A Proposal to Improve the VAT Treatment of Housing in the European Union*

The treatment of housing is one of the most difficult issues under the VATs in the EU. Ideally, rents and rental values should be taxed just like other consumer goods and services, but doing so would present formidable practical and political difficulties. Under a second‐best approach, the value of newly created residential (and other) property is taxed as a proxy for the VAT that should be payable on the flow of housing (building) services. This implies, however, that future increases (and decreases) in the value of the exempt property are left out of the VAT base. To remedy this defect, this paper recommends taxing the increases (refunding the tax related to decreases) realised at the time of sale of the exempt used property. This VAT should replace the current transfer, registration and stamp duties, which are highly distortionary. Beyond that, the VATs in various member states can be improved by limiting the exemption for all used immovable property to housing, by taxing land and by applying the standard rate more widely than is currently the case.     

社会资本与中国农村养老保险——基于CHIPS数据的实证研究

党的十八大以来,习近平总书记多次发表重要论述,阐明自己的"民生观",指出中国养老问题的重要性。改革开放以来,中国经济、社会、政治都发生了巨大变化。福利一词也越来越多为人所谈论。本文以农村养老保险为切入口,研究社会资本、党员身份与农村养老保险的参与程度、知情程度、未来参与意愿之间的关系,从一个侧面反映中国农村的福利情况。通过文献综述,提出了六个假设。根据中国家庭收入调查(CHIPS)数据,建立Logistic回归模型,发现社会资本对是否参加农村养老保险、是否知道个人账户有多少钱、将来是否加入农村养老保险都有积极作用;党员身份与是否参加农村养老保险、是否知道自己的个人账户有多少钱、将来是否可能参加无关。结果表明,提高村民的社会资本,加强他们的社会交往有助于他们获取信息,改善福利,所以可以提高村民小组活动和村民大会的频率以增加农民的社会资本。     

长期资金市场对能源强度的影响研究——基于中国省际面板数据的实证分析

依据中国30个省(市)自治区1998~2013年面板数据,考量长期资金市场对能源强度的影响。结果表明,长期资金市场发展对东部地区能源强度下降影响较大,产业结构升级、人均 GDP 提高均有利于各地区能源强度下降,技术进步、对外贸易度对各地区能源强度的影响呈现出分化态势。鉴此,应充分发挥长期资金市场优势、促进产业结构升级、重视研发投入产出技术成果转化等,多渠道降低能源强度。     

The European Union Endorsement Process for International Financial Reporting Standards: A Telos-Based Analysis

The paper discusses the process for the endorsement of an IFRS in the European Union with regard to its compliance with teleological principles and with regard to the true and fair view. It begins with an exposition of the teleological principle under Roman law and its relationship to the true and fair view override, as known in the UK and in the EU. We then discuss firstly the telos-based criteria against which a new Standard is appraised during the endorsement process, and secondly the application of the true and fair view principle to the issue of which criteria an EU-endorsed IFRS should be appraised against as regards its application, using IFRS 3 as a specific illustration. The teleological principle is a crucial element in our conclusions. We show that this principle can be used, and in the EU is being used, to bypass democratic processes. The issues raised by this paper concern the operation of regulations designed to be, at least theoretically, context-neutral, within a specific legal and operational framework, that is, the European Union. But similar issues are likely to require consideration in other geographical areas, outside the European context.     

公司多元化战略对资本结构影响的研究——基于面板数据的实证分析

从战略管理和财务理论融合的角度,利用762家上市公司的面板数据对公司多元化战略与资本结构之间的关系进行实证分析,研究发现:公司的债务水平与多元化程度存在显著的正相关关系,并且单一业务型公司的负债水平最低,主导业务型和相关业务型公司的居中,非相关业务型公司的债务水平最高.因此,公司战略的制定与实施应考虑其财务影响;同样,资本结构决策也应该考虑如何与公司战略相配合,以从资本结构决策中获得竞争优势.     

吸收风险投资对企业投资效率的影响研究--基于创业板的数据研究

以创业板上市公司为研究对象,就初创公司上市后是否吸收风险投资、吸收风险投资的比例以及是否存在风险投资机构的联合投资展开实证研究。结果表明:公司上市后风险投资参与仍可以显著提高企业的投资效率,风险投资比例越高,越有利于提高投资效率,联合投资也对此有正向促进作用。     

河南省实体经济资本配置效率研究——基于2003—2017年面板数据的实证分析

实体经济是衡量一个国家综合实力的基础,实体经济越强,综合国力的基础越牢固,金融发展与实体经济的关系越密切。以河南省2003—2017年18个地级市的面板数据为样本,从金融规模、金融效率两方面构建金融发展综合指标,实证检验金融发展对实体经济资本配置效率的影响。研究发现,近年来河南省金融规模呈迅速上升态势,金融效率小幅下降后趋于平稳;整体上看河南省实体经济资本配置效率水平显著有效,分区域看河南省各地市实体经济的资本配置效率普遍有效,地市间差别明显;随着时间的推移,金融规模扩张和金融效率的提高对实体经济资本配置效率的促进作用开始显现。     

IPO市场时机选择与资本结构关系研究——基于中国上市公司面板数据的实证研究

本文以沪深全部上市公司1990～2004年的IPO面板数据,运用多元回归的方法,研究市场时机行为对资本结构的影响及其持续性。研究发现,我国股市明显存在市场时机选择行为,并且对上市公司的资本结构影响显著;公司的历史估值和杠杆水平之间具有显著的负相关性,历史估值每上升一个单位,将引起账面杠杆和市值杠杆分别下降4.87和2.9个单位;进一步研究表明,中国上市公司市场时机对资本结构的影响,可以持续5～8年。     

资本结构行业差异及其影响因素的实证分析--来自我国上市公司的经验数据

通过对我国上市公司资本结构行业差异及其影响因素进行的实证分析发现,我国上市公司不同行业门类之间的资本结构具有显著性差异;同一行业的资本结构具有稳定性,资本结构行业间的差异具有稳定性;不同行业资本结构的影响因素是有差异的,同一因素对各行业的影响力度也不一样;从各假设条件的检验结果来看,有些假设在多数行业得到了证实,但也有一些假设被一定的经验数据所证伪或没有得到支持.     

Financing Retirement in the European Union

This paper explores how EU countries can address various challenges (including the aging of the population) affecting their systems of old-age income support. It presents two scenarios illustrating the most important uncertainties surrounding the major developments that affect the pension systems of the EU. To diversify these risks, EU governments should act on several fronts. In addition to the formation of human capital (especially that of children), employment (especially that of older workers) should be boosted. This calls for social insurance reform with more emphasis on individual saving schemes. Pension schemes should be more explicit about how they share demographic and other risks. Countries that currently rely heavily on public pay-as-you-go (PAYG) schemes should stimulate private pensions by gradually reducing PAYG benefits collected by high-income earners, by issuing new financial instruments, and by conducting intergenerational risk sharing through the tax system.     

Sweden: A member of the European Union but without the Euro

The integration of the EU-member countries continues. An important step of this process was the introduction of the common currency, the Euro coins and bank notes in year 2002. During a time of incidents and events last year, Swedes made up their minds and declined the Euro favouring the Swedish krona in the referendum on 14 September 2003. This is a story about a small EU-member state that still needs time to integrate.     

Governmental Accounting in Spain and the European Monetary Union: A Critical Perspective

During the last twenty-five years, the changes in Spanish accounting have been radical and significant, especially since 1986 when Spain joined the European Union. Those changes were first introduced in business accounting, following the patterns of the Fourth Directive, but governmental accounting has also been affected by structural reforms that have modified the financial reporting system, the accounting standards and the accounting principles to be applied. However, the governmental accounting system needs further improvement, particularly given the EMU framework and the relationship between governmental accounting and national accounting.     

基于面板数据的中国商业银行效率实证分析

针对以往参数方法存在权重确定困难的问题,本文提出了一种基于面板数据的银行效率评价的非参数方法（BEE）,同时构造了相应的数学模型（M-BEE）。然后,应用（M-BEE）模型对中国四家国有银行、八家股份制商业银行2001-2008年的经济效率状况进行了实证分析,结果表明,八年间中国12家商业银行的综合效率呈现逐年递增趋势,纯技术效率呈现先下降后上升的U型特征,规模效率缓慢上升,变化不显著;2006-2007年我国12家商业银行的综合效率和纯技术效率整体上都有大幅提升;八家股份制银行的综合效率和纯技术效率均明显高于四大国有银行。     

Bank Capital Standards for Market Risk: A Welfare Analysis

We propose a simple model that is suitable for evaluating alternativebank capital regulatory proposals for market risk. Our modelformalizes the conflict between bank objectives and regulatorygoals. Banks' decisions represent a tension between their desireto exploit the deposit-insurance put option and their desireto preserve franchise value. Regulators seek to balance thesocial value of deposits in mediating transactions against thedeadweight costs of failure resolution. Our social welfare criterionis standard: a weighted average agents' utilities. We demonstrate that banks do not incrementally alter their portfoliorisk as the economic environment changes. Rather, banks eitherchoose the minimal feasible risk or the maximal feasible risk.This pattern, in turn, drives regulatory decisions: The firstgoal of the regulator is to induce banks to choose the minimalrisk level. For all nontrivial cases, unregulated banks failto choose the first-best allocations. Traditional ex-ante capitalrequirements can induce banks to choose the socially-optimallevel of portfolio risk, but the required capital is often inefficientlyhigh. In contrast, variants of the Federal Reserve Board's precommitmentproposal imply far smaller efficiency losses, and achieve allocationsat or nearthe first-best for most reasonable model specifications.The ex-post penalties required for the optimal implementationof precommitment are not excessively large. The welfare gainsfrom precommitment are even higher when the precommitment penaltyfunction is precluded from sending banks into default. We concludethat state-contingent regulatory mechanisms, of which the precommitmentapproach is an example, offer the possibility of substantialgains in regulatory efficiency, relative to traditional statenon-contingent regulation.     

Bank Capital Standards for Market Risk: A Welfare Analysis

We propose a simple model that is suitable for evaluating alternative bank capital regulatory proposals for market risk. Our model formalizes the conflict between bank objectives and regulatory goals. Banks' decisions represent a tension between their desire to exploit the deposit-insurance put option and their desire to preserve franchise value. Regulators seek to balance the social value of deposits in mediating transactions against the deadweight costs of failure resolution. Our social welfare criterion is standard: a weighted average agents' utilities.We demonstrate that banks do not incrementally alter their portfolio risk as the economic environment changes. Rather, banks either choose the minimal feasible risk or the maximal feasible risk. This pattern, in turn, drives regulatory decisions: The first goal of the regulator is to induce banks to choose the minimal risk level. For all nontrivial cases, unregulated banks fail to choose the first-best allocations. Traditional ex-ante capital requirements can induce banks to choose the socially-optimal level of portfolio risk, but the required capital is often inefficiently high. In contrast, variants of the Federal Reserve Board's precommitment proposal imply far smaller efficiency losses, and achieve allocations at or near the first-best for most reasonable model specifications. The ex-post penalties required for the optimal implementation of precommitment are not excessively large. The welfare gains from precommitment are even higher when the precommitment penalty function is precluded from sending banks into default. We conclude that state-contingent regulatory mechanisms, of which the precommitment approach is an example, offer the possibility of substantial gains in regulatory efficiency, relative to traditional state non-contingent regulation.     

The Empirical Average Cost of Capital: A New Approach to Estimating the Cost of Corporate Funds

The authors develop a new way to measure the cost of capital, called the empirical average cost of capital (or “EACC”), which is consistent with existing methods of calculating the weighted average cost of capital, but uses information from the firm's financial statements and requires fewer and less subjective inputs. The authors’ model relies on the concept of economic profit while using data from the period 1990‐2012 on net operating profits and total capital to estimate the EACC at both the individual company and industry‐wide levels. Estimates of the EACC and rolling quarterly forecasts of future net operating profits for a single company, McDonald's, for its related industry, and for 57 other U.S. industries are compared to five conventional “textbook” estimates of the weighted average cost of capital published by Ibbotson Associates. The authors find that the EACC yields forecasts of future net operating profit after taxes that compare favorably to those of the five published measures of the weighted average cost of capital, as well as the average and median of these measures.     

不同行业内公司之间资本结构差异研究——以中国上市公司为例

本文对不同行业内公司之间的资本结构差异情况以及产生这些差异的原因进行了一定的探讨。研究表明,产品市场竞争、代理问题、发展机会、资产流动性等行业特征以及行业内公司特征存在的极大差异是造成行业内公司之间资本结构差异的主要原因。     

New European Union members on their way to adopting the Euro: An analysis of macroeconomic disturbances

We identify aggregate demand and supply disturbances of several central and eastern European countries and compare them with the respective disturbances of France, Germany, and Italy which are the large economies of the euro zone. We also examine how output and prices of the various economies respond to these changes. We find that several central and eastern European countries (CEECs) still exhibit significant differences compared with the older member countries of the European Union (EU). However, some more advanced countries of the area already show remarkable similarities with the euro zone countries.