treat?

Although manipulations of visual and auditory media are as old as media themselves, the recent entrance of deepfakes has marked a turning point in the creation of fake content. Powered by the latest technological advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, deepfakes offer automated procedures to create fake content that is harder and harder for human observers to detect. The possibilities to deceive are endless—including manipulated pictures, videos, and audio—and organizations must be prepared as this will undoubtedly have a large societal impact. In this article, we provide a working definition of deepfakes together with an overview of its underlying technology. We classify different deepfake types and identify risks and opportunities to help organizations think about the future of deepfakes. Finally, we propose the R.E.A.L. framework to manage deepfake risks: Record original content to ensure deniability, Expose deepfakes early, Advocate for legal protection, and Leverage trust to counter credulity. Following these principles, we hope that our society can be more prepared to counter deepfake tricks as we appreciate deepfake treats.     

Aid Allocation by German NGOs: Does the Degree of Official Financing Matter?

Using a new data set for 41 German non‐governmental organisations (NGOs), we analyse the allocation of NGO aid across recipient countries in a Tobit regression framework. By identifying for each NGO the degree of official financing, we address the largely unresolved issue of whether financial dependence on the government impairs the targeting of NGO aid. It turns out that German NGOs are more active in poorer countries, while they do not complement official aid by working under difficult local conditions. Beyond a certain threshold, rising financial dependence weakens their poverty orientation and provides an incentive to engage in ‘easier’ environments. In addition, we find that the NGOs follow the state as well as NGO peers when allocating aid. This herding behaviour is, however, hardly affected by the degree of official financing.     

Bank Work Experience Versus Political Connections: Which Matters for Bank Loan Financing?

This paper examines how bank lending decisions are affected either by executives’ connections with banks, through their former banking experience, or by their political connections with governments, using a sample of bank loans granted to Chinese listed non‐state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) from 2003 to 2010. We find that bank loans are more closely related to profitability for firms with bank connections, while firms’ political connections weaken this relationship. We further find that the influence of bank connections is more significant for firms from less supported industries or less developed regions. Furthermore, firms with bank connections are less likely to become financially distressed after the initiation of their bank loans and experience higher future stock returns, while firms with political connections experience the opposite outcome. Overall, our results indicate that in the context of a relationship‐based economy like China, firms’ connections with banks create value by alleviating information asymmetry and improving banks’ lending decisions, while political connections result in capital misallocation and subsequent deterioration in performance.     

Screening: Value enhancing or diminishing?

Using an international sample of environmental and social firm-level ratings between 2007 and 2019, we form synthetic overlapping region-based equity portfolios to examine the impact of screening stringency on abnormal returns and specific risk. While previous literature analyzes this relationship in a bidimensional setting, inferences made in this study are additionally robust to regional levels of market efficiency. Our results suggest that (1) screening stringency displays an inverted curvilinear relationship with risk-adjusted returns and (2) the impact on specific risk is strictly increasing. Thus, portfolios that employ marginal and substantial screening incur the cost of responsible investing. However, moderate screening has the benefit of increasing performance without the burden of financing the least responsible corporations.     

Business orientation: Cliche or substance?

This paper reviews the orthodox treatment of production, product, sales and marketing business orientations in introductory marketing texts and suggests changes. Orientation is an important issue which has a profound effect on long run business success, particularly on the effectiveness of business strategy. It is recommended that the orthodox orientations should be revised to the following: marketing/customer orientation; accounting/cost orientation; production/technology orientation; R&D/innovation orientation. The examination of orientation suggests they should not be regarded as mutually exclusive, but rather that organizations need, to some extent, to be oriented to all four. This treatment of orientation may be a little more complex than the former but it remains simple enough for inclusion in introductory texts.     

Business ethics: Restrictive or empowering?

There is a tendency in the business ethics literature to think of ethics in restrictive terms: what one should not do, and how to control this. Drawing on Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development, the paper focuses on, and draws attention to, another more positive aspect of ethics: the capacity of ethics to inspire and empower individuals, as well as groups. To understand and facilitate such empowerment, it is argued that it is necessary to move beyond Kohlberg's justice reasoning so as to appreciate the value and importance of feeling and care. Accordingly, we draw upon case study material to review the meaning of Kohlberg's higher stages — 5, 6 and 7 — to question the meaning of ethical reasoning. With such deeper understanding of particular ethical codes or practices, it is thought that members of organisations may come closer to thespirit, as opposed to the letter, of ethical conduct in organisations. This, we argue, is consistent with the degree of trust and integrity demanded by leaner, post-bureaucratic ways of organizing and conducting business as well as being personally beneficial to the people involved.Bjørn Kjonstad has recently completed his Masters dissertation. He has subsequently been ordained in the Western Buddhist Order and is currently devoting himself full-time to the work of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order.Hugh Willmott is Reader in the Manchester School of Management having previously held appointments at the Aston Business School and Copenhagen Business School. He has taken refuge in the Kagyu Order of Tibetan Buddhism. His most recent books have beenLabour Process Theory (Macmillan, 1990 co-edited with David Knights),Critical Management Studies (Sage, 1992, co-edited with Mats Alvesson) andSkill and Consent (Routledge, 1992, co-edited with Andrew Sturdy and David Knights) andMaking Quality Critical (Routledge, 1994 co-edited with Adrian Wilkinson). Their common theme has been a critical examination of the changing organization and management of work in modern society.     

Executive Compensation: Excessive or Equitable?

The eighties and nineties have seen much debate about CEO compensation. Critics of CEO compensation support their contention of excessive and inequitable CEO pay based on a number of factors and premises. This paper examines the validity of these arguments. We show why many of these arguments fail to persuade, in part, because they attempt to determine propriety of CEO pay without having a definitive standard for comparison. Arguments based on comparisons between CEO pay and the pay of other individuals or jobs or between CEO pay and firm performance are shown to be an insufficient mechanism to determine the appropriateness of CEO compensation.     

Robust services: People or processes?

Service systems are inherently subject to variability, whether through customers, service providers, suppliers, or unexpected events. Yet, customers demand excellence and consistency regardless of this variability. In general, there are two ways to handle this variability: with people or with processes. We use the concept of robustness to describe these two approaches, address when one or the other might be appropriate, and discuss how and why one might transition from one approach to the other. Robust people and robust processes within a system can inform and build upon one another in a cycle that mirrors that of continuous improvement. Investing in this cycle can help an organization move toward a system that relies more on robust processes and less on hiring and training robust people, allowing the organization to be scalable while simultaneously creating new opportunities for incumbent robust people.     

业主会所:金矿or鸡肋?

业主两极分化的现象日趋严重,一些经营状况良好的会所不仅顺利实现赢利,其前景犹如一座源源不断的金矿;而对于一些经营不善的业主会所而言,则俨然成为了弃之不舍却又食之无味的鸡肋。     

Entrepreneurs: intuitive or contemplative decision-makers?

Small Business Economics - In a large survey (n =?1928), we examine whether entrepreneurs differ in their decision-making style from managers and employees. Besides two self-reported measures...     

猪肉批发市场:终结or前行?

<正>广州"瘦肉精"事件导致70多人中毒,2009年4月2~10日有关部门关闭广州天河牲畜交易市场,不少业内人士更认为,根据猪肉流通和监管的需要,取消批发市场是一种大趋势。于是一场对于猪肉批发市场是否予以取缔的争论甚嚣尘上。