Dynamical macroprudential stress testing using network theory

The increasing frequency and scope of financial crises have made global financial stability one of the major concerns of economic policy and decision makers. This has led to the understanding that financial and banking supervision has to be thought of as a systemic task, focusing on the interdependent relations among the institutions. Using network theory, we develop a dynamic model that uses a bipartite network of banks and their assets to analyze the system’s sensitivity to external shocks in individual asset classes and to evaluate the presence of features underlying the system that could lead to contagion. As a case study, we apply the model to stress test the Venezuelan banking system from 1998 to 2013. The introduced model was able to capture monthly changes in the structure of the system and the sensitivity of bank portfolios to different external shock scenarios and to identify systemic vulnerabilities and their time evolution. The model provides new tools for policy makers and supervision agencies to use for macroprudential dynamical stress testing.     

稳定土地承包关系视域下土地承包经营权继承的法理阐释与规范路径

土地承包经营权的身份性特征使得其继承与否无论在理论上、立法上还是实践上均未达成共识。土地三权分置改革在立法上的落实，使得土地承包经营权继承与否的问题转变成了土地承包权继承、土地经营权继承还是土地承包经营权继承的新分歧。土地承包经营权继承与否、如何继承，应当从法理基础、规范进路综合分析，平衡政策与法律之间的张力。土地承包经营权与土地承包权在法律属性上的同一性，决定了土地承包经营权继承等同于土地承包权继承。在继承规则构造上，坚持集体成员为权利主体，兼顾土地承包经营权的身份性，限定其继承主体为本集体成员。在继承方式上以法定继承为主，赋予尚未取得土地承包经营权的户内集体成员以优先性，遗产分割区分“分户”与“未分户”的情形，并予以变更登记。     

注册体制下商标使用意图要件检视

商标使用意图要件是使用体制国家转向注册体制的关键,对在注册体制下维持和强调发挥商标作用所必需的使用义务以及对相对具体规则进行有效补充等方面具有不可替代性。据此,我国为规制频发的恶意注册和囤积行为,在商标法中增加了使用意图要件的规定,禁止缺乏使用意图的商标注册,并允许就此提出异议和申请无效宣告。然而,本次修改为保证商标法体系的稳定性而过于简略,很容易出现使用意图要件地位不明、意图认定困难、规则适用冲突等问题。对此,有必要在明确商标法注册体制下宣示性与规则性相结合条款与兜底性绝对无效理由条款的法律地位的基础上,吸收国内外实践和立法经验,细化完善意图声明审查、兜底性适用顺位、实际使用豁免无效以及由实际使用衔接注册审查与无效宣告等具体规则,从而增强我国使用意图要件的可操作性并使其发挥应有作用。     

Corporate debt and financial balance sheet adjustment: a comparison of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany

The level of UK corporate debt directly affects financial stability in the United Kingdom because a significant amount of the exposure of the UK financial system is to UK corporates. Our paper provides a comparison of the determinants of corporate debt in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. The comparison serves to benchmark our findings about the determinants of UK corporate debt. In addition, the UK financial sector is significantly exposed to the corporate sectors in the United States, Germany and France. The model assesses the contribution of investment, acquisitions, cash flows and market-to-book values to the determination of debt, and also the tendency of debt to revert to its optimum level. Debt was found to be positively related to the financing needs of the firm, and the optimum level of debt to be negatively related to the market-to-book ratio. This casts some light on the procyclicality of debt.     

中小企业信贷可得性的影响因素

本文利用中国人民银行征信系统的相关数据,实证研究湖南地区中小企业信贷可得性的影响因素,以检验银行对中小企业的贷款技术。实证结果表明:大型和跨区域性银行对中小企业未采取关系型贷款;贷款银行对中小企业的财务特征不太重视;大型和跨区域性银行对中小企业贷款主要采用信用评分技术。作者建议:第一,整合信息资源,发展独立的信用评估机构对中小企业进行信用评估,降低大型和跨区域性银行对中小企业贷款成本和信息不对称程度;第二,大力发展区域性中小商业银行,并鼓励其形成和充分发挥对中小企业进行关系型贷款的比较优势。     

跨国银行并表监管与金融隐私权的冲突及制衡

在金融全球化、金融一体化、金融自由化和金融集团化的趋势下,包括发达国家和发展中国家在内的很多实力雄厚的大银行纷纷走出国门,进行全球扩张和跨国并购,成为国际金融市场上的跨国银行.这种跨国银行的产生和经营给普通的银行监管带来挑战,为了避免对跨国银行监管漏洞的存在从而危及整个国际金融体系的稳健,巴塞尔委员会提出了跨国银行并表监管的核心监管原则.但是在母国具体实施跨国银行并表监管过程中,会遇到东道国保护金融隐私权的法律障碍.因此,由于金融信息披露和金融信息交流所引发的并表监管和金融隐私权保护之间的冲突是不可避免的,为了整个国际金融体系的稳定就必须对两者的冲突进行价值和机制制衡.     

Making visions visible for long-term landscape management

Results generated by planning and futures studies are often too abstract to provide a clear vision of the future to non-specialists. In this study the role of 3D visualization and the challenges in developing and communicating visible visions for our future landscapes is explored. While traditional visualization techniques have been well-known for several hundreds of years digital 3D visualizations are still not yet taken advantage of in long-term planning or in futures studies in general to their full potential. As part of an iterative consultation and participation process a long-term vision for the landscape and land management of the Alport Valley in the Peak District National Park, UK is developed in order to improve the valley's special landscape character, to enhance the valley's visual and recreational attractiveness, to regenerate the woodlands in ways that maximize the long-term benefit of ecology, wildlife and landscape and to get a good balance between wooded areas and open moorland.An early integration of 3D visualization in the planning process offers a wide range of opportunities for exploring alternative futures but it also poses challenges to the expert planners such as being able to react timely, with a high degree of realism and interactively to incorporate new inputs from participating stakeholders. Furthermore, the planner is forced to translate a vision into concrete geographically referenced data. Only then the vision can be visualized. The full potential of 3D visualizations in the planning disciplines and in futures studies is still to be explored. The visualizations could be the basis to communicate the vision - the views of the future - and to share the vision with others in order to influence future change.     

Professional Accounting Standards and the Public Sector—a Mismatch

Professional accounting standards have been applied to the public sector in Australia as part of the process of adopting accrual accounting. However, the reason given for their application to the public sector is questionable. The modes of operation of governments and of the business sector are very different, and accounting standards must be tailored to suit the specific information needs of each sector for the accounting systems to provide relevant information. The four Accounting Concepts Statements and the broad requirements of AAS 29 and AAS 31 are examined to show where changes are needed in the standards to make their information more relevant to the needs of the public sector. These changes would better enable accrual accounting information systems to assist in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of public sector operations and the accountability of governments to parliament and citizens.     

Informations- und Beratungspflichten des Versicherers nach der VVG-Reform

The insurer’s duty to enable the customer to come to an appropriate decision, providing advice and information, is a central topic of the reform of the German insurance contract law. The obligations of intermediaries given by the Directive 2002/92/EC on insurance mediation are transferred to insurers and thereby enlarged in some aspects. The duty to give advice in §6 I 1 VVG depends on the objective circumstances of each individual case depending upon either the complexity of the insurance contract and problems in understanding its terms, or the characteristics and situation of the customer. Therewith, the regulation both refers to former jurisdiction and exceeds it by implementing a duty for the insurer to ask for the demands and the needs of the customer. Without reason in the special case the customer has to disclose his need for advice to obtain it. During the term of the contract the insurer is only obliged to give advice if he knows or — acting diligently — could know the needs of the policy-holder. On a European level further duties to inform and advise could help to achieve an effective internal insurance market.     

化解省属高校贷款债务政策研究

从对高校贷款债务的研究方式来看,现有的研究方式显得比较单一。研究方法多属于理论研究,缺乏实证研究,研究的成果往往不容易转化为实践。正因如此,进一步推动高校贷款的理论研究和实证研究的充分结合就显得十分必要。应该增加运用实证研究方法的比重,保证研究的客观性和规范性,本文试图从政府角度研究解决高校贷款问题提出具体的方案和对应的实施细则,对高校如何控制贷款的风险和多大程度上控制贷款风险提供可操作性的办法,更为国家和政府如何调整高校贷款政策、规范高校贷款行为提供必要的参考和借鉴。     

Assessing adaptive capacity of water management organizations. The case study of the municipality of Tomave (Bolivia)

Climate change is only one of several pressure and drivers, such as natural disasters, improvements in technologies and changing customers’ behaviors that water organizations have to relate and adapt to. This places new challenges (e.g. dealing with increased exposure, vulnerability, and uncertainty) to water management and require water organizations to change their perspective on how to deal with water issues. This paper builds on a literature review to identify dimensions and criteria of adaptive capacity and presents a conceptual framework to assess organizational adaptive capacity. The developed framework has been tested within the Municipality of Tomave (Bolivia). The paper results emphasize the incapacity to transform routines as the context is changing leads to the construction of barriers and to the inability of an organization to support the process of change of the society. In addition, the study emphasis that the development of a working system based on cooperation requires first that an organization acquires skills and adapt its routines to the new working system. Furthermore, the development of a participatory process of planning and implementation of policies would help to reduce the trade-offs and conflicts related to water management. Linked to this, the development of a system for monitoring and evaluation of policies implemented organization can contribute to build an iterative mechanism so to allow a redefinition and improvement of such policies.     

The European flying geese: New FDI patterns for the old continent?

This article attempts to apply the flying geese metaphor to emerging foreign direct investment (FDI) patterns in Europe and the Mediterranean. Such a division of labour is at best at a nascent stage, given the overwhelming share of Western Europe in both inward and outward foreign direct investment flows. Because of these imbalances, special attention is to be paid to Central and Eastern Europe’s (CEE) potential, both in the group joining the European Union (EU) in 2004 and the rest of the subregion. For the former, middle-income countries, risks in investment promotion are related to uncertainty brought about by the transition to European Union’s acquis and an eventually too fast increase in production costs. Policy response to that requires a modernisation of both general and specific investment promotion policies, adjusted to the rules of the Union. For the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, the challenge is to adjust to the enlarged European Union and to improve the business and investment environment, in order to capture the foreign direct investment outflows of other European countries searching for optimum labour costs.     

Unleash innovation in foreign subsidiaries

In multinational corporations, growth-triggering innovation often emerges in foreign subsidiaries from employees closest to customers and least attached to the procedures and politeness of the home office. But too often, heavy-handed responses from headquarters squelch local enthusiasm and drive out good ideas--and good people. The authors' research into more than 50 multinationals suggests that encouraging innovation in foreign subsidiaries requires a change in attitude. Companies should start to think of foreign subsidiaries as peninsulas rather than as islands--as extensions of the company's strategic domain rather than as isolated outposts. If they do, innovative ideas will flow more freely from the periphery to the corporate center. Basing their arguments on a rich array of examples, the authors say that encouraging such "innovation at the edges" also requires a new set of practices, with two aims: to improve the formal and informal channels of communication between headquarters and subsidiaries and to give foreign subsidiaries more authority to see their ideas through. The challenge for executives of multinationals is to find ways to liberalize, not tighten, internal systems and to delegate more authority to local subsidiaries. It isn't enough to ask subsidiary managers to be innovative; corporate managers need to give them incentives and support systems to facilitate their efforts. The authors suggest four approaches: give seed money to subsidiaries; use formal requests for proposals as a way of increasing the demand for seed money; encourage subsidiaries to be incubators for fledgling businesses; and build international networks. As part of the last approach, multinationals also need to create roles for idea brokers who can link entrepreneurs in foreign subsidiaries with other parts of the company.     

A novel approach in risk evaluation for ship-to-ship (STS) transfer of cargo using process failure mode and effects analysis (PFMEA)

The ship-to-ship transfer (STS) of oil and oil products plays currently an important role on a worldwide scale. Usually, it refers to the transfer of cargo between seagoing ships positioned alongside each other. Although the procedure of STS transfer has become a day-to-day practice, it remains a difficult operation, which deserves special consideration. To reduce the adverse effect of a potential accident on humans as well as on the environment, a risk assessment is necessary to be done to evaluate the hazards that derive from such a difficult procedure. To this end, the process failure mode and effect analysis (PFMEA), which is under the umbrella of the traditional failure mode and effect analysis, is properly modified and applied to assess the hazards of a typical STS transfer procedure. PFMEA is based on the risk priority number with regard to each risk related to the procedure of interest by multiplying the numerical values of the severity, occurrence and detection indices. Although PFMEA is currently applied mainly to manufacturing processes, the aim of the paper was to implement this methodology to STS transfer of petroleum products. According to the study of PFMEA implementation, the petroleum cargo is the product similar to the product in a manufacturing procedure; hence, the different phases of the STS procedure are similar to the production line of the manufactured product. Moreover, proposals to eliminate the disadvantages of the implementation of PFMEA by a qualitative manner (using linguistic terms) are proposed. The objective target of this effort is to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of implementing the PFMEA in a maritime activity and therefore to address the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach.     

The Impact of Internet Investor Relations on the Cost of Capital: Evidence from Companies Listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange

Given the voluntary nature of internet investor relations (IIR), the decision to engage can be viewed in terms of a cost–benefit framework. This study aims to investigate one potential benefit of IIR: a reduction in the cost of capital (measured as the weighted average cost of equity and cost of debt). Contrary to the majority of related studies to date that have used either an indirect proxy or examined the annual report, this study entails a content analysis of corporate websites using a comprehensive measurement instrument. IIR is found to be significantly and negatively related to the cost of debt. Although the level of IIR is also found to be significantly and negatively related to the cost of equity, this association only prevails after an adjustment is made to the cost of equity of smaller companies. Finally, the level of IIR is found to be significantly and negatively related to the cost of capital, both before and after an adjustment to the cost of equity of smaller companies is made. Although the current study deals with Johannesburg Stock Exchange data, the problem investigated is universal in nature and according to our knowledge, this is the first study to comprehensively examine the impact of IIR on the cost of capital.     

Extending the classroom boundaries – an evaluation of an asynchronous discussion board

Accounting educators are being challenged to revitalize the accounting curriculum and to expand methods of delivery, especially through the application of technology. Web-enhanced course delivery offers an opportunity to expand delivery techniques. This paper evaluates an asynchronous discussion board group exercise in an intermediate accounting course. Analysis of students' perceptions of the exercise indicated that they considered it had contributed to their learning. The discussion board gave them time to analyse other students' responses and to prepare their own contributions. The results show the discussion board made it easier for non-English background students and students over 30 years of age to express an opinion, and made them feel they had to contribute to the discussion. Students raised issues about the quality of the contributions, the lack of feedback from the lecturer on discussion topics, the time taken to complete the exercise and the amount of work involved for the assessment weighting.     

我国农村剩余劳动力转移途径及对策选择

我国农村剩余劳动力转移是解决三农问题的重中之重.现行土地制度、户籍管理制度、城市化进程以及农村剩余劳动力素质是制约农村剩余劳动力转移的主要因素.农村剩余劳动力在第一产业内部的转移和劳动力向二、三产业的转移,是我国农村劳动力转移的基本途径.坚持走农业产业化道路、推进乡镇企业二次创业、完善农村金融体系、推进城市化进程、建立和完善社会保障体系等,是推动农村劳动力转移的必然选择.     

Drivers of flood and climate change risk perceptions and intention to adapt: an explorative survey in coastal and delta Vietnam

Abstract

This article contributes to current research about determinants of climate change and flood risk perception, and intentions to take adaptive measures. We propose a research model that distinguishes between vulnerability and severity components of perceived risks, and adds perceived adaptive capacity as a third factor to predict the intention to take adaptive measures. We used this combined model as a conceptual lens for an explorative survey among 1086 residents of coastal and delta communities in Vietnam. Pairwise analyses revealed a significant association of flood and climate change risk perceptions with individual’s flood experience, climate change knowledge, frequency of community participation and socio-demographic factors. However, in multivariate analysis, the influence of most socio-demographic factors became weak or patchy. Flood experience was the most influential driver of flood-related risk perceptions but weak for climate change-related risk perceptions and behavioural intentions. Knowledge strongly increased the intention to adapt to flood and climate risks and the perceived vulnerability to and severity of climate change risks, but reduced the perceived capacity to adapt to climate risks. Frequency of community participation increased the perceived vulnerability and severity of climate change risks, the intention to adapt to both climate and flood risks and the perceived capacity to adapt to flood risks, but reduced the perceived capacity to adapt to climate risks. Our research confirms earlier findings that individuals’ knowledge, place-specific experience and social-cultural influences are key predictors of both flood and climate change risk perceptions and intentions to take adaptive measures. These factors should therefore receive ample attention in climate risk communication.     

Accounting education for professionals in Germany — current state and new challenges

In comparison to other countries, the requirements on the education of professional auditors in Germany have been considered to be the toughest in the world. However, German professionals risk losing this position since there are countries which seem to adapt more quickly and appropriately to changes in the accounting environment.The first part of the paper provides a review of the current state of the education for qualified auditors in Germany with special reference to the according EU-Directives and IFAC-Rules. It is shown that there are various issues which have to be accounted for in order to meet the challenges of the future.The remainder of the paper focuses on challenges due to changes in the accounting and auditing environment, on challenges due to an enlargement of the scope of statutory audit and — finally — on challenges due to the need for diversification from auditing to assurance services.