Intraboard heterogeneity and the role of bank-dispatched directors in Japanese firms: An empirical study

To discuss the role of bank-dispatched directors in the governance of Japanese firms, it has to be noted that the board is heterogeneous and only senior directors, including presidents and managing directors, are likely involved in major management decisions. With a panel of about 1150 firms in 1990–98, we find that, when bank loans constitute a significant portion of the firm's assets, the low industry-adjusted profitability increases the probability that a new (or additional) director is dispatched from the bank at a senior level but not at a junior level. This dispatch improves the firm's performance provided it does not merely replace the predecessor.     

Competition and Collusion in Dealer Markets

This article develops a game-theoretic model to analyze market makers' intertemporal pricing strategies. We show that dealers who adopt noncooperative pricing strategies may set bid-ask spreads above competitive levels. This form of “implicit collusion” differs from explicit collusion, where dealers cooperate to fix prices. Price discreteness or asymmetric information are not required for collusion to occur. Rather, institutional arrangements that restrict access to the order flow are important determinants of the ability to collude because they reduce dealers' incentives to compete on price. Public policy efforts to increase interdealer competition should focus on such restrictions.     

Collusion under monitoring of sales

Collusion under imperfect monitoring is explored when firms' prices are private information and their quantities are public information; such an information structure is consistent with several recent price‐fixing cartels, such as those in lysine and vitamins. For a class of symmetric oligopoly games, it is shown that symmetric equilibrium punishments cannot sustain any collusion. An asymmetric punishment is characterized that does sustain collusion and it has firms whose sales exceed their quotas compensating those firms with sales below their quotas. In practice, cartels could have performed such transfers through sales among the cartel members.     

Collusion with intertemporal price dispersion

We develop a theory of optimal collusive intertemporal price dispersion. Dispersion clouds consumer price awareness, encouraging firms to coordinate on dispersed prices. Our theory generates a collusive rationale for price cycles and sales. Patient firms can support optimal collusion at the monopoly price. For less patient firms, monopoly prices must be punctuated with fleeting sales. The most robust structure involves price cycles that resemble Edgeworth cycles. Low consumer attentiveness enhances the effectiveness of price dispersion by reducing the payoff to deviations involving price reductions. However, for sufficiently low attentiveness, price rises are also a concern.     

Collusion with limited product comparability

We examine the effect of limited product comparability on the viability of collusion. Firms choose messages to influence consumer product comparison. The cartel hinders transparency on the equilibrium path and seeks it for optimal punishment. Five conditions are each sufficient to ensure obfuscation aids collusion: if firms can mix over messages or commit to messages, if messages are informative, or if an individual firm or the cartel can control comparability. We also analyze the impact of message differentiation and complexity for optimal messages, and identify a key role for the convexity or concavity of comparison probabilities in these features.     

本地审计师的合谋效应

本文结合公司的信息不对称程度,从审计收费与审计质量的角度来研究本地审计师的合谋效应问题。研究结果表明,异常审计收费降低了本地审计师对信息不对称程度高的盈余管理公司出具非标审计意见的概率,而并不会降低本地审计师对信息不对称程度低的盈余管理公司出具非标审计意见的概率,同时,异常审计收费也不影响外地审计师出具非标审计意见的概率,表明本地审计师与信息不对称程度高的盈余管理公司之间存在合谋行为;进一步研究表明,信息不对称程度高的盈余管理公司更可能选择本地审计师进行审计,从而为本地审计师的合谋效应提供了进一步的证据。     

Collusion with (almost) no information

We analyze noncooperative collusion in an infinitely repeated Bertrand game, where each of the n firms receives a privately observed, i.i.d. cost shock in each period and firms only (and privately) observe whether they have “won” the unit mass of consumers. No other information is available and no communication is allowed. We prove that there exist equilibria in private strategies approximating first‐best profits when firms are sufficiently patient. In particular, productive efficiency obtains in the limit.     

地方政企合谋与信贷资源配置

通过建立地方政企合谋与信贷资源配置的数理模型来研究分权下地方政府干预信贷资源配置服务于地方政府的自身效用,结果表明地方政企合谋是地方政府在直接干预力度减弱的情况下,间接干预金融资源配置的一个重要的途径;且地方政府官员的政治晋升是助长这些干预行为的关键因素。若将发现地方政企合谋与政府地方官员政治晋升与否直接相关,即能起到威慑作用,并能形成最优的防范地方政企合谋契约。     

Complicated firms

We exploit a novel setting in which the same piece of information affects two sets of firms: one set of firms requires straightforward processing to update prices, while the other set requires more complicated analyses to incorporate the same piece of information into prices. We document substantial return predictability from the set of easy-to-analyze firms to their more complicated peers. Specifically, a simple portfolio strategy that takes advantage of this straightforward vs. complicated information processing classification yields returns of 118 basis points per month before transaction costs. Consistent with processing complexity driving the return relation, we further show that the more complicated the firm, the more pronounced the return predictability. In addition, we find that sell-side analysts are subject to these same information processing constraints, as their forecast revisions of easy-to-analyze firms predict their future revisions of more complicated firms.     

Institutional trading and information processing: Evidence from complicated firms and easy-to-analyze firms

In this article, I examine institutional trading within two groups of firms with different demands on investor information processing: conglomerate firms and stand-alone firms. On average, institutional trading in conglomerate firm stocks yields significantly lower returns than institutional trading in stand-alone firm stocks. Inferior returns following institutional trading in conglomerate firm stocks persist across small and large firms. Moreover, financial institutions with a low concentration of conglomerate firms in their portfolios are more profitable in their trading. This study provides evidence that skilled institutional investors intentionally focus their information-processing efforts on easy-to-analyze firms.     

合谋操纵与散户跟风的演化博弈分析

本文通过构造一个合谋操纵和散户跟风的双种群双策略的演化博弈模型,从规范经济学角度研究了合谋账户与散户之间的演化博弈,分析了合谋操纵者何时会选择操纵、散户是否会跟风、监管对市场操纵的影响以及市场环境如何影响合谋操纵者和散户的行为等问题。为追求利益最大化,拥有资金优势的合谋者具有操纵市场的动机;合谋者操纵市场行为损害了一些跟风散户的利益,一定程度上也会减少散户跟风。基于此,本文认为,应当通过完善法制,保持监管高压态势,加强投资者教育和投资者适当性管理,完善套利制度等,应对合谋操纵和散户跟风行为。     

Collusion Proof Transfer Payment Schemes with Multiple Agents

Most of the current studies on transfer pricing under asymmetric information focus on a single principal and a single agent. Under a separating management and ownership assumption, transfer pricing is at minimum a three-person problem involving one principal and two agents. This paper considers a transfer pricing problem with two agents who possess private information and seek to maximize their net cash flows, instead of divisional accounting profits. The objectives of this paper are: (1) to derive a direct-revelation mechanism that induces truth telling and efficient allocation; (2) to study the agents' collusion behaviors under the direct-revelation mechanism. The findings indicate that when agents have the option to quit after contracting, it is optimal for the center to produce less than the first-best output level unless the costs for both divisions are at their lowest levels. The optimal amount of underproduction varies according to the demand condition. In addition, two sets of transfer functions, named as identical and nonidentical functions, are derived to induce truth-telling and yield optimal equilibrium output. The two sets of transfer functions are subject to collusion. However, the functions induce different collusion behaviors among agents, that is, the collusion sets for both functions are not common sets. This property enables us to eliminate any collusion between agents, particularly prior to their observation of private information.     

Cash-rich firms and carbon emissions

We investigate whether corporate cash holdings affect carbon dioxide emissions. Using a sample of 5402 firm-years observations from 943 U.S. firms during 2007–2017, we find that carbon emissions are lower in firms with higher corporate cash holdings. The effect of cash holdings on carbon emissions is more pronounced in firms with low leverage and less financial constraints. Our channel analysis further unveils that renewable energy consumption and carbon abatement investment are higher in cash-rich firms, which transmit lower carbon emissions. Our findings are robust to different identification strategies and alternative measures of cash holdings and carbon emissions. Overall, our paper provides novel evidence on the role of corporate cash holdings in mitigating carbon emissions.     

监督还是合谋:多个大股东与公司内部控制质量

中国上市公司大股东持股比例相对较高,大股东之间可能存在合谋掏空或监督制衡的关系,为此,以2008~2016年A股上市公司为样本,探究多个大股东的股权结构对公司内部控制质量的影响。研究发现：相对于只有单一大股东的公司而言,具有多个大股东的公司内部控制质量更高;大股东数量越多、非控股大股东持股比例越高、大股东之间股权偏离度越低,公司内部控制质量越高;外国投资者和国有法人大股东能够显著提升公司内部控制质量;多个大股东的治理效应主要体现在非国有企业中,公司所处地区的法律及市场环境越好,多个大股东监督效应对公司内部控制质量的提升作用越明显。     

Collusion and dynamic (under‐) investment in quality

In a dynamic game of investment in product quality, I investigate whether collusive underinvestment equilibria can be supported by the threat of escalation in investment outlays. When there are no spillovers, underinvestment equilibria exist even though, by deviating, a firm can gain a persistent strategic advantage. When there are strong spillovers, underinvestment equilibria fail to exist. A weakening of patent protection can thus lead to more investment in equilibrium. A “nonfragmentation” result is shown to hold: in all free‐entry equilibria, industry concentration is bounded away from zero, no matter how large the market, and despite the existence of underinvestment equilibria.     

Valuation of bankrupt firms

This study compares the market value of firms that reorganizein bankruptcy with estimates of value based on management'spublished cash flow projections. We estimate firm values usingmodels that have been shown in other contexts to generate relativelyprecise estimates of value. We find that these methods generallyyield unbiased estimates of value, but the dispersion of valuationerrors is very wide - the sample ratio of estimated value tomarket value varies from less than 20% to greater than 250%.Cross-sectional analysis indicates that the variation in theseerrors is related to empirical proxies for claimholders' incentivesto overstate or understate the firm's value.     

Tax avoidance in family firms: Evidence from large private firms

Ownership structure plays an important role in firms’ decisions on tax avoidance. Recently, the effect of family ownership on corporate tax avoidance has become an issue of increasing interest among scholars from both the fields of family business research and tax research; however, empirical findings have so far remained ambiguous. Based on a unique sample of 678 large private firms from Germany, we show that for unlisted large firms (i) family firms avoid more tax than non-family firms, (ii) tax avoidance increases with the percentage of family ownership, and (iii) tax avoidance is a function of the number of shareholders. We interpret our results as evidence that benefits from avoiding taxes outweigh the non-tax costs in the case of large private family firms in Germany. Furthermore, as the number of family shareholders increases, family firms satisfy increasing demand for dividends by avoiding taxes.     

Trade costs, firms and productivity

This paper examines the response of U.S. manufacturing industries and plants to changes in trade costs using a unique new dataset on industry-level tariff and transportation rates. Our results lend support to recent heterogeneous-firm models of international trade that predict a reallocation of economic activity towards high-productivity firms as trade costs fall. We find that industries experiencing relatively large declines in trade costs exhibit relatively strong productivity growth. We also find that low-productivity plants in industries with falling trade costs are more likely to die; that relatively high-productivity non-exporters are more likely to start exporting in response to falling trade costs; and that existing exporters increase their shipments abroad as trade costs fall. Finally, we provide evidence of productivity growth within firms in response to decreases in industry-level trade costs.     

The organizational culture of public accounting firms: evidence from Taiwanese local and US affiliated firms

This study examines the organizational cultures of public accounting firms with data from US affiliated international accounting firms in Taiwan and Taiwanese local firms. Hypotheses are tested about the impact of the national culture of the US firms on their Taiwanese affiliates, and about cultural differences across function and rank. The study extends previous research by (1) examining an oriental country whose culture is significantly different from that of the US, (2) using the Hofstede, G., Neuijen, B., Ohayv, D. D., & Sanders G. (1990). Measuring organizational cultures: a qualitative and quantitative study across twenty cases. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, 286–316 practices-based measure of organizational culture, and (3) examining the importance of the fit between employee preferences and organizational culture in influencing organizational commitment, job satisfaction and propensity to remain with the organization. Support is found for the cultural impact and fit hypotheses. Additonally, while culture is found to be relatively homogeneous across function, differences are found across rank.     

论会计师事务所组织文化及组织演化模式

一、会计师事务所的组织文化任何组织都具有积累组织文化的功能,且具有个性化、一贯性和隐含的控制性等特征。一般来说,组织文化具有两面性。一方面可以形成无形的核心能力,但另一方面可能造成企业文化的冲突和碰撞,沉淀成文化风险,成为企业发展障碍。对会计师事务