Information from Relationship Lending: Evidence from Loan Defaults in China

Using a proprietary database from a large Chinese state‐owned bank, we examine whether information evolved from banking relationships predicts commercial loan default by industrial firms. We find that the bank's relationship information is significantly linked to the incidence of default, and that its contribution to prediction accuracy is larger than any hard information. Furthermore, the effect of relationship information is stronger among firms that have a more sustained banking relationship. Our findings indicate that, at least in the emerging markets, a bank's relationship information still matters for large firms, despite the fact that hard information for such firms is abundant.     

Political Incentives to Suppress Negative Information: Evidence from Chinese Listed Firms

This paper tests the proposition that politicians and their affiliated firms (i.e., firms operating in their province) temporarily suppress negative information in response to political incentives. We examine the stock price behavior of Chinese listed firms around two visible political events—meetings of the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party and promotions of high‐level provincial politicians—that are expected to asymmetrically increase the costs of releasing bad news. The costs create an incentive for local politicians and their affiliated firms to temporarily restrict the flow of negative information about the companies. The result will be fewer stock price crashes for the affiliated firms during these event windows, followed by an increase in crashes after the event. Consistent with these predictions, we find that the affiliated firms experience a reduction (an increase) in negative stock return skewness before (after) the event. These effects are strongest in the three‐month period directly preceding the event, among firms that are more politically connected, and when the province is dominated by faction politics and cronyism. Additional tests document a significant reduction in published newspaper articles about affected firms in advance of these political events, suggestive of a link between our observed stock price behavior and temporary shifts in the listed firms’ information environment.     

Chief Executive Officer Incentives,Monitoring, and Corporate Risk Management: Evidence From Insurance Use

Corporate governance and risk management issues have received prominent publicity in recent years following several major company failures such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. While prior studies have examined this issue within the context of derivatives’ trading, little is known regarding the linkage between corporate governance and alternative corporate risk management activities such as insurance. Using a detailed firm survey conducted by the World Bank (2004) , we examine the impacts of various governance monitoring mechanisms and chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics on the corporate insurance decision. Overall, our results suggest that both monitoring mechanisms and managerial incentives induce the corporate purchase of property insurance. However, the purchase of property insurance for managerial self‐interest is only prevalent in firms subject to lax monitoring, and the determinants of insurance purchases are more in line with the prediction of the economic theory in firms with strong monitoring. In addition, our study contributes a number of new insights into the determinants of corporate purchase of property insurance.     

Chief Executive Officer Equity Incentives and Accounting Irregularities

This study examines whether Chief Executive Officer (CEO) equity‐based holdings and compensation provide incentives to manipulate accounting reports. While several prior studies have examined this important question, the empirical evidence is mixed and the existence of a link between CEO equity incentives and accounting irregularities remains an open question. Because inferences from prior studies may be confounded by assumptions inherent in research design choices, we use propensity‐score matching and assess hidden (omitted variable) bias within a broader sample. In contrast to most prior research, we do not find evidence of a positive association between CEO equity incentives and accounting irregularities after matching CEOs on the observable characteristics of their contracting environments. Instead, we find some evidence that accounting irregularities occur less frequently at firms where CEOs have relatively higher levels of equity incentives.     

兼任高管与公司价值:来自中国的经验证据

本文实证检验了上市公司高管直接为第一大股东或实际控制人,或其同时也在第一大股东或实际控制人处任职时(即‘兼任高管’)与公司价值的相关性。通过分析中国A股上市公司2001年至2009年的数据,本文发现存在兼任高管的上市公司,公司价值显著较低。进一步研究显示,尽管存在兼任高管的公司,总资产收益率和销售利润率显著更高,但同时从事了规模更大、频率更高的与担保相关的关联交易,并且发生信息披露违规的可能性也更高。这些结果意味着,尽管兼任高管可以加强控股股东对公司的控制,但在新兴市场中,这种行为方便了大股东侵占中小股东利益,最终与公司价值显著负相关。     

The Impact of Incentives and Communication Costs on Information Production and Use: Evidence from Bank Lending

In 2002 and 2003, many Chinese banks implemented reforms that delegated authority to individual loan officers. The change followed China's entrance into the WTO and offers a plausibly exogenous shock to loan officer incentives to produce information. We find that the bank's internal risk rating becomes a stronger predictor of loan interest rates and ex post outcomes after reform. When the loan officer and the branch president who approves the loan work together longer, the rating also becomes more strongly related to loan prices and outcomes. Our results highlight how incentives and communication costs affect information production and use.     

Information, Credit Risk, Lender Specialization and Loan Pricing: Evidence from the DIP Financing Market

We provide an empirical support for theories of lender specialization using the recently developed market for Debtor-in-Possession (DIP) financing. The legal environment in which DIP financing operates represents a natural laboratory for testing determinants of lending specialization (e.g. lender choice). We find that the choice of lender is not driven by credit risk, but by information considerations and that this lending specialization has loan pricing effects. In short, banks (non-bank lenders) lend to more (less) transparent firms and at lower (higher) loan spreads. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that banks provide important and useful services.

The Impact of Information Processing Costs on Firm Disclosure Choice: Evidence from the XBRL Mandate

This paper examines the effect of market participants’ information processing costs on firms’ disclosure choice. Using the recent eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) regulation, I find that firms increase their quantitative footnote disclosures upon implementation of XBRL detailed tagging requirements designed to reduce information users’ processing costs. These results hold in a difference‐in‐difference design using matched nonadopting firms as controls, as well as two additional identification strategies. Examination of the disclosure increase by footnote type suggests that both regulatory and nonregulatory market participants play a role in monitoring firm disclosures. Overall, these findings suggest that the processing costs of market participants can be significant enough to impact firms’ disclosure decisions.     

Firm Size and the Information Content of Annual Earnings Announcements: Australian Evidence

Abstract:   We investigate the effect of firm size on the market's short‐window response to annual earnings announcements for a large sample of Australian listed companies. Our research design involves regressions of unexpected earnings against unexpected returns. Non‐linearity in the returns‐earnings relationship is incorporated and other factors known to affect the response to earnings announcements are controlled for. Contrary to prior US research, our results show that firm size has either no effect on the response to earnings announcements (3 day window) or the response is significantly stronger for larger firms (twenty‐one day window). The information content of earnings announcements is present across firm size categories but the nature of the response differs with firm size and context.     

Analyst Activity and Firm Value: Evidence from the REIT Sector

This paper is the first to examine (1) properties of analyst forecasts and (2) effects of analyst following on firm value for all REITs on CRSP, Compustat and I/B/E/S. Our results suggest that REITs operate in an information environment that has changed over time. We find that for periods when the REIT industry was either in the developmental stage (pre-1992), or after other structural changes in the industry (post-2000), more analysts cover REITs and forecasts are more accurate and less biased. Further, we find that mortgage REITs are more transparent than other REIT structures and exhibit properties of analyst behavior that are different from other types of REITs. Our investigation into the effect of analyst coverage on REIT value suggests that analyst coverage increases REIT value (as measured by Tobin’s q) and that the causality does not run the opposite way.

公司信息透明度的市场效应——来自中国A股市场的经验证据

目前在中国市场,信息披露质量是较数量更为有效的衡量公司信息透明度的方面。基于信息披露质量,我们分别以深交所上市公司考评中不及格和优秀等级的公司、沪深违规信忠披露公司及其配对公司作为两组研究样本,同时全面考察公司的信息透明度对投资者交易行为的影响以及相应的市场效应。两组样本检验结果一致表明,低透明度和严重的信息不对称是某些知情者诈取广大不知情的中小投资者利益的温床,并扭曲了资本市场的原有功能;从2001年至2004年,尽管公司信息透明度对大量中小投资者的股票选择没有显著影响,但其的确也帮助了投资者对所选择的股票进行定价。健全法律制度、培育理性投资者与信息中介、提高公司信息透明度,是促进市场有效的根本。     

会计稳健性与银行借款契约——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

会计稳健性在银行借款契约中居于重要地位。借款人采用高水平的稳健性可以帮助银行降低风险,相应地,银行会提供一定的优惠作为回报。使用手工收集的2000-2007年中国A股上市公司的单笔银行贷款为研究数据,我们对上述问题进行了实证检验。结果发现,企业的会计稳健性越强,企业获得的每笔贷款金额越大,贷款期限越长,贷款的利率越低。另外,我们发现在法制环境越好,优惠政策越多,政府干预越少的地区,上述关系更为显著。     

Risk Management and Firm Value: Evidence from Weather Derivatives

This paper shows that active risk management policies lead to an increase in firm value. To identify the effect of hedging and to overcome endogeneity concerns, we exploit the introduction of weather derivatives as an exogenous shock to firms’ ability to hedge weather risks. This innovation disproportionately benefits weather‐sensitive firms, irrespective of their future investment opportunities. Using this natural experiment and data from energy firms, we find that derivatives lead to higher valuations, investments, and leverage. Overall, our results demonstrate that risk management has real consequences on firm outcomes.     

Finance and Growth at the Firm Level: Evidence from SBA Loans

We analyze linked databases on all SBA loans and lenders and on all U.S. employers to estimate the effects of financial access on employment growth. Estimation exploits the long panels and variation in local availability of SBA‐intensive lenders. The results imply an increase of 3–3.5 jobs for each million dollars of loans, suggesting real effects of credit constraints. Estimated impacts are stronger for younger and larger firms and when local credit conditions are weak, but we find no clear evidence of cyclical variation. We estimate taxpayer costs per job created in the range of $21,000–$25,000.     

Enhancing Loan Quality Through Transparency: Evidence from the European Central Bank Loan Level Reporting Initiative

We explore whether transparency in banks’ securitization activities enhances loan quality. We take advantage of a novel disclosure initiative introduced by the European Central Bank, which requires, as of January 2013, banks that use their asset‐backed securities as collateral for repo financing to report securitized loan characteristics and performance in a standardized format. We find that securitized loans originated under the transparency regime are of better quality with a lower default probability, a lower delinquent amount, fewer days in delinquency, and lower losses upon default. Additionally, banks with more intensive loan level information collection and those operating under stronger market discipline experience greater improvement in their loan quality under the new reporting standards. Overall, we demonstrate that greater transparency has real effects by incentivizing banks to improve their credit practices.     

Small Firm Capital Structure and the Syndicated Loan Market

We show that small firms using syndicated loans for their mid- and long-term financial needs have significantly higher leverage than firms that do not borrow in this market. This difference cannot be attributed to firm characteristics like the availability of growth opportunities, asset tangibility, R&D spending, profitability and net sales that are known to influence capital structure. We also find that the capital structure of other firms that borrow in the syndicated loan market is not different from those that do not. We show that already highly leveraged small firms are more likely to borrow in the syndicated loan market than other firms. The higher debt in the capital structure of small firms that rely on syndicated loans consequently can be attributed to the availability of capital rather than demand for capital, as shown more generally by Faulkender and Petersen (Rev Financ Stud 19(1):45?C79, 2006).     

Dynamics in Ownership and Firm Survival: Evidence from Corporate Germany

This study investigates the determinants of changes in corporate ownership and firm failure for German firms. We find that many of the determinants of failure also affect ownership changes in this bank‐based economy. They include poor performance, weak corporate governance, high leverage, and small firm size. The ownership structure also plays a role for both events. Separate analyses of one of these events are therefore likely to miss important effects. The implications for the German corporate governance system are that the differences to countries with more market‐based systems are not as pronounced as previously speculated.     

会计软件采用与企业生产率——来自非上市公司的证据

现有关于会计信息化经济后果的研究主要关注ERP系统,而现实中大部分公司仍在使用相对简单的会计核算软件。本文利用企业纳税申报表信息,首次大样本实证分析了非上市公司中会计软件应用情况及其对生产率的影响。我们发现75%的非上市公司采用了功能不等的各类会计软件,但其中仅有6%为ERP。控制其他因素后,采用会计软件的企业生产率显著高于未采用会计软件的企业,且会计软件性能与生产率显著正相关。企业会计信息利用能力和增长机会强化了这一效应。本文采取格兰杰因果检验和工具变量回归等方法缓解内生性问题。本文有助于更全面理解会计信息系统的经济后果,并为促进经济高质量发展提供重要决策参考。     

Firm Competition and CEO Turnover: Evidence from US Railroad Deregulation

In this article, I examine how changes in the competitive environment of firms affect matches between chief executive officers (CEOs) and firms. I exploit the 1980 Staggers Rail Act, which drastically deregulated the freight railroad industry, as a source of arguably exogenous variation in the operating environment. Using hand‐collected data, I obtain three main findings: first, CEO turnover rates increase; second, relative to utility firms, railroad CEOs have more business education and show broader work experience after deregulation; and third, firm performance leads to CEO turnover only during the regulated period.