Information Frictions in Uncertain Regulatory Environments: Evidence from U.S. Commercial Banks

Information frictions between firms and regulators are typically seen as a means by which firms evade enforcement. In contrast, we argue that information frictions between firms and regulators can reduce the efficiency of firms’ compliance efforts when the interpretation of regulatory standards is uncertain. We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in distance between firms and their regulators to demonstrate this for a panel of community banks in the US. We find that banks located at greater distance from regulatory field offices face significantly higher administrative costs, at a rate of 20% of administrative costs per hour of travel time. These differences do not come with reduced compliance, are not driven by endogenous regulator choice, and are stable over time. Further, the costs borne by distant firms are negatively related to the scale of the jurisdiction in which they operate, suggesting that information spillovers between firms limit uncertainty about regulatory expectations.     

证券监管的选择性执行:以IPO核准为例

在证券法律体系已经相对比较完备的情况下,执行问题成了学者们关注的焦点。现实中的证券法律执行,经常是执法者在不同时期、针对具体情形有选择性地采取不同的执行强度,即选择性执行。基于IPO核准的经验研究发现,市场低迷阶段的IPO核准速度较慢,这对来自所在辖区政治地位较高地区的公司更为明显;进一步引入发行市盈率后研究发现,市场低迷、所在辖区政治地位较低、发行核准越慢的公司,其发行市盈率越低,但所在辖区政治地位较高地区的公司发行市盈率没有显著更低,在市场繁荣时期却表现出相反的结果。研究结论为理解转型经济中政府管制选择性执行的状况、路径和经济后果提供了一个有益的视角。     

中国商业银行信贷效率评价体系及实证研究——来自16家上市银行的经验证据

通过分析中国商业银行信贷资产的分布现状,设计了中国商业银行信贷效率的评价指标体系,并选取2009-2013年16家上市银行作为样本数据,运用因子分析法对中国商业银行信贷效率进行了实证分析。研究发现,工商银行、建设银行等四大商业银行信贷效率较高,处于绝对领先地位,而中小商业银行信贷效率相对较低。并以此为依据,从商业银行的盈利能力、规模水平、资产质量、风险控制能力等层面给出了提升商业银行信贷效率的相关政策建议。     

市场势力对银行效率影响分析——来自我国商业银行的经验数据

运用我国14家上市和50家未上市商业银行2000~2009年的数据探讨商业银行市场势力对效率的影响。分别测量我国商业银行的市场势力、成本效率以及利润效率,结果发现与未上市商业银行相比,上市商业银行具有较高的市场势力和利润效率以及较低的成本效率。同时分别建立线性模型和非线性模型分析市场势力对效率的影响,结果发现在我国特殊金融环境下,商业银行市场势力与成本效率或利润效率之间均为线性关系;提高商业银行的市场势力,会导致其成本效率显著下降和利润效率显著提升;在所有显著的变量中,信用风险对成本效率和利润效率的影响都是最大的。     

Identity theft in the internet age: Evidence from the U.S. states

This paper examines the determinants of identity theft, focusing especially on the influence of internet diffusion. Results, based on panel data across the U.S. states, show that a 10% in increase households with internet access would increase identity theft by about 9%, ceteris paribus. Other noteworthy findings point to states with greater corrupt activity having greater identity theft but greater police employment not having a significant deterrent impact. Dynamic panel regressions results reveal the presence of inertia in identity thefts. Some implications for policy are discussed.     

The J-Curve: Evidence from commodity trade between Canada and the U.S.

Several studies in the literature have tried to assess the impact of real depreciation of the Canadian dollar on the Canadian trade balance. They have either relied on the trade data between Canada and the rest of the world or between Canada and her major trading partners. In this paper we consider the trade between Canada and her major trading partner, the U.S. However, unlike previous research, we disaggregate the trade data between the two countries by commodity. We use export and import data over the period 1962–2004 from 152 commodities and the bounds testing approach to cointegration and error-correction modeling and show that real depreciation of the Canadian dollar has short-run effects on the trade balance of two-thirds of the industries. However, only in 50% of the industries, the short-run effects translate into the long-run favorable effects.

Salience in Quality Disclosure: Evidence from the U.S. News College Rankings

This paper investigates the impact of college rankings, and the visibility of those rankings, on students’ application decisions. Using natural experiments from U.S. News and World Report College Rankings, we present two main findings. First, we identify a causal impact of rankings on application decisions. When explicit rankings of colleges are published in U.S. News, a one‐rank improvement leads to a 1‐percentage‐point increase in the number of applications to that college. Second, we show that the response to the information represented in rankings depends on the way in which that information is presented. Rankings have no effect on application decisions when colleges are listed alphabetically, even when readers are provided data on college quality and the methodology used to calculate rankings. This finding provides evidence that the salience of information is a central determinant of a firm's demand function, even for purchases as large as college attendance.     

Interest rate and bank stock returns asymmetry: Evidence from U.S. banks

We use the multivariate extension of Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditionally Heteroscedastic (EGARCH) of Nelson, Econometrica, 59: 347–370, 1991 to test for spillover effects and examine the extent of asymmetries between short- and long-term interest rates and portfolios of money center, large, and medium-size banks in the U.S. Our results indicate the existence of price and volatility spillovers from short- and long-term interest rates to the three bank portfolios. We also provide evidence of response asymmetries for the portfolios of money center and large banks, suggesting that money center and large banks are more sensitive to negative than positive short- and long-term interest rate changes.

Regional policy handles in econometric models : Evidence from U.S. development outlays

Our econometric model of growth in state employment includes outlays for 56 Federal programs in the model structure. We found that: (1) there are positive, significant coefficients for most grant and loan guarantee outlays in most industries; (2) outlays do act with a lag of one to three years and possibly longer, (3) disbursements (i.e., cash outlays) are an important explanatory variable which follow obligations (legally binding commitments) with a lag. These findings support our contention that lagged policy handles should be included in the structure of regional econometric models and that disbursements should replace the commonly-used variable, obligations.     

Verifying the state of financing constraints: Evidence from U.S. business credit contracts

Many policymakers are concerned that tight financing constraints for small businesses are stalling the recovery from the Great Recession. This paper empirically assesses two agency problems that induce such financing constraints—one resulting in a “firm balance sheet channel” and one resulting in a “bank balance sheet channel”. Evaluating specific models of these two agency problems against a comprehensive data set of U.S. small business credit contracts, I find strong support for the firm balance sheet channel but only weak support for the bank balance sheet channel. A complementary regression analysis confirms this result. Hence, policies seeking to improve firms’ balance sheets may be desirable to support small business lending in the recovery from the Great Recession.     

U.S. uncertainty and Asian stock prices: Evidence from the asymmetric NARDL model

When uncertainty reduces spending among U.S. consumers, it may affect the bottom line stock performance of Asian producers that cater to their needs. Theory predicts that the impact of uncertainty will be asymmetrical: during the two phases of the business cycle, countercyclic shocks will outweigh procyclic shocks, resulting in phase-specific equilibrium price adjustments. We conjecture that relative to recessions, recoveries bring larger long-run price adjustments, a response to pent-up growth potential. This is an extension of existing theories, which predict that recoveries bring overshooting, a transient reaction to pent-up demand. We test for these asymmetric uncertainty effects on 11 Asian stock market indices over the 2000M08 – 2017M02 period. Our independent measures include the economic policy uncertainty index (EPU) of Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2016), the Chicago Board Options Exchange implied volatility index (VIX), and the financial uncertainty indicator (JLN) of Jurado, Ng, and Ludvigson (2015). To characterize asymmetry, we employ the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model of Shin, Yu, and Greenwood-Nimmo (2014), in which both short- and long-run nonlinearities are captured through positive and negative partial sum decompositions of the explanatory variable(s). Using the NARDL output, we test three hypotheses. The first, that increases in uncertainty (decreases in uncertainty) result in stock price drops (stock price rises), is broadly supported by our analysis. The second, that equilibrium adjustments following negative countercyclic uncertainty shocks exceed those following positive movements, is supported fully by the EPU analysis and partially by the VIX and JLN analyses. The third hypothesis, that recoveries are characterized by overshooting, is consistent only with the behavior of the Chinese stock responses to EPU and VIX shocks. Our results demonstrate the advantages of the NARDL model in characterizing asymmetry. They suggest that while long-run asymmetry is fairly consistent across countries, short-run asymmetry is more country-specific.     

The Market Perception of Convertible Debt Versus Straight Debt: some Empirical Evidence from U.S. Firms and Non-U.S. Firms Listed in the U.S.

Accounting for convertible debt has long been a source of controversy in the accounting profession in the U.S. Current U.S. accounting rules require classifying convertible debt at date of issuance as "entirely debt" until conversion, despite numerous studies that assert that convertible debt is not "entirely debt", but is a blend of debt and equity. Convertible debt has taken on international interest because of the issuance of International Accounting Standard (IAS) 32, Financial Instruments; Disclosure and Presentation, which prescribes reporting separate debt and equity components for convertible debt. This study examines convertible debt issued by U.S. firms and non-U.S. firms listed in the U.S. using a levels approach. Specifically, convertible debt is compared to straight debt and contrary to ex ante expectation, convertible debt was not found to be perceived as being significantly different than straight debt for U.S. firms for any years and is statistically different in only two of the six years tested for non-U.S. firms. The validity of this study's findings is underscored by its research design, which compares convertible debt and straight debt issued by the same firms. The findings suggest that investors regard reported amounts of convertible debt similar to straight debt in their assessment of firm value.     

Financial analyst coverage for U.S. firms facing foreign competition: Evidence from trade liberalization

This study examines financial analyst coverage for U.S. firms following an increase in foreign product market competition. To capture exogenous shocks to domestic firms' competitive environments, we exploit a quasi‐natural experiment from large import tariff reductions over the 1984 to 2005 period in the manufacturing sector. Using data for the years before and after large tariff reductions, our difference‐in‐differences analysis shows evidence of a significant decrease in analyst coverage for incumbent U.S. firms when they face greater entry threat from foreign competitors. We also find that analysts with less firm‐specific experience and less accurate prior‐period forecasts are more likely to stop following the domestic firm when foreign competition intensifies. Overall, the findings suggest that foreign product market competition from global trade liberalization is an important determinant of financial analysts' coverage decisions.     

Productivity trends in U.S. manufacturing: Evidence from the NQ and AIM cost functions

In this paper, we take the econometric approach to productivity measurement in United States manufacturing, using KLEM data over the period from 1953 to 2001. We are also interested in technical change bias, price elasticities, and elasticities of substitution in the U.S. manufacturing industry. We present an empirical comparison and evaluation of the effectiveness of four well-known flexible cost functions—the locally flexible generalized Leontief (see Diewert [1971. An application of the Shephard duality theorem: a generalized Leontief production function. Journal of Political Economy 79, 481–507]), translog (see Christensen et al. [1975. Transendendal logarithmic utility functions. American Economic Review 65, 367–364]), and normalized quadratic (see Diewert and Wales [1987. Flexible functional forms and global curvature conditions. Econometrica 55, 43–68])—and the globally flexible asymptotically ideal model (see Barnett et al. [1991. Semi-nonparametric Bayesian estimation of the asymptotically ideal production model. Journal of Econometrics 49, 5–50]), the latter modified to introduce technical change by means of Thomsen's [2000. Short cuts to dynamic factor demand modelling. Journal of Econometrics 97, 1–23] factor-augmenting efficiency index approach.     

The measurement and transmission of macroeconomic uncertainty: Evidence from the U.S. and BRIC countries

We propose a new measure of macroeconomic uncertainty that incorporates a rich information set from U.S. SPF density forecasts. Our measure has two key advantages over traditional measures: (i) it reflects the subjective perceptions of market participants; and (ii) it is an ex ante measure that does not require a knowledge of realized outcomes. We study the features of this measure of macroeconomic uncertainty and explore its impact on real economic activities within the U.S., as well as its spillover effects for BRIC countries.     

International transmission of stock price movements: Evidence from the U.S. and five Asian-Pacific markets

Using a vector autoregressive analysis, this paper examines the structure of international transmissions in daily returns for six national stock markets— the U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Our results generally indicate that (1) the degree of interdependence among national stock markets has increased substantially after the 1987 stock market crash, (2) the U.S. market plays a dominant role of influencing the Pacific-Basin markets, (3) Japan and Singapore together have a significant persistent impact on the other Asian markets, and (4) the markets in Taiwan and Thailand are not efficient in processing international news.     

The impact of productivity adjusted deviations from PPP on the U.S. inbound FDI: Evidence from Japan, U.K. and Germany

In this paper, we investigate the degree to which productivity adjusted deviations from PPP influence the U.S. inbound FDI. Our results show a significant negative relationship between productivity adjusted misalignments and the U.S. inbound FDI from Germany and the United Kingdom in the short-run, and a positive relationship in the long-run. Hence, indicating that a positive misalignment—undervalued U.S. dollar—leads to a decrease in the U.S. inbound FDI in the short-run and to an increase in the long-run. No significant evidence is found for Japan. Interestingly, unadjusted real exchange rate changes show no statistically significant relationship with respect to the U.S. inbound FDI. The authors thank the reviewers for their insightful comments.     

Do minimum wages raise employment? Evidence from the U.S. retail-trade sector

This paper examines the impact of minimum wages on earnings and employment in selected branches of the retail-trade sector, 1990–2005, using county-level data on employment and a panel regression framework that allows for county-specific trends in sectoral outcomes. We focus on specific subsectors within retail trade that are identified as particularly low-wage. We find little evidence of disemployment effects once we allow for geographic-specific trends. Indeed, in many sectors the evidence points to modest (but robust) positive employment effects.     

证券交易信息系统与交易运行模式辨析

首先对证券交易信息系统的特性进行了阐述,介绍了证券公司交易系统的主要模式。现行的证券交易系统主要分为两类:以单营业部为基础的独立式交易系统和以中心营业部为基础的集中式交易系统。两种不同特性的交易系统又决定了不同的证券交易运行模式,文章的重点在于对不同的交易模式进行对比分析,并结合实际运行情况,找出能适应证券公司发展的、行之有效的交易模式。最终的结论是集中式交易模式是适应市场发展和公司经营的正确选择。     

Market value,market share,and mergers: Evidence from a panel of U.S. firms

Improving shareholder value has often been cited as a merger determinant. Because mergers create larger firms and less competition, they may increase shareholder value through higher market share and stock‐market value. We investigate merger impacts on firms' stock‐market value and market share. We construct panel data from 4 different data sources on public merging and non‐merging U.S. manufacturing firms for 1980–2003. Instrumental variables and factors such as R&D, patents, and citations control for endogeneity. We find that mergers are positively correlated with stock‐market value and market share.