中国经济:现实与未来——中国经济回顾与展望

对于2009年中国经济的判断是件困难的事情,正如要判断2008年全球经济和中国经济在全球金融风暴的影响下出人意料的走势一样。在目前的背景下,中国经济的走势取决于外部经济的变化,以     

国际金融和经济危机与全球经济展望

为全面总结和反思本轮全球金融危机的成因和影响，探讨舒缓危机冲击的应对方略以及中国经济未来的发展走势，中国国际经济交流中心拟于2009年7月3～4日于北京中国大饭店举办“全球智库峰会”。本次峰会将邀请全球著名政要、学者以及200-300家国际知名智库和世界500强企业领袖为全球尽快摆脱金融危机和中国经济的平稳增长出谋划策。     

我国经济有望率先复苏

2009年,中国经济走势会如何,危机中有哪些机遇,就业难题如何破解等当前经济中的诸多热点,备受社会关注。全国政协经济委员会副主任、经济学家厉以宁日前谈了自己的看法。“国家大量投资下去以后,经济会起来的。今年,经济增长可能会到8％或者更高一点。”这番话语。无疑是对中国经济信心坚定的声明。厉以宁还认为中国经济有望在全球实现率先复苏,“因为我们的问题不像外国那么复杂,出口虽然有一定的对外依赖度,但中国现在把主要精力放在扩大内需上,这实际上会培育以后的增长力。”     

关于当前宏观经济的基本判断与瞻望

对于中国近期宏观经济形势及2009年全国宏观经济走势作一个基本的判断和预测,是各级经济工作者和研究部门的重要课题。淮安市发展和改革研究会课题组综合国际国内的经济形势,对2008年中国经济的基本判断和对2009年乃至以后一段时期中国经济走势的瞻望如下:中国经济增长步伐已经并将继续放缓;消费景气指数趋于疲软;货币政策出现大幅松动;贸易顺差日益走向平缓;通货膨胀形势出现逆转;汇率保持基本稳定;投资仍是拉动经济增长的关键所在;房地产市场即将在近年得到恢复。     

信心!中国信心!

信心，无疑是活跃全球经济的催化剂。2009，中国经济的信心正在回来，中国经济信心并非空穴来风。     

标准普尔：2009中国经济仍保持增长

目前中国又面临全球经济危机的包抄,在如此恶劣的周边环境下,2009年中国的经济走势会如何？是否也会像世界其他国家那样就此进入“跌跌不休”的经济下滑通道？标准普尔评级服务最新发布了一份题为《2009年中国经济将保持增长,受强劲刺激计划提振》的报告,报告中指出,中国实行了积极的经济刺激计划,因此中国或许能够更好地应对经济下滑的冲击,经济增长有望在年内出现回升,但总体年经济增长率仍会远低于2008年的增幅.     

中国经济平稳较快发展有“本钱”

在全球经济金融危机冲击不减的情况下,国内外经济学家在预测2009年中国经济走势时,看好或看空的都有。     

2009中国V型经济调整下银行的对策

中国银行副行长朱民在21世纪亚洲金融论坛上，对2009年中国经济走势及其银行的对策发表了演讲。他认为，2009年中国经济将面临着V型的调整，较大的下滑和较快的反弹；V型下滑和反弹在结构上有很大的关联，必须予以关注；银行面临这一经济调整必须做出对策反应；银行也因此获得了寻找适合自己的经营模式的机会     

2009至2010年是中国经济企稳整固期

2009年对中国经济发展来说．是为保增长、调结构．促民生而奋斗的一年,明年经济形势如何为人关注,宏观经济研究专家王小广对中国宏观经济作出的总体判断是：2009年到2010年将是中国经济企稳整固期．中国经济可能的走势是“根号”型发展。投资和价格是北京经济发展中的热点问题,投资分析专家齐心判断2010年北京投资运行将更趋稳健,价格专家王小娥对北京价格走势则给出将温和上升的判断。     

2005年中国经济十大预测

1．世界经济走势牵动中国经济“神经” 2005年，世界经济特别是我国主要贸易伙伴美国、日本经济的回调，将影响到我国外贸出口的增长。     

CFO驭变

从低调潜行到"首席忽悠",2012,看知名CFO如何演绎变"化"财道。天下武功,无坚不破,唯快不破。对公司理财而言,为企业创造价值,已成CFO共识,但在瞬息万变的商业环境中,唯有拥有应对变化的快速反映能力,才能真正赢。任何武功,都有自己的不足,防守的再好,也有破解方法,只要意识、攻、守、应机变化等速度远远高于对方,势必游刃有余。公司理财也是如此,现实工作中面临的种种困惑不仅仅要求CFO"武功"高强,要想轻松驾驭变"化",必须具有快速化解困惑的能力,才能发挥"武功"的威力。     

CFO role and CFO compensation: An empirical analysis of their implications

Given concerns over CFO pay, especially incentives, and considering the tension between a CFO’s fiduciary responsibility and being a key member of the firm’s executive team, we examine the determinants and effects of CFO compensation amount, incentive intensity, and proximity to CEO compensation in a sample of European companies (FTE 500, 2005–2009). First, we focus on the CFO role as a determinant of CFO compensation. Like prior work, we proxy for CFO roles by using hand-collected public data on education and past professional experience, but we supplement these proxies with proprietary data to more directly capture the firm-specific nature of the CFO job in term of its similarity with that of the CEO. We thus argue how CFOs can have varied roles characterized by different levels of financial expertise and CEO-likeness, and document that it is this latter aspect that is associated with CFO compensation. Second, we study the effects of CFO compensation design on outcomes in the CFO’s realm related to financial reporting. We find that CFO financial expertise is positively associated with financial reporting quality, while a CFO’s pay long-term incentive intensity and a CFO’s incentive compensation proximity with the CEO are negatively associated with financial reporting quality. Overall, then, our results suggest that CFOs get rewarded for their CEO-likeness, and particularly for their being similar to the CEO in terms of tasks and decision making authority. But it is their financial expertise that is positively related to financial reporting quality. At the same time, using compensation that is more incentive intensive and more similar to that of the CEO appears to be potentially detrimental to the quality of financial reporting. These results are relevant for boards involved in selecting highly expert CFOs, and their compensation committees charged with defining subsequently effective incentive compensation plans for those CFOs.     

Management of operating cash flows before and after the scandals in the early 2000s: An examination of meeting or beating analyst cash flow forecasts*

We examine whether the stock market premium assigned to meeting or beating analyst estimates of cash flows from operations (hereafter, “CFO”) has changed after the publicized accounting scandals in the early 2000 s (“post-scandals period”). We also examine whether firms’ CFO management behavior associated with meeting or beating analyst CFO forecasts has changed after the scandals. We find that the market reward for firms that meet or just beat analyst CFO forecasts (“small beaters”) has increased in the post-scandals period, especially when the accuracy of CFO forecasts is relatively high. We also find that the extent of CFO management engaged in by small beaters has increased after the accounting scandals and that these firms appear to resort to the timing of CFO. Further, we find evidence that the “underpricing” of CFO is weaker in the post-scandals period that exhibits a greater extent of CFO management than before, suggesting that the reduction in the underpricing of CFO in the post-scandals period is at least partially due to CFO management. Overall, our findings suggest that firms responded to the rising importance of cash flow information after a series of accounting scandals by inflating reported CFO to a larger extent than they did before.     

CFO Narcissism and Financial Reporting Quality

We investigate the effect of CFO narcissism, as measured by signature size, on financial reporting quality. Experimentally, we validate that narcissism predicts misreporting behavior, and that signature size predicts misreporting through its association with narcissism. Empirically, we examine notarized CFO signatures and find CFO narcissism is associated with more earnings management, less timely loss recognition, weaker internal control quality, and a higher probability of restatements. The results are consistent for within‐firm comparisons focusing on CFO changes and are robust to controlling for CFO overconfidence and CEO narcissism. The results highlight the importance of CFO characteristics in the domain of financial reporting decisions.     

我国总会计师制度建设若干问题研究——基于相关政策与法规之间冲突性与不完善性的思考

总会计师制度是我国总会计师事业建立和发展的保障,但是长期以来总会计师制度在执行过程中存在"称谓不统一、职能不明确、权限不清晰、职责不到位、地位不靠前"等诸多问题。本文从现行总会计师政策与法规的冲突性、不完善性以及部分调查数据的角度分析总会计师制度在建设过程中存在的问题和原因,并针对这些问题提出了相应的政策建议。     

The quality of street cash flow from operations

We provide empirical evidence on the quality of street cash flow from operations (CFO) as an alternative financial performance summary measure. We focus our investigation on the quality of the items analysts exclude in their determination of street CFO. Based on a sample of 8,518 firm-year observations over the 1993–2008 period, we find that the street CFO number is generally higher than the GAAP CFO number, indicating that analysts typically make CFO-increasing exclusions. Our inspection of hand-collected analyst reports reveals that, while some analysts make sophisticated exclusions of transitory cash items, many others ignore working capital and other accruals when adjusting forecasted earnings to arrive at their street CFO forecasts. We find that street CFO exclusions are negatively associated with future operating earnings, suggesting that these exclusions are not fully transitory or unimportant in forecasting future performance. Our results also indicate that street CFO exclusions are less transitory than the implicit accrual component of analysts’ street earnings exclusions. These results suggest that the average quality of analysts’ street CFO exclusions is quite low and that it is even lower than the quality of their implied accrual exclusions. Moreover, we find that investors perceive analysts’ CFO exclusions to be of such low quality to render street CFO measures less informative than GAAP CFO figures. Finally, we find that analyst conflicts of interest and (to some extent) the greater inherent volatility of firms’ CFO series contribute to the low-quality nature of analysts’ street CFO exclusions.     

The real effects of disclosure regulation: Evidence from mandatory CFO compensation disclosure

The 2006 SEC rule, by changing the definition of Named Executive Officers, mandates CFO compensation disclosure. Using this setting and a difference-in-differences research design, we study the real effects of CFO compensation disclosure regulation on CFO job performance. We hypothesize that the disclosure of CFO compensation information, by facilitating shareholder monitoring of the board in providing appropriate incentives to CFOs, leads to better CFO job performance in providing high-quality financial reports. The analyses support our prediction: the treatment firms, which start disclosing CFO compensation information under the 2006 rule, compared to the control firms, which already disclose CFO compensation before 2006, experience an improvement in CFO performance, as exhibited in decreases in accounting misstatements and unexplained audit fees. The results are more pronounced for firms with concentrated ownership, smaller compensation committees, and CFOs subject to weaker monitoring by audit committees. Overall, we provide evidence of a real effect resulting from mandatory CFO compensation disclosure.     

Can CFOs resist undue pressure from CEOs to manage earnings?

Building upon the premise that, under certain conditions, the ability of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to pressure the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is limited, we develop a measure of CFO resistance that captures the ability of the CFO to resist undue pressure from the CEO to manage earnings. In doing so, we consider various sources of power for both the CEO and CFO, and a market setting where CFO resistance is perceived to be high. We find that firms with resistant CFOs are less likely to engage in earnings management than firms with non-resistant CFOs, ceteris paribus. Additionally, while confirming prior evidence that CEOs with strong incentives are more likely to manage earnings, we show that this effect is significantly less pronounced in the presence of resistant CFOs. Overall, our findings suggest that firms can improve the quality of financial reporting by creating conditions that enable CFO resistance.     

Executive Turnover,Gender, And Earnings Management: An Exploratory Analysis

This paper examines the relationship between the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) turnover and earnings management. Based on cross‐sectional panel regressions on a three‐year sample of the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 1500 firms, the following findings are reported: (1) CFO turnover is accompanied by income‐decreasing earnings management; (2) discretionary accruals tend to become more negative when a male CFO is replaced by a female; (3) earnings management increases income if the outgoing CFO is a female and the incoming is a male and in the case of male–male CFO changes. Overall, these results indicate that the firms who hire a female CFO after a male tend to shift toward more conservative financial reporting practices.     

The effectiveness of chief financial officer board membership in improving corporate investment efficiency

The key roles of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in firm operating performance, corporate strategic choices, and corporate governance have been increasingly emphasized in recent decades. In this study, we empirically investigate the relation between CFO board membership and corporate investment efficiency to determine whether CFO presence on the board reduces firms’ propensity to over- or underinvest. We find that CFO board membership is significantly associated with a decreased level of corporate over- and underinvestment. Further, the positive effects of CFO board membership on corporate investment efficiency are greater for firms with greater information asymmetries. Last but not least, we find that the improved investment efficiency experienced by firms with CFOs on their boards has a positive effect on the firms’ future performance. Overall, we find that CFO board membership is associated with improved investment efficiency and firms’ future profitability. By documenting the real business impact of CFO board membership on investment efficiency and firms’ future performance, we add bricks to the literature on board composition and how it influences firms’ strategic choices and performance. Our findings suggest that having CFOs on boards could benefit firms’ investment practices, which directly relate to corporate strategic performance.