Capital market integration

This special issue is dedicated to a topic of great interest in international financial economics — Capital Market Integration. The topic remains live and vigorously examined, as evidenced by the nine papers presented here. These papers divide into three themes: integration and markets, integration and policy, and integration and crisis. Collectively, the papers highlight the importance of market- and policy-induced phenomena for understanding the nature and consequences of capital market integration.     

An investigation of wholly‐owned foreign subsidiary control through transaction cost economics theory

This paper investigates the management control systems used by multinational corporation headquarters to control wholly‐owned foreign subsidiaries. Our theory development is based on transaction cost economics. First, we conduct a series of exploratory interviews, providing an insight into the context, and second, we provide empirical evidence based on cross‐sectional survey data. Our results indicate that activity traits (uncertainty, asset specificity and post hoc information impactedness) have significant implications on control choices, in particular the control archetype combinations chosen by headquarters, although not all results are consistent with theory predictions. Our findings are supported by extensive alternative testing.     

发展经济学的学派划分及其研究方法

在对经济学界关于经济学学派划分标准进行阐述的基础上,归纳分析了国内外学者关于发展经济学流派的划分观点.学者们普遍接受将发展经济学划分为结构主义经济发展思路、新古典主义经济发展思路、新古典政治经济学思路和激进主义经济发展思路.本文对上述四种思路的研究方法进行了分析,并明确指出上述几种思路研究方法分歧的本质,即“单一经济学”和“双元经济学”之争、发展中国家经济发展的“内因”与“外因”之争、对经济发展进行“纯经济研究”还是进行“社会经济系统研究”之争.     

关于消费启动条件--居民收入和经济增长关系的分析

消费启动不仅在理论上是经济启动的主导模式,而且已成为当前我国政府的政策选择.消费启动需要一定的条件,即收入增长同经济增长大体一致.本文从理论入手,以实证为主,考察了我国改革开放以来收入增长率和经济增长率之间的关系,结合同时期经济启动的特点,给出了对消费启动条件的完整分析.     

我国人才市场对财经类人才需求状况的调查分析

本文从财经类人才市场需求的角度出发,试图通过对财经类人才市场需求各项因素以及人才社会评价等方面的深入调查与分析,得到一些在新形势下关于高等财经类人才培养的有益启示,并进而为我国高等财经教育及人才培养提出一些政策建议。     

Teaching economics as though values matter

Economics is permeated with value judgements, and removing them would be neither possible nor desirable. They are consequential, in the sense that they have a sizeable impact on economists’ output. Yet many economists may not even realise they are there. This paper surveys ways in which values influence economic theory and practice and explores some implications for the manner in which economics – especially welfare economics – is taught, practised and communicated. Explicit attention to values needs to be embedded in the teaching of economics at all levels.     

The Information Economics Approach to Financial Reporting

This paper provides a non-technical overview of the literature on the economics of information and its implications for financial reporting. This paper attempts to spell out the unity of approach which underlies all information economics models and focuses on the main implications of the literature for accounting policy makers. The central section of the paper identifies precise conditions under which the provision of public information can lead to an improvement in social welfare. An understanding of these conditions is essential for policy makers if they are to take into account the economic effects of their decisions. The final section highlights three important unresolved issues and identifies promising directions for further research.     

Does economics and management education make managers more cautious? Evidence from R&D of Chinese listed firms

This paper uses the innovation data of Chinese listed firms for 2015–2019 to investigate whether and how executives with economics and management educations influence firm innovation. We find that executives with economics and management educations are characterized by conservatism and risk avoidance and their firms undertake less innovative activity than other firms. This conclusion remains robust after excluding potential reverse causality. Further analysis finds that executives with an educational background in economics and management adopt a more conservative attitude toward risk when they have a low shareholding ratio or face high performance pressure. Moreover, a mechanism analysis shows that executives with an educational background economics and management are more radical and less conservative in their fields of expertise, i.e., are not blindly conservative. Finally, we determine that non-financial knowledge compensate for some of the inhibitory effects that economic and management educational backgrounds have on innovation.     

Accounting research: An analysis of theories explored in doctoral dissertations and their applicability to Systems Theory

This study examined theories used in accounting doctoral dissertations and found that dissertations in this discipline test theories drawn from economics, finance, psychology, and sociology, with 53% from economics and finance and 27% from psychology. Further, a primary conclusion of this paper is that doctoral research in accounting explores subsets of organizational activity consistent with the premises of Systems Theory.     

全球经常项目失衡问题的实证研究

近些年,全球经常项目失衡问题成为经济学家竞相研究的热点问题,并提出了众多不同的观点。本文利用全球范围内52个国家或地区!"1980￣2004年的经济数据对影响经常项目失衡的多种经济因素进行实证研究,就当前分析全球经常项目失衡原因中的一些经济变量对经常项目的影响程度提供了经验分析,并且对解决当前全球经常项目失衡问题提出了相关建议。     

The transformation of business finance into financial economics: The roles of academic expansion and changes in U.S. capital markets

Financial economics combines a high degree of theoretical abstraction and formality with considerable empirical uncertainty and strong connections to financial institutions and employers. This unusual combination is the product of academic expansion in the leading U.S. post graduate business schools and their attempt to acquire intellectual legitimacy by encouraging scientific research, on the one hand, and of changes in the organization of U.S. financial markets, especially of investment analysis and management, on the other hand. This paper discusses the dominant characteristics of financial economics as an intellectual field and how these contextual factors shaped its emergence.     

国外对金融道德风险研究的前沿理论及防范经验

近年来,金融道德风险已成为我国金融业运行中的突出问题。本文在论述国外对金融道德风险研究前沿理论的基础上,进一步比较了美国、欧盟、日本、韩国、新西兰、中国台湾等主要国家或地区对金融道德风险的防范经验,总结出可供我国借鉴的启示,对提高我国金融道德风险的防范水平、维护金融稳定、确保金融安全运行具有重要的参考意义。     

租金理论及其对资源税的影响

本文从租金的理论回顾入手,简要介绍了西方经济理论中的“经济租”、“稀缺租金”和“霍特林租金”的经济含义和相互关系,并以此为基础论证了我国资源税和矿产资源补偿费的经济性质,进而提出了资源税参与调节经济生活的理论依据和不可或缺的重要作用及其重新定位,即作为社会公共收入而不是作为国有资源租金表现形式的资源税,将以可持续发展为基本立足点,与环境保护政策相配合,专注于校正外部效应、维护代际资源利用公平、调整私人贴现率与社会贴现率的差异以及消除垄断对社会公平的损害和节能降耗等目标,这才应该成为资源税的基本定位和改革方向。     

The Diversification Discount Puzzle: Evidence for a Transaction-Cost Resolution

The literature on the corporate diversification discount and the relative efficiency of internal versus external capital markets provides mixed results. We argue that transaction-cost economics is useful in understanding this puzzle. According to transaction-cost economics, diversified firms should outperform single segment firms in industries with higher external transaction costs (e.g., emergent industries) and under-perform in industries with low external transaction costs and high agency and other internal costs (e.g., some mature industries). This paper provides evidence supporting these contentions.     

Understanding financial crisis through accounting models

This paper presents evidence that accounting (or flow-of-funds) macroeconomic models helped anticipate the credit crisis and economic recession. Equilibrium models ubiquitous in mainstream policy and research did not. This study traces the intellectual pedigrees of the accounting approach as an alternative to neo-classical economics, and the post-war rise and decline of flow-of-funds models in policy use. It includes contemporary case studies of both types of models, and considers why the accounting approach has remained outside mainstream economics. It provides constructive recommendations on revising methods of financial stability assessment and advocates an ‘accounting of economics’.     

Accounting information systems research over the past decade: Past and future trends

This article reviews the extant accounting information systems (AIS) literature by conducting an analysis of AIS articles published in 18 leading accounting, management information systems, and computer science journals from 1999 to 2009 with a view to identifying whether or not the focus of AIS research has changed, and if so how it has changed, since the Poston and Grabski’s (2000) review of AIS research from 1982 to 1998. We also report our insights into where AIS research is likely to be heading in the future. We analyse each of the 395 articles identified as reporting AIS research to identify their underlying theory, research method and research topic. Our results confirm the continuing decline in analytical and model‐building research in AIS‐related research and this decline is associated with a similar decline in the use of computer science theory to motivate this research. We also find that two theoretical platforms, in particular, now account for almost half (48 per cent) of all AIS research: cognitive psychology and economics. Experimental research methods and archival studies continue to grow as the preferred methods for testing the AIS‐related theories derived from these theory domains.     

Principles of fiscal and monetary policy

This paper describes a complete and internally consistent set of principles for the conduct of a welfare-maximizing fiscal and monetary policy. Issues of time-consistency that arise in applying these principles to actual economics are also discussed.     

货币经济学的理论体系与教学方法

货币经济学是一门研究货币运动及其规律的科学。理论体系上可以分成货币微观经济学、货币宏观经济学、国际货币经济学、货币经济思想史等四个部分。为了提高货币经济学的教学质量,相应的措施有：针对授课对象安排教学内容,加强定量研究方法的训练,结合实践开展专题教学,实施课程论文制度。     

Towards horizontal archetypes of management control: a transaction cost economics perspective

This paper offers an economic explanation of an observed tendency to adopt and (re)design horizontal management control systems. To this end, the paper first describes generic vertical and horizontal management control templates: archetypes of management control. These archetypes draw on bureaucratic control mechanisms and some of them also on a market mechanism. Next, the observed tendency towards horizontalization is explained by making a differential transaction cost economics analysis of the movement towards horizontal archetypes of management control. This is not with the intention to generategeneral normative statements nor to generate a general positive economic theory of choices in management control systems design. Rather, the paper aims at acquiring a richer understanding of the economics of the horizontal direction into which management control systems are developing. In particular, it throws some light on the importance of various transactional and behavioural features for an efficient adoption and tailor-made design of management control systems in practice.     

Corporate finance,industrial organization,and organizational economics

In the last 35 years, research at the intersection of corporate finance, industrial organization, and organizational economics has grown substantially. This paper reviews work that combines elements from these fields of finance and economics, with an emphasis on recent developments. I discuss how product market competition, customer-supplier relations, firms’ organizational form, and ownership structures interact with firms’ financial policies. I also overview new developments in the literature from a special issue of the Journal of Corporate Finance.