The effects of adopting the Balanced Scorecard on shareholder returns

Many firms have adopted the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a way to implement strategy and measure firm performance. This paper uses a long-horizon event study methodology to examine the relationship between BSC adoption and shareholder returns. Using a matched pair design, we show that firms who adopt the BSC significantly outperform firms that do not adopt the BSC over a three year period beginning with the year of adoption. Our results are robust for different matching criteria. There is also evidence that firms earn greater excess returns after adoption of the BSC than before. These results provide strong evidence that the BSC is an effective strategic management tool that leads to improved shareholder returns.     

Why high productivity growth of banks preceded the financial crisis

The high levels of operating efficiency, profits, and market values for banks in the years before the financial crisis raise reasonable doubts about the accuracy of the assessments of the efficiency of banking intermediation. We examine the productivity growth in Spanish banks in the pre-crisis period by separating out the contributions to productivity growth from business practices and from industry-wide technological progress. We find that more than two thirds of the estimated productivity growth in the years 2000–2007 is attributed to banks’ practices, such as the expansion of credit in the housing market, the high recourse to securitization and short-term finance, the reduction in liquidity holdings, and the leveraging process of banks’ balance sheets, that the literature claims are the ultimate causes of the crisis. We estimate that the remaining cumulative annual growth rate is 2.8% for the industry’s technical progress, which is similar to that in the period of 1992–2000.     

International portfolio diversification and the home bias puzzle

We review the literature on equity home bias, a phenomenon stating that investors do not hold enough foreign equities for an optimally diversified portfolio. We begin by defining the home bias measurement and reviewing related evidence on the bias. Further, we consider four explanations for this puzzling phenomenon: barriers to foreign investment, country-specific risks, information asymmetry, and cultural and behavioral factors. We analyze the related theoretical arguments and empirical findings of prior studies within each explanation. Based on the discussion of previous studies, several avenues for future research are suggested. (JEL G11, G15, F41)     

Nigerian professional investors' sense-making of the impact of shareholder activism on corporate accountability

This study investigates the perceptions of professional investors (PIs) on the impact of three groups of shareholder activists (i.e., reputable, sophisticated, or institutional) on corporate accountability in a weak institutional context and how this shapes the PIs’ investment recommendations. Relying on a sense-making theoretical perspective of the power and competence of shareholder activists obtained through semi-structured interviews with 27 Nigerian PIs, we reveal that the impact of shareholder activism occurs in three activism-accountability dimensions: dominant, insignificant, and emerging. Subsequently, we unpack factors that explain the power and influence of the dominant activism of reputable activists, the insignificant activism of sophisticated activists and the emerging activism of institutional activists. By advocating a contextual understanding of shareholder activism, this article sheds much-needed insights into the concept of ‘activism-accountability’ in a weak institutional environment.     

Decoupled earnings: An institutional perspective of the consequences of maximizing shareholder value

Recent accounting scandals have brought focus on the role of management in financial statement manipulation. This focus on micro-behavior does not capture the complexities of earnings management. Taking an institutional rather than agency theory approach, earnings management is posited as a decoupled behavior. A behavior that results from not only agency-based motivations of self-interests, but also regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive legitimacy pressures. Conformity to the central logic of “maximizing shareholder value” found in the “US financial market” institutional field provides the context in which to explore earnings management as a decoupled behavior. Insights for earnings management include the blending of agency and institutional theory perspectives to gain a more complete understanding of the behavior and the positing of a continuum of earnings management conducive to this merger. Institutional theory benefits from exploring the nesting in multiple institutional fields.     

Behavior in a simplified stock market: the status quo bias, the disposition effect and the ostrich effect

Previous literature suggests specific behavioral tendencies cause investors to deviate from optimal investing. We investigate three such tendencies in a simplified stock market. Subjects do trade for better stocks, but do not reach their maximum potential earnings, most commonly because they choose to ignore information and continue to hold on to a stock regardless of its performance. The results support the predictions of the status quo bias, but not the ostrich effect or the disposition effect. This research is an extension of Brown’s undergraduate honors thesis at Ohio State University. Financial support was provided by the Honor’s College and the Department of Economics at Ohio State University. Kagel’s research was partially supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. We received helpful comments from Hal Arkes, David Cooper and two anonymous referees.     

Empirical investigation of securitisation drivers: the case of Italian banks

This paper explores the determinants of securitisation by Italian banks over the period 1999–2006, investigating the funding, specialisation, and regulatory capital arbitrage hypotheses. According to our evidence, when we consider all securitisation types together, Italian banks seem to have securitised out of funding motives, to diversify and optimise their available funding channels. When we separately consider securitisations backed by residential mortgages and those backed by non-performing loans, we find that the main factors affecting the former type of securitisation are the need for funding and capital arbitrage motivation, whereas the latter appear to have been affected to a lesser extent by a need for funding and to have also been slightly conditioned by a desire to specialise.     

SEC Rule 14a-8 shareholder proposals: No-action requests,determinants, and the role of SEC staff

Under SEC Rule 14a-8, shareholders can petition management to include a topic for vote on the annual proxy statement. In response, management may request no-action relief from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) staff to exclude unwelcome proposals. Using a sample of 3,040 no-action letters from the SEC between 2008 and 2019, I examine the determinants of the SEC staff’s decision to grant no-action relief. I find that legal characteristics, pressures on the staff, and proposal attributes have a statistically significant association with the SEC’s decision. Beyond these factors, I find evidence individual SEC staff members differ in the likelihood that they grant no-action relief. On average, these staff members appear to add value, as evidenced by a positive market response to their decisions, but this favorable valuation effect is concentrated among relatively more experienced staff.     

互联网金融形势下的银行业发展

随着我国金融改革不断加深、互联网金融不断发展,互联网企业与银行展开着激烈的市场争夺战,不断地改变金融业的格局,本文分析了互联网金融对银行业的发展造成的冲击和商业银行进行的战略跟进,并进一步探讨了未来商业银行如何在互联网金融浪潮下应对挑战的策略.     

Political systems and the financial soundness of Islamic banks

We investigate whether and how political systems affect the financial soundness of conventional and Islamic banks. Using factors extracted from principal component analysis, we find that Islamic banks underperform their conventional counterparts in more democratic political systems but outperform them in hybrid and Sharia’a-based legal systems. The findings reflect the challenges Islamic banks face in Western countries in terms of perception, financial infrastructure, and regulatory constraints while mirroring the recognition of their specificities and their cultural and religious compliance with Sharia’a law in Muslim countries. The findings are robust to a battery of alternative estimation techniques and methods of correcting standard errors.     

Systemic banks and the lender of last resort

We propose a model where systemic and non-systemic banks are exposed to liquidity shortfalls so that a lender of last resort policy is required. We find that it is socially optimal to override the decision of the central bank by the unconditional provision of liquidity support when the shortfall is large enough, i.e. in crisis times. The existence of systemic banks provides a rationale for the central bank to act as lender of last resort for non-systemic banks in a larger range of their liquidity shortfalls. However, the impact of systemic risk on the optimal allocation of the lender of last resort responsibilities for systemic banks depends on the relative size of counteracting effects.     

The impact of competition on the operations of foreign banks in Australia in the post-deregulation period

In 1985, Australia removed its long-standing embargo on the entry of foreign banks. The Australian market therefore provides an opportunity to study the factors influencing multinational bank expansion in a new host country. This paper tests a model of the size of multinational banking operations in Australia in the post-embargo period. One major finding is that a push for market share in a highly competitive environment led to risky lending practices in the global boom-bust economic climate of the late 1980s, which adversely affected the foreign banks’ performance. Another is that competition from home country banks had a significantly negative effect on foreign banks’ asset volumes.     

普惠金融发展中的商业银行产品创新问题分析

为实现普惠金融的商业可持续发展,需要创新研发有针对性的金融产品。在发展普惠金融的过程中,商业银行需要做好产品创新以扩大业务种类、丰富服务渠道、扩充服务客户、提升服务水平,最终提高竞争实力。在具体做好产品创新发展普惠金融的过程中,商业银行需要认真分析客户需求,提高产品创新的针对性,充分借助互联网金融渠道,积极做好与外部机构合作,全面做好风险管理。     

Technical analysis as the representation of typical cognitive biases

The present research provides a justification for the popularity of the technical analysis. It finds that financial analysts firmly discriminate between two types of technical signals—those based on typical cognitive biases and “empty” signals that sound like a technical analysis but are without any connotation with psychological inclinations.At the same time that they treat them differently, different analysts rate these items very similarly. These results suggest that the popularity of technical analysis is associated with its relation to the typical cognitive biases of humans.     

个人投资者的行为金融学分析

行为金融是当前金融经济学的研究热点。它注重研究投资者的实际决策行为，解释金融市场上的各种现象。个人投资者行为分析是行为金融研究的重要组成部分。行为金融较为成功地解释了个人投资者的判断与决策、投资组合、策略与交易以及退休储蓄等方面的行为。     

农村金融发展对收入分配的机制分析与实证研究

在分析金融发展影响收入分配的传导机制的基础上,选择1978～2009年相关指标对城乡收入差距中金融发展因素进行实证研究。实证结果显示,农村金融发展规模、农村金融发展效率和农村金融发展结构等指标与农村经济发展的关系密切,但影响效果各有不同。当前,农村金融发展必须坚持以科学发展观为指导,按照统筹城乡经济金融协调发展的根本要求,继续深化农村金融体制改革,努力消除农村金融抑制,优化农村金融发展结构,建立适应社会主义市场经济发展根本要求的农村金融体系。     

我国商业银行理财业务发展研究

近年来,随着我国金融体制改革的快速推进,个人理财业务逐渐成为银行业务发展的新方向和竞争焦点所在。虽然经过几年的发展,我国商业银行的个人理财业务已取得一定成绩,但其发展过程中还存在着机制流程以及后台支持体系的欠缺,大量高素质理财人才的缺乏等问题。本文提出了发展我国商业银行个人理财业务的对策建议。     

当前山东省外汇指定银行贸易融资状况分析及对策选择

受金融危机影响,近期我国贸易融资业务大幅萎缩,对外贸进出口产生不利影响.本文以山东省为例,对当前银行贸易融资业务经营情况进行了调查,深入分析了贸易融资业务规模萎缩的原因,并提出了相关的政策建议.     

Leaving the darkness: The emergence of shadow banks

This paper studies the interaction between bank capital regulation, moral hazard and co-existence of traditional and shadow banks. Bank managers can choose between traditional banking and off-balance sheet special purpose vehicles (SPV), in a setup with deposit insurance and moral hazard. We first show that in the absence of SPV intermediation, capital requirements are ineffective at preventing the moral hazard problem originated by deposit insurance. We find that shadow banks can improve financial stability, when there is full information sharing. Finally, we analyze the case of neglected tail risk. We find that under such circumstances, the SPV will increase financial risk by exposing the system to extreme events.     

当前山东省外汇指定银行贸易融资状况分析及对策选择

受金融危机影响,近期我国贸易融资业务大幅萎缩,对外贸进出口产生不利影响。本文以山东省为例,对当前银行贸易融资业务经营情况进行了调查,深入分析了贸易融资业务规模萎缩的原因,并提出了相关的政策建议。