Does transfer of control rights and private benefits of control increase efficiency? Evidence from China’s privatization of the SOE’s

This study assesses China’s overall privatization efficiency from the perspective of private benefits of control. Results suggest that there is no statistically significant change in the firm’s performance after the transfer. However, ROE is negatively correlated with the magnitude of block premiums at the point of purchase. The research also finds that the average private benefit of a private controlling shareholder is significantly higher than that of a state-controlling shareholder. Obtaining private benefits of control is often the private buyers’ main acquisition motive. However, private benefit undermines the future corporate performance; therefore, lowering the private benefits may help improve the efficiency of privatization. As of now, privatization by means of controlling right transfer among listed companies is inefficient in China.     

Women's higher education in Japan: Family background,economic factors,and the Equal Employment Opportunity Law

Since the mid-1980s there has been a striking increase in the propensity of young Japanese women to attend four-year universities. During this same period, the Japanese Diet, in 1985, passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, which focused on improving women's access to career employment. This paper uses micro-data from the Japanese Panel Survey on Consumers (JPSC) to investigate the importance of socio-economic and demographic factors, as well as the EEO Law, in determining the higher education decisions of young women in Japan.We find that one of the most important factors in determining whether or not a young woman attends university is whether or not her mother attended university. Other important factors we identify include whether or not her father attended university, whether or not the young woman attended juku in high school, family income, and attendance at private secondary school. Data limitations prevent drawing strong conclusions about the role of the passage of the EEO Law, but our results suggest that the passage of the law was associated with an increase in the propensity of young women to choose university over junior college.     

公司成长能力、股权制衡与控股股东的控制权私利

通过对2005—2009年沪深两市发生了控制权转移的上市公司的研究,从公司成长能力和股权制衡度两个方面分析了控股股东的控制权私利行为。研究表明：（1）公司的成长能力对控股股东的控制权私利有显著的影响,并且两者成正相关关系;（2）国有控股公司存在更高的控制权私利水平,但随着企业成长能力的提高,民营企业的控制权私利比国有控股公司增长更快;（3）股权制衡度对控制权私利水平有抑制作用。     

控制权影响下的关联购销与上市公司价值——对限售股形成、禁售、解禁的三阶段分析

关联购销常被看作控股股东追求控制权收益的重要方式。控股股东追求的控制权收益不同,对关联购销的处理措施也必然呈现差异化,从而对公司业绩产生不同影响。论文以沪市2003—2011年制造业上市公司为样本,在股权分置改革以及限售股不断解禁的大背景下,研究不同控制权收益驱动的异常关联购销与企业价值的关系。论文研究发现,股权分置改革前,控股股东倾向于追求控制权私利,异常关联购销与企业价值显著负相关：股权分置改革后限售股解禁前,两者虽然仍为负相关关系但已不显著：限售股解禁后控股股东更倾向于提升企业价值获得共享收益,异常关联购销与企业价值呈现正相关倾向,但统计上不显著。     

The Role of Pension Business Benefits in Institutional Block Ownership and Corporate Governance*

We investigate whether potential pension contracting benefits lead institutions that provide pension services to acquire ownership blocks in firms and the implications of such blockholdings on the firms' corporate governance. We use the 2006 Pension Protection Act, which expanded pension participation in certain states, as a quasi-exogenous shock and find an increase in block ownership by pension-providing institutions in firms with substantial operations in affected states. Further, we find that the acquisition of a large block increases the likelihood that the institution will provide future pension services to the firm. With regard to corporate governance, we find that the acquisition of large pension blockholdings is associated with higher CEO pay and lower CEO turnover following poor financial performance. However, contrary to the prediction of the private benefits hypothesis, we do not find consistent evidence that large pension blockholdings are associated with declining firm profitability, suggesting that pension institutions are incentivized to exert monitoring to preserve the investment value of their blockholdings. Overall, our evidence is consistent with pension service institutions acquiring ownership blocks to obtain pension contracts, but our evidence does not support the prediction that they use their influence to compromise shareholder value.     

政府干预、控制权私人收益与国有企业并购研究

文章以中国制度环境为背景,研究了国有企业的收购与反收购动机。通过构建企业收购与反收购模型,考察了管理者控制权私人收益对并购动机的影响,结果发现如果政府干预补偿了管理者的控制权私人收益,则管理者越有动机进行反收购;如果政府干预降低了控制权私人收益,则管理者没有反收购动机。模型还发现管理者持股比率、公司规模、自然世界状态均对企业并购行为有显著影响。     

公司创业投资与企业控制权配置： 基于技术契合视角

控制权配置是创业企业治理的核心问题,公司创业投资母公司与被投资企业间的技术契合水平是影响创业企业控制权配置的重要因素。基于不完全契约理论,文章构建公司创业投资者与企业家不同控制权收益影响下创业企业控制权配置数理模型,分析技术契合水平对创业企业两类控制权配置的作用机理,并提出研究假设。文章运用公司创业投资支持的97 家上市企业3 年非 平衡面板数据,通过随机效应模型检验我国公司创业投资母公司与被投资企业间技术契合水平对创业企业两类控制权配置的影响。结果表明,当公司创业投资者战略收益较小、创业企业家私人收益较大时,双方技术契合度与公司创业投资者获得的剩余控制权呈非线性倒U 型关系;当公司创业投资者战略收益较大,创业企业家私人收益较小时,双方技术契合度与公司创业投资者获得的剩余控制权呈非线性U 型关系;公司创业投资者获得的特定控制权与双方技术契合度正相关。     

Control–ownership Disparity and Business Performance: A Study of Korean Firms

In Korea, there is a large disparity between voting and cash flow rights (control–ownership disparity). Using firm‐level data from Korea for the 2004–2009 period, the present study examines whether control–ownership disparity influenced firm performance. Specifically, the study analyzes whether the effects of control–ownership disparity on firm performance vary according to the type of firm (publicly traded vs private firms) and to the major shareholder's ownership stake (greater than 50 percent vs less than or equal to 50 percent). According to the results, the negative effect of control–ownership disparity on firm performance was weaker for publicly traded firms, and control–ownership disparity had a negative effect on firm performance when the major shareholder's ownership stake exceeded 50 percent.     

The Sarbanes‐Oxley Act and Exit Strategies of Private Firms

The costs and benefits of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) have been oft‐debated since the inception of the Act. Much of the extant literature has assessed the costs and benefits of SOX to publicly traded companies. We focus on the costs of SOX compliance for private firms wanting to exit the private market via either an acquisition by a public firm or an IPO. Consistent with our predictions we establish two principal findings. First, SOX appears to have shifted the preferences of private firms from going public to exiting the private market via acquisition by a public acquirer. Second, private target deal multiples are increasing in variables that proxy for a private target's level of pre‐acquisition SOX compliance. These findings suggest that SOX‐related costs have both restricted the action space of possible exit strategies for private firms and led to lower deal multiples for those private acquisition targets that are less likely to be SOX compliant prior to acquisition.     

Customer Concentration and Public Disclosure: Evidence from Management Earnings and Sales Forecasts

This study examines the association between customer base concentration and corporate public disclosure policy. When the customer base is more concentrated, large customers face lower costs of accessing the supplier firm's private information, reducing customers' overall demand for the supplier's public information, suggesting a negative association between customer concentration and the amount of public disclosure. Alternatively, large customers have greater bargaining power and may demand that the supplier firm provide more public disclosures. Consistent with customer concentration facilitating private information flow from the supplier to customers, we find that the frequencies of management earnings and sales forecasts are negatively associated with customer concentration among firms with major corporate customers. These associations are stronger when the supplier and customers are engaged in more relationship-specific investments, when customers' private information acquisition costs are lower, and when it is less costly for customers to find another supplier.     

China's Anti-Corruption Campaign and Financial Reporting Quality

We examine the impact of China's anti-corruption campaign on firm-level financial reporting quality (FRQ). As an important component of the anti-corruption campaign, in October 2013, “Rule 18” was issued to prohibit party and government officials from serving as directors for publicly listed firms. The regulation led to a large number of official directors resigning from their roles as directors involuntarily. As such, Rule 18 has effectively weakened, if not fully discontinued, the political connections of the firms that previously hired officials as directors. Our empirical analyses employ a difference-in-differences research design with firm fixed effects and propensity-score matching to examine the pre- and post-period FRQ around the enactment of Rule 18. We find that, compared to propensity-score-matched control firms, FRQ of firms with resigned official directors increases after Rule 18. Further evidence suggests that the impact is stronger when firms are located in regions with more developed financial markets and in regions with higher judiciary efficiency. We also find that the effect is more pronounced when firms are non-state-owned, received preferential credits, and face refinancing pressure.     

Does an Audit Judgment Rule Increase or Decrease Auditors' Use of Innovative Audit Procedures?

The current audit environment encourages auditors to conduct defensive auditing procedures in lieu of using new, innovative, and potentially more effective audit procedures, due to concerns these procedures may be second-guessed in litigation or by audit inspectors such as the PCAOB. As a result, auditors may prefer traditional “generally accepted” procedures over innovative procedures that are potentially more effective. We test recent proposals that an Audit Judgment Rule (AJR) encourages the use of innovative, and potentially more effective, audit procedures analogous to the similar Business Judgment Rule that affords legal protections to corporate directors. Under an AJR, litigators or audit inspectors could not second-guess auditor judgments, even if they perceive that alternate judgments would have ordinarily been reached, provided the auditor's judgment was made in good faith and in a rigorous manner. However, the AJR's requirements that auditors must defend the rigor of their innovative judgments could potentially backfire and lead auditors to select more traditional procedures. Under the framework of goal activation theory, we conduct an experiment with audit managers and seniors and find that an AJR makes auditors less likely to select innovative audit procedures, particularly when audit risk is high. They do so despite believing the innovative procedures to be more effective than the traditional procedures. Findings from a supplementary experiment with experienced auditors further suggest that national office affirmation of the reasonableness of the procedures does not help overcome this effect. Overall, our findings suggest that an AJR may have the unintended consequence of further increasing auditors' focus on more traditional, and potentially less effective, audit procedures.     

企业家精神、外部环境与创新效率

以2015-2018年的上市民营企业为样本,采用熵权法和随机前沿模型(SFA),实证检验了企业家精神对创新效率的影响,同时还考察了外部创新环境对两者关系的调节作用。研究发现：企业家精神显著促进了企业创新效率,其中企业家的创新意识、管理能力和责任意识较为重要;市场化进程对两者关系有显著正向调节效应,市场化程度越高,企业家精神越能发挥积极作用,金融发展水平则无明显调节效果。     

For goodwill or resources? The rationale behind firms' corporate philanthropy in an environment with high economic policy uncertainty

This paper investigates the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the corporate philanthropy (CP) behaviors of firms using a dataset from Chinese A-share listed firms. We find that, on average, firms decrease their CP significantly when economic policy uncertainty increases, but the response is heterogeneous for firms with different ownership types. Compared with their counterparts, private firms are willing to contribute more donations in an environment with high economic policy uncertainty. Further analysis shows that private firms take on more other types of corporate social responsibility at the same time, and private firms' additional CP in a high EPU environment is rewarded with more subsidies, indicating that altruistic and political motives may play important roles in driving the CP behaviors of private firms. There is no evidence that private firms selling products directly to consumers are more likely to engage in additional CP. Our findings indicate that the main motivation behind Chinese private firms' additional CP under high economic policy uncertainty is seeking more government resources, instead of keeping consumers loyal by maintaining good reputations during hard periods.     

公司资本结构与控制权转移价格的实证研究

文章以我国A股市场2001—2003年发生控制权协议转让的上市公司为样本,对控制权转让价格及溢价率的影响因素进行了实证分析和检验,重点分析资本结构的影响。回归结果表明:目标公司的每股净资产越高,控制权转让价格越高;股权性质影响控制权转让价格,法人股转让价格高于国有股;其     

High benefits and low wages: Employees as monitor of management in SOEs

Employees do play a role in corporate governance as important stakeholders of modern enterprises. In the absence of financial and managerial labor markets in centrally planned economies (CPE), the owner of state enterprises (SOEs) has no effective mechanisms to discipline management. Therefore, the role of employees in corporate governance becomes much more important in SOEs than in the typical capitalist private firm. We posit that low wages and generous benefits in SOEs provide incentives for employees to monitor management. Other employment arrangements, especially lifetime job security and centralized wage scale, are also conducive to the monitoring of management by employees. A formal model shows that benefits tied to firm performance, designed properly, induce employees to monitor management. It also suggests that the existence of a market for managers tends to undermine this mechanism.     

Investment incentives and the relative demand for skilled labor: Evidence from accelerated depreciation policies in China

This study evaluates the effects of China's 2014 and 2015 accelerated depreciation policies on the relative demand of firms for skilled labor. We develop a simple model to explore how the policies affect the relative demand of firms for skilled labor and illustrate the roles of financing constraints and tax compliance in mediating the policy effects. We then employ a firm-level dataset from China's A-share listed companies and use a quasi-experimental design to examine the model predictions. We find that the policies significantly increase the relative demand of firms for skilled labor. The channels underlying the policy effects are that the policies generate additional cash flow for firms, stimulate investment and, thus, raise the demand of firms for skilled labor with the presence of capital–skill complementarity. We also find that the positive effects of the policies on the relative demand for skilled labor are primarily significant for firms with strong financing constraints and high tax compliance. Moreover, we document the positive effects of the policies on R&D investment, firm value added, productivity, workers' benefits, and corporate social responsibility performance, which further corroborate our main results.     

上市公司控制权私利监管措施分析

随着我国资本市场的迅速发展,上市公司控制权私利监管成了我国公司治理研究的焦点之一。本文从培育我国上市公司控制权市场,构建公司股权制衡治理机制,加强中小股东的保护,完善上市公司信息披露等四个方面就上市公司控制权私利监管措施进行了探讨。     

Foreign investment,corporate governance and performance in the Chinese listed A Share companies

We present a novel lens on the presence and impact of qualified foreign institutional investors (QFII) in top shareholdings of the non-financial domestically listed Chinese ‘A’ share firms. The initial results suggest that the presence of a QFII as a top shareholder in these companies is associated with their better performance, using both Tobin’s Q and ROA as the performance measures. Our models include variables representing corporate governance mechanisms, foreign legal person shares, a proxy for international affiliations and a number of time-variant firm characteristics. Economically, the coefficient of impact on the market measure is the more significant, while the effect of having a QFII in top shareholdings on both performance measures is empirically significant. Previously, studies have often ignored the potential for reverse causality beyond using lagged regressors. This is problematic. Therefore, we follow up with a 2SLS instrumental variables and system GMM model to further mitigate this potential and find the empirical relationship holds. Contrary to earlier work on QFIIs and governance post-implementation of the QFII scheme, the findings from our models suggest that the presence of a QFII top shareholder augments market performance holding equal existing corporate governance mechanisms and other controls.     

基于绩效和社会福利的公司治理实证研究

本文从公司绩效和社会福利两个方面,对2010年不同性质12个行业的国内上市公司进行比较分析,发现国有企业的经营收入、资产和市场份额都要高于私有企业;在公司绩效指标上,不同行业不同指标衡量下比较结果不同;在社会福利指标上,大部分行业中国有企业均大于私有企业。如以盈利能力来衡量企业绩效,则国有企业和混合企业相对于私有企业会降低企业的绩效,表明私有企业更加关注绩效;如果以社会福利来衡量公司绩效,则国有企业和混合企业相对于私有企业会提高企业的绩效。