Does religion enhance firm performance? Evidence from private firms in China

We study the impact of religiosity on firm performance in China. We find that entrepreneurs with religious beliefs have higher accounting performance. Firms are more likely to obtain bank credit if entrepreneurs have religious beliefs as religiosity stimulate them to invest more in networking, which further enhance the access to bank credit. Religious entrepreneurs have more trust towards external people, which incentivizes them to adopt a shareholding reform and employ external professional CEOs instead of family members, and thus enhances the corporate governance of these firms. In contrast, religious entrepreneurs also prefer family members as shareholders and inheritance of the firm by family members. The preference of inheritance of the firm by family members undermines the enhancing effect of external CEOs on firm performance. Religious entrepreneurs are more likely to spend more on safety insurance for employees, which is driven by the altruism originated from religious doctrines and also the risk aversion channel. The impact of religiosity complements market institutions, and political and social status of the entrepreneurs, which shows the interaction between religion and formal market institutions. We find that it's mainly Buddhism that drives our results, while other religions have limited impact on business activities in the country.     

The Emergency Land Fund: Robert S. Browne, the Idea and the Man

This article offers a snap shot of one of the several black institutions founded in 1972, by the late Robert S. Browne—the Emergency Land Fund (ELF). The idea of ELF—land ownership by blacks as an asset to build upon for economic well being, a cultural and social glue to ground a sense of family, place and community—was but another strategic and timely insight on the part of Robert S. Browne. The article is the story about the journey of ELF, a southern black-belt African American led institution, lead by Robert S. Browne it’s Chair, and it’s political, economic and policy impact on both public and private institutions, which for the most part, restricted and undermined the aspirations of black’s to own and benefit from landownership. It is also about the positive impact ELF had on rural black landowners, taking the form of organized networks challenging the discriminatory and land grabbing practices of both public and private sector actors. Robert S. Browne was a Man ahead of his time and a giant in the eyes of many who have follow his example today with asset development strategies that benefit communities of color.     

Flight‐to‐safety and the credit crunch: a new history of the banking crises in France during the Great Depression†

Despite France's importance in the interwar world economy, the scale of the French banking crises of 1930–1 and their consequences have never been fully assessed quantitatively. The lack of banking regulation severely limited the availability of balance sheet data. Using a new dataset of individual balance sheets from more than 300 banks, this article shows that the crises were much more severe than previously thought, although they did not affect the main commercial banks. By reconstructing financial flows, this study shows that the fall in bank credit was mostly driven by a flight‐to‐safety by deposits, from banks to savings institutions and the central bank. The decrease in bank deposits due to bank runs was offset by an increase in deposits with savings institutions, with the central bank, and in cash hoarding, whereas the decrease in bank credit was not offset by an increase in loans from non‐bank financial institutions. In line with the gold standard mentality, cash deposited with savings institutions and the central bank was used to decrease marketable public debt and increase gold reserves, rather than pursuing countercyclical policies. Despite massive capital inflows and rising aggregate money supply, France suffered from a severe, persistent credit crunch.     

女性居民参与新型农村社区治理意愿及其影响因素——基于浙江省部分区域的田野调查

女性居民参与是社区发展、社区建设的核心议题之一,同时也是当前新型农村社区治理的主要瓶颈所在。通过对浙江省部分新型农村社区的337份调研数据发现：当前女性居民的社区治理认知薄弱,参与积极性不高;年龄、教育程度、家庭年收入因素与女性居民参与治理意愿呈负相关关系;政治面貌、家属参与程度、邻居关系融洽、惠民政策落实程度等因素与女性居民参与治理意愿呈正相关关系。基于此,应充分发挥党员和社区干部的带动作用,通过加强女性居民社区治理认知、构建社区和谐环境、增强社区认同感、贯彻村务公开制度等途径提升女性居民参与治理意愿。     

The economics of discrimination in the granting of credit

Conclusion As a result of credit supply imperfections and inelastic demand, creditworthy consumers may not fully benefit from accurate credit assessments as is implied by the concept of qualified demand. Yet, despite the existence of house rates and prepackaged credit offers, consumers are still able to shop around for the best terms from creditors who are all competing to make profitable credit extensions. If creditors become less accurate in their credit risk assessment due to ECOL, as the cited empirical studies predict, their opportunity to make profitable credit extensions has diminished. In a competitive credit market, credit availability would decline as creditors would be compelled either to raise rates to compensate for greater default losses and other costs associated with less accurate credit evaluation or to cut those costs by applying more stringent credit standards. Otherwise, credit institutions would be unable to earn a return on invested capital sufficient for the risk involved and the supply of consumer credit funds would diminish. With the existing credit market, creditors may not be as compelled by competition to raise house rates (or able, if such rates are at ceiling levels) or raise credit standards, as is implied by a highly competitive market. However, creditors would still have the same economic incentive to repond to increased costs of doing business in ways which would reduce credit availability to qualified demanders. Furthermore, as credit extensions become less profitable, the economic penalty accorded invidious discrimination is diminished and credit grantors, who are so inclined, are more likely to engage in such practices. Alternatively, if legislators focused upon increasing competition in the consumer credit market, increased credit availability would result. And as this would increase the economic penalty for invidious discrimination, such practices would decline.     

Local political corruption and M&As

We examine the relation between local political corruption and firms' cross-province M&As using provincial-level data on corruption in China. The results show that firms in more corrupt regions are less likely to engage in cross-province M&As. Further analyses reveal that the effects of local corruption on the probability of cross-province M&As are stronger when corrupt officers have greater impeding benefits or lower impeding costs. Meanwhile, Both ex-ante intervention and ex-post punishment are important channels through which corrupt officers hinder firms' cross-province M&As. Moreover, informal institutions, such as social capital and informal networks can help to alleviate the negative impact of political corruption on firms' cross-province M&As.Our findings show that in the context of highly government intervention, cross-province M&As not only cannot be an effective channel to shield from expropriation, but are themselves highly distorted and lead to significant economic efficiency losses.     

Common Institutional Ownership and Earnings Management*

This study examines the relation between earnings management and block ownership of same‐industry peer firms by a common set of institutional investors (common institutional ownership). This relation is important given the tremendous growth of common institutional ownership and the significant influence of blockholders on financial reporting. We hypothesize that common institutional ownership mitigates earnings management by enhancing institutions' monitoring efficiency and by encouraging institutions to internalize the negative externality of a firm's earnings management on peer firms' investments. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that higher common institutional ownership is related to less earnings management. Analyses of a quasi‐natural experiment based on financial institution mergers show that this negative relation is unlikely to be driven by the endogeneity of common institutional ownership. Cross‐sectional tests provide evidence that the negative relation is stronger among firms for which common institutional ownership is likely to generate a greater reduction in institutions' information acquisition and processing costs, and among firms whose severe financial misstatements are more likely to distort co‐owned peer firms' investments, supporting both mechanisms underlying our hypothesis. Our findings inform the ongoing debate on the costs and benefits of common institutional ownership by highlighting an important benefit: the enhanced monitoring of financial reporting.     

社会信用与企业韧性——基于社会信用体系改革试点的准自然实验

在当前全球经济环境不稳定的背景下,如何增强企业韧性是所有企业都要面临的重要问题。文章基于 2007-2021年我国 A股上市公司的平衡面板数据。测度了企业韧性水平,并以城市社会信用体系改革试点作为一项准自然实验,运用多时点 DID模型实证检验了社会信用对企业韧性的影响。结果表明:社会信用提升能够显著增强企业韧性:社会信用主要通过提高城市人力资本水平、降低企业交易成本和提升企业劳动生产率三个机制来增强企业韧性。异质性分析发现:社会信用对企业韧性的增强作用在内部治理水平较低企业、非国有企业、市场化程度较低地区中的效果更大。文章为研究企业韧性的影响因素提供了新的视角,对如何增强企业韧性、实现企业高质量发展具有一定的启示。     

健康冲击、数字普惠金融与家庭消费

基于中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)数据和"北京大学数字普惠金融指数",分析健康冲击对家庭消费的影响,以及数字普惠金融在其中所起的作用。基于固定效应模型的实证结果表明,健康冲击显著降低了家庭的非医疗消费支出,但数字普惠金融能有效地减轻这种影响;同时就分指标而言,数字普惠金融指标体系一级维度中的覆盖广度和使用深度,二级维度中的信贷、保险、货币基金以及支付这四个子指标均显著地平滑了冲击下的家庭消费。就作用机制而言,数字普惠金融主要通过缓解家庭流动性约束和强化非正式社交网络来帮助家庭应对健康冲击对消费的影响。异质性分析的回归结果显示,健康冲击对中西部地区、户主受教育水平较低以及金融素养水平较低的家庭影响更大,同时这种影响还与冲击的程度正相关,进而数字普惠金融的积极作用在这部分家庭中表现得更为明显。文章的研究结论进一步阐述了数字普惠金融发展对改善金融包容性的重要现实意义,并在微观层面上解释了数字普惠金融发展对改善家庭福利、防止因病致贫返贫的积极作用。     

The Interrelation between Audit Quality and Managerial Reporting Choices and Its Effects on Financial Reporting Quality

Two distinct lines of research have been dedicated to empirically testing how financial reporting quality (measured as the earnings response coefficient or ERC) is associated with management's choice of reporting bias and with audit quality. However, researchers have yet to consider how ERCs are affected by either the auditor's reaction to changes in the manager's reporting bias or the manager's reaction to changes in audit quality. Our study provides theoretical guidance on these interrelations and how changes in the manager's or the auditor's incentives affect both reporting bias and audit quality. Specifically, when the manager's cost (benefit) of reporting bias increases (decreases), we find that expected bias decreases, inducing the auditor to react by reducing audit quality. Because we also find that the association between expected audit quality and ERCs is always positive, changes in managerial incentives for biased reporting lead to a positive association between ERCs and expected reporting bias. When the cost of auditing decreases or the cost of auditor liability increases, we find that expected audit quality increases, inducing the manager to react by decreasing reporting bias. In this case, changes in the costs of audit quality lead to a negative association between ERCs and expected reporting bias. Finally, we demonstrate the impact of our theoretical findings by focusing on the empirical observations documented in the extant literature on managerial ownership and accounting expertise on the audit committee. In light of our framework, we provide new interpretations of these empirical observations and new predictions for future research.     

Trade, Institutions, and Credit

Within economics there has been a mounting interest in institutions. Virtually all the work to date on institutions has examined a single institution. The problem is that in many settings the performance of the institution under examination is affected by other, unexamined institutions. This paper examines the relationship between two types of private-order institutions that facilitated trade in a specific setting—Mexican California during the 1830s and 1840s. The surviving evidence suggests that a multilateral institution enabled merchants to extend credit to their retail customers, and a similar multilateral institution enabled the merchants to extend credit to one another. The relationship between these institutions makes them of particular interest. This relationship arose because local communities imposed costs on merchants that affected their trade with one another. The barriers to entry and exit posed by these costs, in turn, facilitated the operation and persistence of the institution that supported intermerchant trade. They also precluded other organizational forms such as the vertical integration of wholesalers.     

Housing wealth changes and entrepreneurship: Evidence from urban China

This paper studies the impact of household-level housing wealth changes on entrepreneurship in urban China. Exploiting the 2011–2015 China Household Finance Survey, we control for lagged proxies for wealth, city-by-year fixed effects, and other household attributes and directly estimate the magnitude of homeowner's response to housing capital gains net of home maintenance and upgrading expenditures. We also instrument for housing wealth changes with structural breaks in city housing price trend. We find that a 10,000 RMB increase in housing wealth increases the propensity of a household becoming a business owner by about 0.7 percentage points in IV estimation. In addition, we provide new evidence for underlying channels that housing capital gains alleviate household credit constraints, reduce risk aversion and increase awareness of financial information.     

Marginal returns on Chinese agricultural technology transfer in Nigeria: Who benefits more?

Agricultural technology transfers are generally considered an effective means of solving persistently low yields in sub-Saharan Africa. This study assesses the impact of the Chinese agricultural training program on farmers' productivity and income using ex-post non-experimental data from Ogun State, Nigeria. Our empirical approach is based on marginal treatment effect models. We find that the returns for individuals who participated in Chinese agricultural technology training indicated a 68.5% increase in yield and a 45.3% increase in agricultural income. Furthermore, we show that the program targets farmers from advantaged backgrounds, who may benefit less from attending the program than disadvantaged farmers, who experience a lower incentive to participate. Finally, we suggest sufficient awareness and incentives to encourage highly resistant farmers to participate in such programmes.     

Who responds to changes to the federal adoption tax credit? Evidence from Florida

The federal adoption tax credit (ATC) can help offset the cost of adoption, yet it is unclear whether it has a positive impact on the number of adoptions or if it merely transfers resources to households who would have adopted anyway. The ATC has primarily been a nonrefundable tax credit, but in 2010 and 2011 the full amount (over $13,000) was available as a refundable tax credit, representing a substantial increase in the benefit to lower- and middle-income families—those with typically low tax liability. Using county-level data from Florida, we estimate an increase of 265 additional public adoptions over what would be expected at the end of 2011. Relative decreases in adoptions in the first months of 2012 suggest that much of this increase is due to retiming rather than new adoptions. The response appears to be concentrated in lower- and middle-income households living in higher-income, more populated areas.     

Does tax deduction relax financing constraints? Evidence from China's value-added tax reform

Financial constraint is a significant obstacle for firm growth, especially in developing countries where credit is scarce. This paper explores the role of tax policy in relaxing firms' financial constraints by exploiting China's value-added tax (VAT) reform that was initiated in 2004 and completed in 2009. We use a quasi-experimental method and Annual Survey of Industrial Firms (ASIF) data from 2000 to 2009 to estimate the VAT reform's policy effects on financial constraints. We show that the VAT reform significantly improves firms' external financing capacity by decreasing borrowing costs and promoting commercial credit. The findings are robust to alternative specifications but show heterogeneity across ownerships, firm sizes, regions, and between export and non-export firms. Our analysis suggests tax deduction is useful to relax firms' financial constraints.     

The link between credit markets and self-employment choice among households in rural China

Our paper examines how credit markets operate through wealth to influence households’ entrepreneurial choices. Our results show that policy-led bank branch withdrawal in rural China has a significant negative impact on credit availability to rural households, though unexpectedly the effect is felt more strongly in informal than formal credit markets. Furthermore, we observe that self-employment is impeded by reductions in wealth associated with credit contraction. Policies which provide more and better formal financial services to rural households are predicted to increase the flow of credit, through both formal and informal channels, thereby supporting accumulation, diversification, and economic growth.     

破解银行与中小企业信息不对称难题的新思路

构建中小企业内在信用建设的动力系统和信用平台,加大信用的收益,提高失信的成本,降低信用的培育和维护成本,实现银行与中小企业的信息对称。     

Information contents of collateral under heterogeneous borrower qualities on the bank loans market in China

We analyze the risk of default and provision of collateral for bank loans made to firms of varied credit qualities using a unique dataset obtained from a major state-owned commercial bank in China. Both high and low quality borrowers provide collateral more often than medium quality debtors do. Using models that explicitly incorporate heterogeneous borrower qualities, we find a positive relation between collateralization and risk of default for loans issued to debtors with low credit ratings. In contrast, collateral provided by debtors with high credit ratings is negatively associated with the risk of default. These results suggest that low quality borrowers may be required to provide collateral at the bank's request to mitigate moral hazard problem. On the other hand, high quality borrowers may provide collateral willingly to signal quality in order to mitigate adverse selection problem when competing for getting access to bank loans. Our findings shed new lights on different information contents of collateral on the bank loans market of China, and have important implications for banks in screening, contracting and monitoring the risk of commercial loans for clients with diverse credit qualities.     

Supply and Demand for Livestock Credit in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons for Designing New Credit Schemes

Based on analysis of credit supply in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria, it is shown that public credit institutions do not have sufficient funds to meet the demand for livestock credit and cannot mobilize savings from their clients or other commercial sources for one reason or another. In addition, available credit does not reach those who need it the most and with whom it could have the greatest impact due to the application of inappropriate screening procedures and criteria to determine creditworthiness. The analysis of demand based on borrowing and nonborrowing sample households using improved dairy technology, it is shown that not all borrowers borrowed due to liquidity constraint while some borrowers and some nonborrowers had liquidity constraint but did not have access to adequate credit. Logistic regression analysis show that sex and education of the household head, training in dairy, prevalence of outstanding loan and the number of improved cattle on the farm had significant influence on both borrowing and liquidity status of a household, though the degree and direction of influence were not always the same in each study country. Based on the findings it is suggested that combining public and commercial finance could solve the problem of inadequate credit supply while inventory finance to community level input suppliers and service providers might help in getting credit to worthy and needy smallholders at lower cost than providing credit to smallholders directly.     

The Economic Value of Auditing and Its Effectiveness in Public School Operations*

We examine the impact of auditing on public school operations with two objectives: to investigate whether audits provide economic benefits to stakeholders and how complex compliance rules impact auditing effectiveness. Utilizing auditing time data and a unique opportunity presented by the Quality Basic Education Act in Georgia, we estimate the relative performance of school district operations employing a stochastic frontier estimation technique. We find that auditing produces real economic benefits for stakeholders by mitigating inefficiency in the use of school resources. We also find that stringent compliance rules reduce an audit’s effectiveness but auditors’ experience can help to overcome the problems. The lack of disclosure of auditing costs hinders the ability to conduct a cost–benefit analysis of new requirements. Our analysis supports the notion that auditing is vital to establish governance mechanisms and disclosure of auditing costs is important to adequately evaluate a new policy. Data are available from the public sources identified in the text.