公司治理、代理成本与审计定价--基于2001-2003年我国A股上市公司的实证研究

笔者借助公司内部治理框架,运用2001-2003年我国A股上市公司面板数据,考察了代理成本对于审计定价的影响.研究结果显示,当存在其他变量时,独立董事制度、高管层持股和董事长与总经理两职设置情况对审计定价存在显著影响,这一结果表明独立董事制度、高管层持股对于公司内部治理具有积极意义;加快董事长和总经理的两职分离有助于降低代理成本,改善公司内部治理.     

Taxes,Tuition Fees,and Education for Pleasure

The fact that education provides both a productive and a consumptive (nonproductive) return has important and, in some cases, dramatic implications for optimal taxes and tuition fees. Using a simple model, we show that when the consumption share in education is endogenous and tuition fees are unconstrained, the optimal tax/fee system involves regressive income taxes and high tuition fees. A progressive labor income tax system may, on the other hand, be a second‐best response to politically constrained, low tuition fees. Finally, the existence of individuals with different abilities will also move the optimal income tax system toward progressivity.     

A utilitarian approach to the provision and pricing of excludable public goods

This paper studies utilitarian welfare maximization in a large economy with an excludable public good where individual preferences are private information. If inequality aversion is large, optimal allocations involve the use of admission fees and exclusion to redistribute resources from people who benefit a lot from the public good to people who benefit little. If inequality aversion is close to zero, optimal admission fees are zero. Because of inequality aversion, information rents of people who benefit a lot from the public good receive less weight, so optimal provision levels for the public good are below first-best levels.     

Legal effort and optimal legal expenses insurance

In this paper we derive optimal legal expenses insurance for litigants and payment method for lawyers when neither the litigant's quantity choice nor the lawyer's legal effort is contractible. Three points are highlighted as our conclusions. First, to design an optimal insurance-payment system, demand-side cost-sharing is necessary. Second, supply-side cost-sharing is necessary only if the quantity and effort are substitutes and the payment contract involves hourly fees. Third, the optimal insurance-payment system could be achieved under conditional fees and sliding fees. Reputation incentives and side-contracts are also discussed in this paper.     

Enforcement,payments, and development projects near protected areas: how the market setting determines what works where

This paper examines a model of the decisions made by developing country protected area managers that recognizes that rural people react to policies differently in various market settings. For each of three market settings, the paper identifies the make-up of an optimal management plan that consists of three possible policies: enforcement, agricultural development projects, and conservation payments. The results ground a discussion of the likelihood of success of conservation policies, the failure of Integrated Conservation and Development Projects, and the use of some policies as mechanisms to compensate rural people for lost access to resources within protected areas.     

How does a public innovator license a foreign rival?

This paper uniquely considers the optimal two‐part fee of a public firm innovator licensing to a more efficient foreign rival. This is both theoretically interesting and empirically relevant. While previous research emphasises the importance of fixed fees for public firms, we show that, in this case, ad valorem fees typically dominate both fixed fees and per unit royalties. This domination carries over when a private domestic competitor is also added to the market.     

Price Discrimination in Public Healthcare

Could a public healthcare system use price discrimination—paying medical service providers different fees, depending on the service provider's quality—lead to improvements in social welfare? We show that differentiating medical fees by quality increases social welfare relative to uniform pricing (i.e. quality‐invariant fee schedules) whenever hospitals and doctors have private information about their own ability. We also show that by moving from uniform to differentiated medical fees, the public healthcare system can effectively incentivise good doctors and hospitals (i.e. low‐cost‐types) to provide even higher levels of quality than they would under complete information. In the socially optimal quality‐differentiated medical fee system, low‐cost‐type medical‐service providers enjoy a rent due to their informational advantage. Informational rent is socially beneficial because it gives service providers a strong incentive to invest in the extra training required to deliver high‐quality services at low cost, providing yet another efficiency gain from quality‐differentiated medical fees.     

国土空间规划背景下自然保护地乡村社区 规划问题探讨

自然保护地乡村社区是影响自然保护成效的重要因素，其性质是特殊保护目标下的人文生态综合体。自然保护地乡村社区规划包含了比一般“村庄规划”更广义的构架，包括涉及社区的自然保护地规划、空间规划和部门专项规划3类。三者以不同的方式作用于乡村社区，但之间缺乏紧密的衔接和联系，而国土空间规划体系和自然保护地体系的重构为各类自然保护地乡村社区规划提供衔接的可能。未来应通过融入乡村社区生态系统观和可持续发展理念、建立自然保护地乡村社区各规划之间的衔接、细化乡村社区规划管控和引导内容，以及优化自然保护地乡村社区规划管理体制，实现自然保护地乡村社区可持续发展目标下的多元规划协同。     

Underperformance of Actively Managed Portfolios: Some Behavioral Insights

Abstract

Two glaring anomalies in investment management are apparent: (1) after fees, active portfolio managers do worse than market indices, and (2) clients continue to pay for services they don’t receive. The purpose of this paper is to offer explanations of these anomalies from a behavioral perspective. We explore some of the cognitive biases that perpetuate active management and subsequent underperformance, including herding, disposition, and endowment effects, as well as conservatism and status quo biases, overconfidence, and agency problems. Investors’ continued use of active managers despite persistent disappointing returns is attributed to being victims of framing effect, hot-hand fallacy, lack of knowledge as well as intimidation or insecurity, and status quo bias. We propose some ways that portfolio managers and investors could improve their decision making.     

Price discrimination and efficient matching

This paper considers the problem of a monopoly matchmaker that uses a schedule of entrance fees to sort different types of agents on the two sides of a matching market into exclusive meeting places, where agents randomly form pairwise matches. We make the standard assumption that the match value function exhibits complementarities, so that matching types at equal percentiles maximizes total match value and is efficient. We provide necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for the revenue-maximizing sorting to be efficient. These conditions require the match value function, modified to incorporate the incentive cost of eliciting private type information, to exhibit complementarities in types.JEL Clalssification Numbers C7, D4We thank Jonathan Levin, Tracy Lewis, and the seminar audience at University of California at Los Angeles, University of British Columbia, Duke University, and 2003 Econometric Society North American Summer Meeting for comments and suggestions. We are also grateful for helpful suggestions from the referees and the Editor     

深圳市市政公园游客行为调查与分析

深圳市市政公园免费对外开放,其优美的环境和完善的设施已成为市民和外来务工人员休闲娱乐的好去处。文章对市政公园游客的结构、游园目的、交通方式、逗留时间、游园频率、消费情况及游客对公园清洁生产活动进行了具体调查和分析,得出了游客游园的基本资料及游客对深圳市政公园管理的认可程度,并在此基础上提出了深圳市市政公园建设与管理的几点建议。     

Political competition,tax salience and accountability. Theory and evidence from Italy

This paper argues that electoral competition may hinder rather than foster political accountability, especially when elected officers can choose among a number of tax instruments. We develop a political agency model showing that politicians in more competitive jurisdictions use less salient tax instruments more intensely. Defining salience as visibility or, analogously, as voters' awareness of the costs associated with specific government revenue sources, we argue that voters are less likely to hold politicians to account for the associated tax burden of a less salient instrument. This in turn implies that strategic politicians will more heavily rely on less salient revenue sources when electoral competition is stronger. Using data on Italian municipal elections and taxes over a 10-year period, we determine the degree of salience of various tax instruments, including property taxes (high salience) and government fees for official documents (low salience). We then show that mayors facing stronger competition for re-election use less salient tax instruments more intensely.     

A Latent Class Nested Logit Model for Rank-Ordered Data with Application to Cork Oak Reforestation

We analyze stated ranking data collected from recreational visitors to the Alcornocales Natural Park (ANP) in Spain. The ANP is a large protected area which comprises mainly cork oak woodlands. The visitors ranked cork oak reforestation programs delivering different sets of environmental (reforestation technique, biodiversity, forest surface) and social (jobs and recreation sites created) outcomes. We specify a novel latent class nested logit model for rank-ordered data to estimate the distribution of willingness-to-pay for each outcome. Our modeling approach jointly exploits recent advances in discrete choice methods. The results suggest that prioritizing biodiversity would increase certainty over public support for a reforestation program. In addition, a substantial fraction of the visitor population are willing to pay more for the social outcomes than the environmental outcomes, whereas the existing reforestation subsidies are often justified by the environmental outcomes alone.     

自然保护地与生态保护红线关系研究

当前中国国土空间规划体系和自然保护地体系等多 项改革均进入关键时期,全国各地正全面开展生态保护红线的 核验和划定工作。自然保护地与生态保护红线的相互关系成为 红线划定的难点,相关研究亟须开展。通过对相关政策文件的 文本分析,研究生态保护红线的内涵演变、发展特点,以及自 然保护地与生态保护红线的相互关系,提出自然保护地与生态 保护红线相互关系的2种模式,即包含模式和交错模式,并认 为交错模式更能充分发挥生态保护红线和自然保护地2种体制 在保护最重要和最美丽国土空间方面的重要作用。最后,针对 当前生态保护红线划定工作提出2点建议。     

国际荒野地保护实践评析：基于荒野 制图、系统性与连通性的视角

在生物多样性丧失和气候变化的双重背景下,荒野 地保护实践变得越来越重要。从荒野制图、系统性与连通性 3个视角切入,评析国际荒野地保护实践。包括：1)以苏格 兰为例,评析基于荒野制图的荒野地保护实践,指出荒野地 图是开展荒野地保护实践的基础,并需要将地图与政策紧密 结合;2)以美国国家荒野保护体系(National Wilderness Preservation System)和欧洲荒野网络(European Wilderness Network)为例,评析荒野地的系统性保护实 践,指出只有建立系统性的荒野地保护机制,才能确保荒野 地保护的有效性和长久性;3)以北美野地网络(Wildlands Network)为例,评析荒野地的连通性保护实践,指出在景 观破碎化的区域中,荒野地连通性保护对于维持生态过程具 有重要意义。在荒野地保护实践中,荒野制图、系统性保护 和连通性保护是3个重要的视角,对中国国土空间规划、国家 公园与自然保护地体系建设、生态网络构建等生态实践具有 启发意义。     

Effects of the October 2013 U.S. Federal government shutdown on National Park gateway communities: the case of Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor,Maine

The U.S. Federal Government experienced a shutdown that halted much of its spending and services over 16 days in October 2013. Federal government officials noted a wide variety of impacts that the shutdown had on economic activity, including a reduction in the admission fees collected by the National Park Service and losses of visitor spending in ‘gateway communities’ located near national parks and monuments. This article examines the effects of the October 2013 federal government shutdown on Acadia National Park’s gateway community of Bar Harbor, Maine. Regression results show that the 16-day shutdown is associated with a 76% reduction in Acadia visitation in October 2013 and a 13% reduction in tourism-related sales. This suggests that an estimated 17% of the potential visitors impacted by the Acadia closure cancelled their trips to Bar Harbor. This change in visitor behaviour is a reasonably large response to a short-term event such as the government shutdown.     

Protected areas, wildlife conservation, and local welfare

The establishment and expansion of protected areas in Africa have been motivated by the aspiration of increased wildlife abundance. However, during the past decades, this practice has been subject to a massive debate. While some claim that protected areas have failed in preserving African wildlife, others claim that existing protected areas are successful. This paper adds to this debate by presenting a bio-economic analysis of protected area expansion. The model considers a hunter-agrarian community located on the border of a protected area. An expansion of the protected area means less land for agricultural cultivation and hunting. Depending on the economic conditions of these activities, the model demonstrates that protected area expansion may reduce the degree of wildlife conservation. In addition, it may reduce the welfare of the local people.     

Effluent fees and market structure

This paper explores the efficiency properties of a system of effluent fees in a mixed economy in which polluting agents take a variety of organizational forms: private monopoly, the managerial firm, regulated firms, and public bureaus. The analysis, including some crude empirical estimates, suggests that the welfare gains from pollution control are likely to dwarf in magnitude the potential losses from the various imperfections in the economy. The tentative conclusion is that the case for a system of fees that is invariant with respect to organizational form is not seriously compromised by likely deviations from competitive behavior.     

卖空机制、诉讼风险与审计收费

基于我国推出融资融券业务这一“自然实验”,文章考察了卖空机制如何通过改变诉讼风险而影响公司审计收费。研究发现,卖空机制的引入增加了公司股价下跌的压力,并增强了投资者挖掘公司负面消息的动机,从而导致公司审计的诉讼风险提高,会计师事务所要求更高的审计收费。进一步的分析显示,由于国有企业的信息披露环境较差,卖空机制对国有企业审计收费的提升作用更加明显;由于“四大”具有更高的赔偿能力,卖空机制更加显著地增加了“四大”审计公司的审计收费;对于法制环境较差地区的企业,由于管理层更有动机隐藏坏消息,公司审计收费因卖空机制的存在而显著提高。     

Carbon Sequestration with Reforestations and Biodiversity-scenic Values

This paper presents an optimal control model to analyze reforestations with two different species, including commercial values, carbon sequestration and biodiversity or scenic values. We discuss the implications of partial or total internalization of environmental values, showing that internalizing only carbon sequestration may have negative impacts on biodiversity-scenic values. To evaluate the practical relevance, we compare reforestations in the South-west of Spain with cork-oaks (a slow-growing native species) and with eucalyptus (a fast-growing alien species). We do the analysis with two different carbon crediting methods: the Carbon Flow Method and the Ton Year Accounting Method. With the first method, the forest surface increases more, but using mainly eucalyptus. With the second, additional reforestations are done mainly using cork-oaks. We value the impact on visitors of these reforestations using stated preferences methods showing that, when these values are internalized, cork-oaks are favored.