Maximizing the firm's value to society through ethical business decisions: Incorporating ‘moral debt’ claims

We argue that all three forms of justice (economic, legal, distributive) require to be incorporated into the firm's business decisions in order to protect stakeholders’ alienable and inalienable rights. In addition, the firm has ‘moral debt’ obligations which require to be distributed fairly amongst all stakeholders. We develop a model that demonstrates that just distribution of stakeholders’ ‘moral debt’ and residual claims leads to the maximization of the firm's value to society in the long-run.     

The Evolution of Client‐Consultant Relationships: A Situational Analysis of IT Consultancy in the Public Sector

This research proposes a situational understanding of the role of con‐sultants. The analysis is grounded on a case from Italian local government over a ten year period. The case is one of the earliest adopters of an ERP system in the public sector. The paper extends current understanding of client‐consultant relationships by developing a specific picture of changes in the role of consultants over time. In the case analysed, multiple changes in client‐consultant relationships occurred. They were due to particular historical contingencies in the evolution of the structure of expertise in the field. The case contributes to knowledge on consultants by contrasting bilateral and instantaneous accounts of client‐consultant relationship with a perspective that overcomes the distinction between context and individual action.     

Can exchange rate volatility explain persistence in the forward premium?

The persistence of the forward premium has been cited both as evidence of the failure of the unbiasedness hypothesis and as rationale for the forward premium anomaly. This paper examines the recent proposition that forward premium persistence can be explained solely by the conditional variance of the spot rate. We provide theoretical and empirical evidence to challenge this proposition. Our empirical results are shown to be robust to the presence of structural breaks. A corollary of the results is that the ‘true’ risk premium contains a long memory component. This is non-standard and has implications for the construction of rational expectations models of the foreign exchange market.     

A coevolutionary analysis of organisational systems and processes: Quantitative applications to information system dynamics in small entrepreneurial firms

We present a quantitative, dynamic analysis of coevolution in the new firm. Organisation is treated as a process, rather than a state, involving the simultaneous evolution of interacting systems within, and between, small firms and their environment. Our quantitative analysis uses primary source, time-elapsed data, obtained by face-to-face interviews with entrepreneurs. We found a link between performance and microevolutionary experience. High performers were more innovative, more radical ‘change makers’, more willing to ‘wait and see’, and more willing to use ‘soft’ technologies than low performers.     

What Drives Private Equity Returns?– Fund Inflows,Skilled GPs,and/or Risk?*

This paper analyzes the determinants of returns generated by mature European private equity funds. It starts from the presumption that this asset class is characterized by illiquidity, stickiness, and segmentation. Given this presumption, Gompers and Lerner (2000) have shown that venture deal valuations are driven by overall fund inflows into the industry that yield the putative ‘money chasing deals’ phenomenon. It is the aim of this paper to show that this phenomenon explains a significant part of the variation in private equity funds' returns. This is especially true for venture funds, as they are affected more by illiquidity and segmentation than buy‐out funds. In the context of a WLS‐regression approach the paper reports a highly significant impact of total fund inflows on fund returns. It can also be shown that private equity funds' returns are driven by GP's skills as well as stand‐alone investment risk. In a bootstrapping context we can show that most of these results are quite stable.     

大数据时代：构建央行金融业综合统计初探

大数据时代加速了金融业的发展,商业银行等金融机构纷纷布局大数据战略,而金融机构、金融产品和创新的不断涌现,使得肩负金融业统计重任的人民银行面临严峻的形势,现行的金融统计制度在统计效率、工作方法、工作制度、产品输出和个性化服务方面难以满足大数据时代的需求,迫切需要构建适应大数据时代的金融统计框架,推进金融业综合统计和统计标准化、加强统计数据挖掘分析和丰富金融统计服务产品。     

大数据时代的纳税评估信息采集模式

面对市场主体数量的爆炸性增长,只有结合大数据时代的信息特征及需求,对传统的纳税评估信息采集模式进行创新才能适应税务信息化发展的要求。通过非结构化数据采集、可视化服务、采集众包模式,创新纳税评估信息采集流程和管理;依托物联网技术,创立适应纳税评估数据海量增长不确定性的弹性构架体系。构建以国家统一税务应用平台为中心,以共享数据辅助系统为支撑的纳税评估信息采集模式,是适应大数据时代信息采集需求,促进税源监控,提高纳税评估效率的重要方式。     

Ownership Concentration,State Ownership,and Effective Tax Rates: Evidence from China’s Listed Firms*

This paper examines the effect of ownership concentration and state ownership on the tax reporting practices of China’s publicly listed firms. I argue that ownership concentration and state ownership are important for tax reporting practices in China because listed firms have high ownership concentrations and high levels of state ownership. Using a sample of 758 listed Chinese firms over the 1998–2008 time period, I find that firms with concentrated share ownership have lower effective tax rates. I also find that firms whose largest shareholders are government‐related have higher effective tax rates compared to firms whose largest shareholders are nongovernment related. In other words, the nature of the largest shareholder (government vs. nongovernment) matters. I also show that ownership‐concentrated firms are able to achieve preferential statutory tax rates compared to firms with low ownership concentration regardless of the identity of the largest shareholder.     

我国数字经济发展战略与路径研究--基于国际经验的考察

当前我国经济正处于增速放缓、结构升级及经济发展动力转换的新常态阶段。寻找新的经济增长点和新动能是经济新常态时期的重要任务和目标,而发展数字经济则是目前最优的经济发展模式。2017年数字经济被写入政府工作报告,预示着数字经济作为继农业经济和工业经济发展模式之后的又一新型社会经济发展形态,已成为新常态下中国经济发展的新动能,也是推动我国供给侧结构性改革的重要抓手。但数字经济模式属于新型经济发展模式,目前尚无一个完整的发展参考体系,需要我国自寻探究发展道路。由此,本文在研究数字经济内涵及其战略意义的基础上,基于我国数字经济发展现状和国外发展战略提出了我国数字经济的具体发展路径。     

Monitoring Legal Compliance: The Growth of Compliance Committees*

The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations’ (COSO) framework outlines three objectives of internal control. This paper addresses the third and least emphasized component, compliance with laws and regulations. We address the growing importance of board‐level oversight of legal compliance and the emerging role of a separate board committee dedicated to the compliance function. A recent COSO project emphasizes the importance of the monitoring function; COSO observes that many companies are not conducting this function effectively. We examine the use of a board‐level compliance committee to monitor legal compliance. We also discuss the roles of corporate counsel and internal auditors in assisting with monitoring. Our results show that over the last 15 years a growing percentage of S&P 500 firms have adopted a board‐level compliance committee. Internal auditors’ specialized training and expertise in the areas of monitoring and prevention would complement the company’s legal expertise and be of significant value to boards of directors in helping them fulfill their compliance oversight responsibilities.     

The Prestige disaster: risk or danger?

The sinking of the Prestige off the coast of Galicia in north-west Spain in November 2002 was an enormous environmental disaster and it had an immense media impact both nationally and internationally, lasting weeks as a social and political phenomenon. Five days before the ship sank, the captain had reported to the maritime authorities that the old tanker was damaged and in trouble. During these five days leading up to the shipwreck, a crucial decision had to be made: what should be done with this dangerous oil tanker? Temporality is a property of the hazardous events which, after being noticed, are evaluated as imminent or deferred. This temporality makes a clear difference between a risk and a danger. Whereas the risk has time to anticipate the events, danger has just a very short time or even has no time. At this point, the Prestige disaster turns to be paradigmatic. To tow away this damaged oil tanker was a risk decision which estimated that there was still a time to prevent its running aground what meant to follow the story repeatedly told by the narrative context of risk. However, the Prestige had been spilling out oil all the time and the damage was not a probability but a fait accompli. This accident has not a risk temporality; in fact, it had not temporality at all because it demanded an immediate intervention. My conclusion here is that this crisis was managed in terms of risk when it should have been treated as a danger situation.     

Audit Quality and the Market Valuation of Banks’ Allowance for Loan Losses*

The recent banking crisis has led market participants to focus on the adequacy and quality of banks’ balance sheet items such as the allowance for loan losses. Beaver and Engel (1996) document that the capital market prices the nondiscretionary component of loan loss allowance negatively and the discretionary component less negatively. Using data from the pre‐crisis period and three measures of audit quality, auditor type (i.e., Big 5 versus non–Big 5), auditor industry specialization/expertise, and audit and nonaudit fees paid to auditors, we examine the effect of audit quality on the market valuation of the discretionary component of the allowance for loan losses. We find that, relative to the nondiscretionary component, the market valuation of the discretionary component of loan loss allowance is higher for banks audited by Big 5 auditors than for banks audited by non–Big 5 auditors. We also find that the relative market valuation of the discretionary component of loan loss allowance is increasing in auditor expertise. Regarding the impact of fees paid to auditors, we find that banks paying higher audit fees have higher relative market valuation of the discretionary component of the allowance for loan losses, but banks that pay higher nonaudit fees do not.     

企业成长阶段、融资需求与金融市场的专业化分工

本文梳理了实体经济结构对金融市场结构影响的国内外文献,分析了企业成长阶段、融资需求与金融市场专业化分工的关系,得到以下结论:(1)对于市场规则体系不完善的地区和处于创建阶段的企业,融资决策所需的可数码化的信息较少,大多是不确定的意会式信息,适合中小银行提供融资服务。(2)对于市场规则体系较完善的地区和处于规模扩张阶段的企业,企业可向银行提供较多的可数码化的信息,用于风险评估和融资决策,企业适合大银行提供融资服务。(3)对于市场规则体系发育相对成熟的地区,企业具有一定的自主知识品牌和核心竞争力,企业可为外部投资者提供充分的可数码化的信息进行量化的风险评估和资产定价时,适合通过证券市场进行直接融资。     

基于区块链的新型数字资产应用:一种面向监管的弱中心化理论

本文将区块链技术分为数据库与数字资产两种应用类型。其中,数字资产类应用是一种特殊的区块链数据库应用,其记录的数据类型是具有真实价值的资产权属凭证,因此能够产生经济现象。在此基础上,本文提出了一种面向监管的弱中心化数字资产应用理论,从技术与社会等层面分析了弱中心化的必然性,给出了货币、商品与证券这三大类数字资产的界定方法与监管建议,并框定了新兴数字资产应用的基本原则,为政府与市场回应相关监管问题提供理论基础,从而在逻辑起点上为我国数字经济与智能社会的发展打下健康根基。