Donald C. Cook: CPA,SEC Chairman,corporate legend,and presidential advisor

Donald C. Cook served as a member of the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 1949 to 1953 and as Chairman during the last two years. His unique position as the only Certified Public Accountant (CPA) who served as Commission Chairman has been largely unnoticed and elicits the need for a profile about the individual, his background, career, and what, if any, legacy might be related to it. Cook was also unique in that his prior staff experience at the SEC was primarily in the public utilities division. This profile describes and identifies several episodes in Cook's career at the SEC and after. These include other public service positions in government and his executive career at American Electric Power (AEP) as president and board chairman. These years were often filled with controversy and challenges in dealings with the SEC and with issues relating to consolidation among utilities as the country's demand for electrical energy grew substantially. His government service roles beyond the SEC acquainted him with many political leaders. He was an advisor to President Lyndon Johnson, who shared the opinion of others that Cook was “the smartest man in the country” [Johnson, Telephone conversation No. 7070, March 16, 1965].     

Duty,obligation, and responsibility in accounting policy making

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has been under considerable pressure in recent years to choose among accounting standard alternatives based on their anticipated economic consequences. It is the Boards's stated position, however, that standards ought to be chosen for the faithfulness of the representations they will bring about. This paper examines the philosophical justification for the opposing positions on the economic consequences issue. The issue is first examined as one of ends and means, and it is found that accounting policy makers have a stronger obligation to pursue faithful representations than they have a responsibility to pursue good economic consequences. A similar result is found when the ends—means distinction is dropped and the issue is examined as involving conflicting duties to refrain and to act. The conclusion is reached that there is no justification for departing from faithful representations.     

Liquidity Pools, Risk Sharing, and Financial Contagion

This paper reevaluates the Allen–Gale (2000) analysis of interbank deposits to explain financial contagion. This paper modifies the pecking order of asset liquidation developed in Allen–Gale, which is essential in fragility analysis. Furthermore, we also provide a claim structure called liquidity pool that can both achieve risk sharing and prevent financial contagion across regions when asymmetric information about bank assets is absent. This model can partly explain why bank panics reduced substantially after the founding of the Fed and the role of IMF in regional financial crises.     

The attributes,behavior, and performance of U.S. mutual funds

This article examines the risk and return characteristics of U.S. mutual funds. We employ an equilibrium version of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) and a principal-components-based statistical technique to identify performance benchmarks. We also consider the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) as an alternative. We implement a procedure for overcoming the rotational indeterminacy of factor models. This procedure is a hybrid of statistical factor estimation and prespecification of factors. We estimate measures of timing ability for the CAPM and extend it to the APT. We find that this timing test is misspecified due to noninformation-based changes in mutual fund betas. We develop a modification of the timing measure that, under certain conditions, distinguishes true timing ability from noninformation-based beta changes.     

Trend breaks, long-run restrictions, and contractionary technology improvements

Structural vector autoregressions with long-run restrictions are extraordinarily sensitive to low-frequency correlations. Recent literature finds that the estimated effects of technology shocks are sensitive to how one treats hours per capita. However, after allowing for (statistically and economically significant) trend breaks in productivity, results are much less sensitive: hours fall when technology improves. The issue is that the common high-low-high pattern of productivity growth and hours (i.e., the low-frequency correlation) inevitably leads to a positive estimated response. The trend breaks control for this correlation. This example suggests a practical need for care in using long-run restrictions.     

Liquidity, Transaction Costs, and Reintermediation in Electronic Markets

Relationships between trading cost, technology, and the nature of intermediation in the trading services industry are discussed. Electronic markets are linked to reductions in trading costs. Lower explicit costs are related to system development and operating costs. Electronic order book information is identified as a means of realizing implicit cost savings. The concept of liquidity management in electronic environments is introduced, and its potential is empirically illustrated. The empirical results suggest new roles for brokerage and exchange operations, and competition between the two. Competitive advantage with respect to the provision of liquidity management services is compared across types of intermediaries.     

Financial globalization, financial crises and contagion

Two observations suggest that financial globalization played an important role in the recent financial crisis. First, more than half of the rise in net borrowing of the U.S. non-financial sectors since the mid-1980s has been financed by foreign lending. Second, the collapse of the U.S. housing and mortgage-backed-securities markets had worldwide effects on financial institutions and asset markets. Using an open-economy model where financial intermediaries play a central role, we show that financial integration leads to a sharp rise in net credit in the most financially developed country and to large asset price spillovers of country-specific shocks to bank capital. The impacts of these shocks on asset prices are amplified by bank capital requirements based on mark-to-market.     

Japan and Hong Kong Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs): Discounts, Returns, and Trading Strategies

Foreign exchange-traded funds (ETFs) trade on U.S. exchanges but provide broad exposure to foreign markets. ETFs are designed to minimize the deviation between price and value of the underlying securities. However, nonoverlapping trading hours between the United States and many foreign markets inhibit this mechanism. The data for Japan and Hong Kong iShares show that deviations exist between the ETF price and the value of the underlying securities. The deviations are positively related to subsequent ETF returns creating potential profit opportunities. A simple trading rule based on this observation produces impressive gross returns when compared to a buy-and-hold strategy.     

Bank Insolvency, Deposit Insurance, and Capital Adequacy

This paper extends the Dowd (2000) model by introducing a risky investment technology. This assumption allows to introduce the possibility of an insolvency crisis. A banker may earn a positive expected profit by insuring depositors against the technological risk. If the bank has adequate capital, the insurance is credible and an insolvency crisis cannot occur. A public safety net may be unnecessary to prevent insolvency crises.     

公共财政:渊源、内涵与属性

在我国,看待"公共财政"问题,必须有一个特定的历史视角,即不能简单照搬西方,而应在我国特定的国情下理解"公共财政"的涵义,它标识着一种与以往不同的、适应于社会主义市场经济体制的新财政模式。     

美元本位、美元环流与美元陷阱

现行国际货币体系从本质上说是美元本位制,在这一体系下,美元国际循环模式与世界经济运行特征交互作用。20世纪80年代中期后,美元国际循环由金融渠道投放、贸易渠道回流转化为贸易渠道投放、金融渠道回流。20多年来,这种模式对世界经济发展发挥了一定的积极作用,但其带来的风险也在不断累积,近年来开始愈益明显地暴露出来。面对这种状况,我国必须及时采取有效措施,以免被美国经济拖入经济衰退、金融危机的困境。     

理性预期、资本内流与货币危机——基于资本流动的宏观效应分析

货币危机发生机制问题,一直是国际经济学的研究热点之一。货币危机的三代模型注重的是从微观经济主体的行为出发,去解释货币危机发生机制。虽然货币危机预警模型是从宏观方面来研究货币危机,然而却是建立在统计经验之上的,缺乏严密的数理基础。本文从宏观经济的角度出发,基于资本流动的宏观效应,运用数理模型对货币危机发生的机制进行了理论分析,给出了一个货币危机发生机制的宏观模型,该模型的主要结论是:资本内流存在一个临界值,一旦资本流入超过临界值,货币危机就会发生。运用该模型给出了防止货币危机的建议:只要当局把资本流动控制在临界值以内,就可以防止货币危机。     

Audit Fees, Non-Audit Fees and Auditor Going-Concern Reporting Decisions in the United Kingdom

The accounting profession has come under increased scrutiny over recent years about the growing number of non-audit fees received from audit clients and the possible negative impact of such fees on auditor independence. The argument advanced is that providing substantial amounts of non-audit services to clients may make it more likely that auditors concede to the wishes of the client management when difficult judgments are made. Such concerns are particularly salient in the case of reporting decisions related to going-concern uncertainties for financially stressed clients.
 This study empirically examines audit reports provided to financially stressed companies in the United Kingdom and the magnitude of audit and non-audit service fees paid to the company's auditors. We find that the magnitude of both audit fees and non-audit fees are significantly associated with the issuance of a going-concern modified audit opinion. In particular, financially stressed companies with high audit fees are more likely to receive a going-concern modified audit opinion, whereas companies with high non-audit fees are less likely to receive a going-concern modified audit opinion. Additional analyses indicate that the results are generally robust across alternative model and variable specifications. Overall, evidence supports the contention that high non-audit fees have a detrimental effect on going-concern reporting judgments for financially stressed U.K. companies.     

美日韩三国助学贷款比较及对我国的启示

本文简单介绍了美国、日本、韩国三个国家的助学贷款的主要内容,并对这三个国家的助学贷款进行了比较;并在此基础上针对我国助学贷款体系里出现的主要问题提出了相应的对策与建议。     

透视CDO:类型、构造、评级与市场

担保债务权证(CDO)在美国次级债危机中扮演了至关重要的角色。本文试图对CDO产品和全球CDO市场作较为全面深入的介绍和评述。文章首先归纳了CDO的特征和类型,其次重点分析了两类最重要的CDO产品——现金型CDO和合成型CDO的构造,然后简单介绍了主要评级机构对CDO进行信用评级的方法。此外,文章回顾了全球CDO市场的发展现状,并归纳了CDO产生的历史意义,以及给金融市场带来的潜在风险。     

商业银行绩效、效率与市场结构——基于中国1994～2005年的面板数据

本文应用随机边界方法(SFA)测度了中国16家全国性商业银行的X效率和规模效率,并在此基础上针对其经营绩效与市场结构间关系的几种经验假说进行了检验。统计结果显示,样本期内各商业银行的效率情况总体上均不断改善,其中股份制银行的X效率水平普遍高于国有银行,但在减速递增的过程中差距在不断缩小;另一方面,国有银行在规模经济上具有显著优势,并且2002年以来优势还在进一步扩大;最后,关于银行绩效与市场结构关系的四个主要经验假说在中国银行业市场均不适用,中国商业银行部门的成本控制优势在迅速扩大业务规模的过程中并未有效地转化为盈利能力的提高。     

Volatility Clustering, Asymmetry and Hysteresis in Stock Returns: International Evidence

Encompassing a very broad family of ARCH-GARCH models, we show that the AT-GARCH (1,1) model, where volatility rises more in response to bad newsthan to good news, and where news are considered bad only below a certain level, is a remarkably robust representation of worldwide stock market returns. The residual structure is then captured by extending ATGARCH (1,1) to an hysteresis model, HGARCH, where we modelstructured memory effects from past innovations. Obviously, this feature relates to the psychology of the markets and the way traders process information. For the French stock market we show that votalitity is affected differently, depending on the recent past being characterized by returns all above or below a certain level. In the same way a longer term trend may also influence volatility. It is found that bad news are discounted very quickly in volatility, this effect being reinforced when it comes after a negative trend in the stock index. On the opposite, good news have a very small impact on volatility except when they are clustered over a few days, which in this case reduces volatility.