The Importance of Board Risk Oversight in Times of Crisis

Journal of Financial Services Research - This study investigates the relationship between board risk oversight practices at financial institutions in the EU and systemic risk during the sovereign...     

Corporate Social Responsibility: The Link Between Sustainability Disclosure and Sustainability Performance

This paper explores the relation between sustainability performance and sustainability disclosure within the Australian extractive industries. The study utilizes Ullmann's (1985) stakeholder framework, which depicts sustainability disclosure and performance as two components of management strategy for dealing with stakeholder demands. Consistent with this framework, we predict a positive performance–disclosure relation. Extending prior research that has utilized problematic environmental performance indices such as CEP indices or toxic emissions levels, we develop a sustainability performance index based on the International Finance Corporation's Measuring Sustainability Framework (2001). Using data from 339 mining and energy firms listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2006, we find that corporate sustainability performance is strongly associated with disclosure as expected. Sustainability disclosure is also greater for firms with a proactive communication strategy as manifested through press release activity. Finally, asset age and firm size are both positively associated with sustainability, consistent with predictions from the stakeholder framework.     

通胀还能走多远

近期食品价格不断攀升,政府政策调整频繁。预计2011年1季度CPI将保持在4.5%～5%的高位,其主因是由于短期内食品CPI上涨压力持续;非食品CPI也会持续小幅上扬。近期政策调整显示货币条件将加速回归正常,这将对未来国内需求增长有一定制约,限制过热风险。但紧缩力度不会太激烈,经济硬着陆的     

Disparities in Mortgage Lending,Bank Performance,Economic Influence,and Regulatory Oversight

This study investigates factors affecting changes in the disparity of home mortgage denial rates between white and minority loan applicants in the U.S. during the period 1991–1997. We develop a two-stage least-squares regression model that incorporates applicant-level characteristics, neighborhood characteristics, regional economic data, and bank-specific data as explanatory variables. Some have argued that mortgage lenders were under increasing pressure from industry regulators to extend additional credit to minorities and low-income groups during the period under study. The model includes each institution's periodic CRA rating as a proxy for regulatory influence. An alternative explanation is that market forces, such as improvements in economic conditions and in bank financial condition and performance, affected default loss estimates and credit standards in a way that disproportionally benefited minority and low-income applicants. The empirical findings are consistent with the latter hypothesis. We conclude that policy makers should consider the impact of market factors when assessing the allocation of mortgage credit in a particular demographic market. The findings also underscore the importance of controlling for lender assessments of credit risk when evaluating compliance with CRA and fair lending statutes.     

中国跨国公司如何"跨国"?

中国企业如何“走出去”,是一个战略选择,更是一个需要去学的策略     

保本基金如何保本?

保本基金"保"字先行 一直以来,投资者所熟悉的基金产品都是以强调相对收益目标为根本出发点,无论是采取积极投资方式的股票型基金,采取消极投资方式的指数型基金,还是债券型基金,对其风险和收益目标的确定都是建立在一基准指数的基础上.所不同的是,积极投资型基金以战胜基准指数为目标,消极投资型基金则以拟和基准指数为目标.基准指数所代表的是基金资产所投向的一个或多个市场,无法预测的市场风险与收益决定了基金相对收益的不确定性.     

Corporate Sustainability Performance and Idiosyncratic Risk: A Global Perspective

Does investing in sustainability leaders affect portfolio performance? Analyzing two mutually exclusive leading and lagging global corporate sustainability portfolios (Dow Jones) finds that (1) leading sustainability firms do not underperform the market portfolio, and (2) their lagging counterparts outperform the market portfolio and the leading portfolio. Notably, we find leading (lagging) corporate social performance (CSP) firms exhibit significantly lower (higher) idiosyncratic risk and that idiosyncratic risk might be priced by the broader global equity market. We develop an idiosyncratic risk factor and find that its inclusion significantly reduces the apparent difference in performance between leading and lagging CSP portfolios.     

安然事件与会计监管

安然事件暴露了美国会计监管的制度缺陷,同时也把改革提上了议事日程.众所周知,美国现行的监管模式始建于20世纪30年代.1933年的《证券法》和1934年的《证券交易法》奠定了政府监管会计活动的法律基础.     

How Do Investors' Expectations Drive Asset Prices?

Based on an extension of the process of investors' expectations to stochastic volatility we derive asset price processes in a general continuous time pricing kernel framework. Our analysis suggests that stochastic volatility of asset price processes results from the fact that investors do not know the risk of an asset and therefore the volatility of the process of their expectations is stochastic, too. Furthermore, our model is consistent with empirical studies reporting negative correlation between asset prices and their volatility as well as significant variations in the Sharpe ratio.     

Zombie Board: Board Tenure and Firm Performance

We show that board tenure exhibits an inverted U‐shaped relation with firm value and accounting performance. The quality of corporate decisions, such as M&A, financial reporting quality, and CEO compensation, also has a quadratic relation with board tenure. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that directors’ on‐the‐job learning improves firm value up to a threshold, at which point entrenchment dominates and firm performance suffers. To address endogeneity concerns, we use a sample of firms in which an outside director suffered a sudden death, and find that sudden deaths that move board tenure away from (toward) the empirically observed optimum level in the cross‐section are associated with negative (positive) announcement returns. The quality of corporate decisions also follows an inverted U‐shaped pattern in a sample of firms affected by the death of a director.     

How Much Can Marketability Affect Security Values?

How marketability affects security prices is one of the most important issues in finance. We derive a simple analytical upper bound on the value of marketability using option-pricing theory. We show that discounts for lack of marketability can potentially be large even when the illiquidity period is very short. This analysis also provides a benchmark for assessing the potential costs of exchange rules and regulatory requirements restricting the ability of investors to trade when desired. Furthermore, these results provide new insights into the relation between discounts for lack of marketability and the length of the marketability restriction.     

降低养老保险政策缴费率对基金可持续性影响的研究

人口老龄化程度的加深对我国养老保险事业发展造成了巨大挑战.在此背景下,本文通过构建精算模型,模拟了不同政策组合下,降低养老保险政策缴费率对基金可持续性的影响,得到如下结论:(1)当不实行政策干预时,基金在2027年首次出现累计赤字,此后赤字规模逐年扩大;(2)在短期内(2021-2025),养老保险政策缴费率下调3个百分点时,能够使得基金可持续性提高,而在中期(2021-2050),反而会增大基金支付压力;(3)当实现征收体制改革且缴费率下调3个百分点时,基金累计赤字时点向后推迟了8年,基金可持续性得到一定改善;在此基础上进一步实行延迟退休年龄政策之后,基金在中期内并未出现累计赤字,且累计结余大幅度提升;而当政府对基金进行财政补贴后,基金运行状况得到显著改善.     

How Behavioral Finance Can Inform Retirement Plan Design1

Several key lessons for pension design have emerged in the last decade from behavioral economics and finance research. This article analyzes the insights from this literature on how workers decide to save, manage their retirement investments, and draw down their assets in retirement. The aim is to understand how workers and retirees deviate from the rational, well‐informed agents that underpin economic theory, public policy, and often retirement plan design. The evidence suggests that many people save too little, others make poor investment decisions, and still others spend their accumulated assets too quickly in retirement. The “behavioral” reasons for such tendencies include overconfidence, limited self‐control, the overvaluation of the present at the expense of the future, susceptibility to “framing,” and an aversion to realizing losses. By shedding light on why people fail to achieve an ideal outcome on their own, this literature offers practical guidance to plan sponsors and policymakers who must design, regulate, and evaluate the institutions that help provide for economic security in old age. More specifically, the literature suggests that the plan design should be made automatic for the many individuals unwilling to exercise full control over their retirement savings choices. Recommended design features include automatic enrollment, scheduled annual savings increases, and default investment options or managed account programs that represent optimal portfolio choices.     

How Companies Can Use Hedging to Create Shareholder Value

This article provides a framework for designing and evaluating corporate risk management and hedging programs. Corporate risk management has the potential to create substantial shareholder wealth by protecting companies from unexpected events that could force them to put their strategic investment plans on hold or even endanger their existence. However, assessing the performance of risk management, and how it is expected to increase the value of the enterprise, is a difficult undertaking because the costs of risk management tend to be much easier to quantify—indeed, they often appear directly on the firm's bottom line—than the benefits. The author begins by discussing how to evaluate the benefits and costs of a risk management program in general terms, and then focuses more directly on the assessment of corporate hedging programs, which are generally conducted with derivatives. In practice, there are many obstacles to designing and carrying out a successful hedging program. But one of the most common has been the tendency of top managements to insist that hedging programs be “costless.” The author argues that just as the purchase of fire insurance is not viewed as waste of funds or a bad investment if the insured house does not burn down, the use of derivatives in a well‐designed hedge should not be viewed as a mistake if the derivative position produces losses. To guard against this mistake, the people who design and implement risk management strategies must ensure that their CEOs and boards understand the possible outcomes of the strategy—including losses on derivatives position—and how the strategy itself increases the (expected) value of the firm. Further, management should attempt to communicate the principles underlying its risk management program and the value created by its hedging strategy to the investment community.     

Embedding Sustainability Performance and Long‐Term Strategy in the Earnings Call

The practice of disclosing corporate Environmental, Social and Governance performance information continues to evolve, and the frequency of ESG disclosures in investor‐facing discussions, including Investor Day presentations and non‐deal roadshows, continues to grow. But even with these developments, the corporate‐investor dialogue about ESG and long‐term strategy, and their expected effects on long‐run profitability and value, has continued to lag. This seems particularly evident in the quarterly earnings call. In this article, the authors review the work of NYU's Center for Sustainable Business, in collaboration with Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP), in encouraging companies to work ESG themes and performance into their quarterly earnings calls. After discussing the reasons for the relatively slow progress in this important disclosure venue, including interviews with sell‐side analysts, the authors propose practical approaches that can guide companies, regardless of industry or market cap, in delivering this content in a way that is valuable to both buy‐side and sell‐side equity analysts.     

基于DEA方法的封闭式基金相对绩效和持续性研究

我国封闭式基金的发展已经有些时日,基金的业绩和发展的持续性是基金投资者以及基金管理公司极为关注的问题,目前的基金评价方法存在很多不足.本文尝试建立数据包络分析(DEA)的BCC模型,通过选取投入和产出指标,对上证25只封闭式基金进行相对绩效评估和持续性分析.     

CFO如何登陆新三板

就在众多高科技中小企业苦于如何突破发展瓶颈之际,近期的新三板扩围无疑使业界为之一振。8月3日,证监会宣布首批非上市股份公司扩容试点,除中关村科技园区外,新增上海高江高新产业开发区、武汉东湖新技术产业开发区和天津滨海高新区。9月4日,中国证券业协会向社会公布首批在新三板扩容试点的8家企业,随后,这8家企业于9月7日正式集体挂牌交易。对于尚处于"襁褓"之中的众多高科技中小企业而言,登陆新三板意味着什么?在冲击     

试论国有商业银行摆脱困境之路

近年来,伴随着股份制商业银行、保险业和城乡信用社的迅猛发展以及外资银行的陆续进入,金融行业出现了前所未有的“八路诸侯分天下”的竞争局面,使得自称行业“老大”的国有商业银行面临着巨大的市场压力和生存挑战,同时自身还被体改滞缓、竞争无序、管理落后、人才流失严重等危难而棘手的问题所困扰。要摆脱这些危机,国有商业银行必须痛下决心进行制度、业务、管理、用人理念的创新,从根本上提升整体竞争力,才能突破重围,接受全球金融一体化的挑战。     

Venture Capitalists and the Oversight of Private Firms

This article examines the representation of venture capitalists on the boards of private firms in their portfolios. If venture capitalists are intensive monitors of managers, their involvement as directors should be more intense when the need for oversight is greater. I show that venture capitalists' representation on the board increases around the time of chief executive officer turnover, while the number of other outsiders remains constant. I also show that distance to the firm is an important determinant of the board membership of venture capitalists, as might be anticipated if the oversight of local firms is less costly than more distant businesses.     

会计师事务所如何防范上市公司审计风险

多年来,会计师事务所、注册会计师对规范证券市场秩序,维护社会公众利益做出了重要贡献。随着上市公司家数的不断增加,上市公司审计业务收入在具有证券许可证会计师事务所业务收入中所占份额越来越大,有的甚至超过50%。上市公司审计业务在给会计师事务所创造巨大收入的同时,也给他们带来了必须面对的审计风险。尤其是对具有证券许可证会计师事务所来说,对上市公司审计风险控制是贯穿整个会计师事务所生存发展的一条生命线。为了减少审计失败,规避审计风险,会计师事务所应采取有力措施,整体运作,建立起完善的风险防范机制,防患于未然。以笔者…