Rural to urban land conversion in China — How large is the over-conversion and what are its welfare implications?

The current system of converting farmland to urban land use in China can be characterized as a hybrid system that combines government controls with market-based transfers. In this paper we argue that this hybrid governance structure causes an over-conversion of farmland from the rural to the urban sector, as compared to a competitive market situation, and a welfare reallocation that discriminates against farmland owners. We develop a partial equilibrium model that can be used to examine the impact of the current hybrid governance structure on the over-conversion of farmland and to analyze the welfare changes for different groups of actors and the resulting net social welfare loss. Using a dataset with detailed information on farmland acquisitions and urban land transactions in Yingtan City in Jiangxi Province, we illustrate how this framework can be applied. Our results indicate an over-conversion of 33.5% of the total converted farmland in this city between 1999 and 2003. The welfare of farmland owners affected by the conversion decreased by 1.38 billion RMB, while the net social welfare loss equaled more than 270 million RMB during the same period. The local government obtained 380 million RMB of revenues by re-selling farmland as urban land through competitive conveyance mechanisms between 2002 and 2005, while the manufacturing sector gained an estimated 280 million RMB from buying land use rights at relatively low prices. We conclude that the current policy of increasing urban land conveyance through competitive mechanisms does not address two major underlying causes of over-conversion, and that protection of farmland would be better served by replacing the current hybrid rural to urban land market structure by a competitive land market.     

企业社会责任能降低股价同步性吗？——基于强制披露企业社会责任报告的准自然实验

中国2008 年沪深证券交易所强制披露社会责任报告政策为笔者研究其政策效应提供了准 自然实验,文章以2006-2011 年中国A 股上市公司为样本,分别从信息不对称和代理成本两条路 径研究强制披露社会责任报告对股价同步性的影响。运用PSM-DID 双重差分模型研究发现: 强制 披露社会责任报告与股价同步性呈现显著负相关关系,说明强制披露社会责任报告有助于降低股 价同步性,在通过安慰剂实验、变量替换和平行效应检验等稳健性检验后,以上结论仍成立。对 影响路径的分析发现,强制披露社会责任报告通过降低信息不对称和代理成本影响未来股价同步 性。     

由信息不对称引发的房地产中介违规行为研究

随着中国房地产市场的发展,房地产中介机构也逐步兴盛起来,中介机构的发展对房地产市场的繁荣起到了一定的促进作用,但是也暴露了一些严重的问题。由于信息不对称的存在,使得房屋买卖中不断出现中介欺诈,利用信息诱骗消费者的现象。本文讨论了如何利用信息技术降低信息不对称对消费者的影响,以及给出政策建议以杜绝中介欺诈行为的产生。     

THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM IN HONG KONG: ESTABLISHMENT AND READJUSTMENT OF THE LIBERAL WELFARE MODEL

Hong Kong's social security system has followed a “liberal” welfare state regime. The system has undergone changes along with the high economic growth, changes in the labor market, and transformation of the political environment, but has retained the fundamental principle of a social security system led by the private sector. In recent years, Hong Kong has responded to the aging population and growing unemployment by introducing the Mandatory Provident Fund Scheme that requires individuals to join private‐sector pension schemes and by intensifying cooperation with nongovernmental organizations. This indicates the deep‐seated nature of the influence of the liberal regime in Hong Kong.     

Institutional choice in the governance of the early Atlantic sugar trade: diasporas,markets, and courts

The expanding sugar trade linking Portugal, Brazil, and the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries required enforcement mechanisms to guarantee that overseas agents would act honestly and diligently. While the recent literature emphasizes that multiple mechanisms were substitutes in addressing this problem, this article highlights that merchants chose different mechanisms to govern distinct types of transactions and explains why. A reputational mechanism relying on social and economic constraints within an ethnic diaspora governed more complex and higher‐value arrangements. A different mechanism linking economic incentives to professional reputations across the diasporas plying this trade route predominated in simpler and smaller transactions. Finally, long‐distance and transnational judicial enforcement supplemented these two reputational mechanisms. Capable of matching the value and complexity of transactions with the attributes of governing mechanisms, merchants were able to diversify their transactions, expand the market for agents, better allocate agents to tasks, and stimulate competition among them. The resulting decrease in agency costs was critical in such a significantly competitive market as the sugar trade. Evolving institutional choice thus reinforced the expansion of trade. These hypotheses are corroborated by data from a prosopography of merchants of Jewish origin, derived from notarial records from Oporto and Amsterdam, and from Inquisition files.     

The social value of income information in a model with market power and endogenous variety

The present paper analyzes the value of public information in a general equilibrium economy with imperfect competition. The welfare effects of an improved information system for perfectly competitive economies have been extensively investigated in the published literature. Schlee (2001) shows that the value of information is always negative in exchange economies if an efficient risk sharing mechanism exists. In contrast, in economies with production, better information reduces welfare provided consumers are sufficiently risk-averse ( Eckwert and Zilcha 2000, 2003 ). In the present paper it will be shown that this result is robust if the production sector exhibits monopolistic competition in the Chamberlinian sense. Even so, the inefficiency of equilibria adds further potential for positive welfare effects of improved information. A model is presented where the degree of market imperfection is positively linked to the value of information. If the markup on competitive prices is sufficiently high, the value of information is positive; that is, better information increases economic welfare.     

城乡一体化视角农村土地承包经营权有序流转市场交易机制研究——以苏州市为例

文章以苏州市为例,在农地承包经营权市场交易内涵与目标基础上,分析了农村土地流转的主要问题。文章从交易市场信息平台与运行机制建立,交易对象的评估与信息披露,交易主体的准入与监控,交易后期的风险保障机制四个角度进行了市场交易机制构建,以期为农村土地承包经营权有序流转,推进城乡统一化进程提供借鉴。     

Market structure and bank conduct in Lesotho

Lesotho's banking industry is highly concentrated and is perceived to be uncompetitive. However, high market concentration does not necessarily imply a lack of competition in the market. Until now, there is no evidence supporting the view that the industry is uncompetitive. Therefore, this paper uses monthly bank-level data from 2013:10 to 2019:5, and employs the Panzar-Rosse H-statistic and the Boone indicator to examine competition in Lesotho's banking industry. We find that the industry acts as a ‘monopoly’ or a ‘perfectly colluding oligopoly’. We, therefore, argue that policy makers should set up the long anticipated antitrust agency to oversee conduct in this industry, and all other industries to improve societal welfare.     

Chinese block transactions and the market reaction

This paper examines block transactions in the Chinese equity market. We find that most of the block transactions are traded at prices at or below the closing price of the regular continuous auction market, and more than half are traded at or below the lowest price of the day. Consistent with the price pattern indicating that the block transactions are seller-initiated, the overall market reaction is negative. However, we find a different market reaction to block transactions when the buyer is represented by China International Capital Corporation (CICC), the number one investment bank in China which counts many foreign institutional investors as its clients. The positive reaction is consistent with the buyer-certification hypothesis, that is, the fact that some smart institutional buyers enter block trade indicates the buyers' assessment of undervaluation.     

产品市场竞争与代理成本

通过构造以Hotelling价格竞争模型为基础的多阶段博弈模型,首先分别分析了在信息对称与信息不对称情况下管理者的努力程度与所有者激励管理者存在的代理成本,然后讨论了在信息不对称情况下外部产品市场的竞争程度对于代理成本的影响。通过分析我们认为外部产品市场竞争程度越高,代理成本越低,外部产品市场能够成为一项促进公司治理绩效的工具。     

建构城市社会福利过程中市场要素的取舍

从理论上分析了社会福利的基本内涵,认为社会福利是社区居民生活的美好状态。在实践层面上,城市社会福利的提升需要对市场要素进行不同的取舍包括:社会福利服务中的市场要素;政府定位的转向;多方资源的参与中市场要素的位置等多方面的内容。     

并购交易中的信息传递机制研究——基于业绩承诺的视角

由于并购具有金额大与标的资产质量难以辨别等特点，如何在并购交易中降低交易风险一直是学术界持续关注的话题。文章以中小板和创业板公司2015年至2016年审核通过的并购事件为样本，从业绩承诺视角探讨市场对于并购重组交易契约中信息传递机制的看法。研究表明，市场会对业绩承诺这一信息传递机制予以积极反应，业绩承诺越乐观，并购方在公告期间的超额收益越大。进一步研究发现，在非关联并购、投资者专业化程度较低或财务信息更稳健的情况下，业绩承诺所带来的财富效应更明显。文章以业绩承诺为切入点，为学术界了解如何降低并购交易中的信息风险提供了重要的视角与经验证据。     

IPO锁定期、信息生产和效率

本文研究资产的IPO锁定期对投资者行为、市场价格波动及市场效率的影响。发现在比较一般的设定下,资产市场的信息支出并不是有效的：短期交易者对“关于信息的信息”的支出是完全浪费的。而且这类信息的搜集造成了与其无关资产的价格波动,使得两类与基本面无关的资产的价格具有了相关性。Brav and Gompers（2003）为将IPO锁定期存在的理由归纳为三类：一是作为企业质量的信号;二是用来减轻后市道德风险;三是作为投资银行从市场获得补偿的途径。本文作为一个补充,提供了第四类理由：锁定期抑制了一类无用信息的生产,减少了社会浪费。     

Fund Mobilization and Investment Behavior in Thai Manufacturing Firms in the Early 1990s*

This paper investigates capital structure and investment behavior in Thailand in the early 1990s. Various features of financial markets are considered, and the possibility of applying the ‘pecking order hypothesis’ to developing countries is discussed. By estimating the determinants of the capital structure and the investment functions, three major results are obtained. First, the lower debt ratio of listed firms is realized by an increase in the capital surplus gained by initial public offering. Second, firms’ participation in the securities market accommodates agency costs both in the equity and bank‐loan markets. Third, ‘financial conglomerate’ firms are inactive investors and are dependent upon informal financial transactions, whereas foreign firms borrow less and invest more.     

涉农龙头企业与农户最优合作数量的经济学分析

本文指出涉农龙头企业仅从规模经济、协调成本及信息通信技术等因素对农户合作数量进行决策会影响企业的长期稳定发展;同时认为非和约特征是企业与农户合作的一个典型特征,并综合协调成本及非和约投资等因素提出关于企业与农户最优合作数量的理论模型。在此基础上,结合实际提出企业与农户合作的新模式,并对新模式的内在机理进行了较为严格的理论分析。     

Facilitating the Provision of Farm Credit: The Role of Interlocking Transactions Between Traders and Zamindars in Crop Marketing Systems in Sindh

Formal credit institutions in Pakistan have largely failed to provide access to farm credit to small and medium-scale landowners, or zamindars. This paper examines interlocked transactions between traders and landowners in the cotton and wheat markets in Sindh that facilitate the provision of credit by traders. It is concluded that the case examined provides an example where traders lend to landowners in a segment of the credit market that approximates competitive behavior, without surplus extraction by traders. Key conditions resulting in this favorable outcome are the existence of both competition for market share and information sharing on borrowers between traders. Whether this outcome is also beneficial for other rural groups who may borrow from landowners, in particular sharecropping tenants, is independent of market relations between landowners and traders and is not determined here.     

State‐Owned Enterprises,Competition, and Disclosure

We develop a mixed‐duopoly model in which a private firm competes against a state‐owned enterprise (SOE) who cares about social welfare and is privately informed about market demand. When the SOE's social concerns are sufficiently important and when the market competitiveness is sufficiently low, the SOE commits to fully disclose its private information. Otherwise, the SOE commits to withhold its private information. When the disclosure equilibrium prevails, the private firm can be more profitable competing against an SOE than against another private firm. In this mixed‐duopoly setting, the equilibrium social welfare is maximized when the SOE puts a positive weight on both social welfare and its own profit. Our analysis has further implications for both mandatory disclosure and market entry.     

Information Use and Transference among Legally Separated Share Markets—An Experimental Approach

Several countries have adopted legally separated share markets (LSSM), where local firms market separate claims to the same dividend flow to domestic and foreign investors who cannot arbitrage across LSSM. We designed a laboratory experiment to test whether the inside information in one LSSM is reflected in the prices of both markets. We find that insider information does transfer across markets. The extent of this transfer depends upon whether the location of insiders is publicly known, how close prices in the informed market get to the full information equilibrium, and how much the price variance is in this market. We also observe insiders' behavior and performance under different market conditions. Efforts by insiders to manipulate the market increase when their location is unknown to the public. On average such efforts pay off to the whole group of insiders but not to the initiator of these manipulative transactions.     

金融冲击、货币政策与宏观审慎政策—基于动态随机一般均衡模型的分析

通过建立包含房地产市场金融冲击的NK-DSGE模型,考察了我国货币政策与宏观审慎政策的效果。通过比较不同政策机制下金融冲击的脉冲响应函数可以发现,宏观审慎政策的引入缓和了金融冲击的效应,并且可以同时实现稳定物价和稳定金融系统的目的。社会福利分析的结果表明：(1)金融冲击下,仅对产出缺口和通胀做出反应的政策具有最低的社会福利水平;(2)如果货币政策考虑信贷市场,并同时使用反周期性宏观审慎政策,那么社会福利将得到明显的提高。这意味着金融冲击下,政府应该积极行使对信贷市场做出反应的货币政策以及反周期性宏观审慎政策相结合的政策机制。当前,在房地产市场整体不景气的背景下,我国政府积极利用金融冲击对房地产市场进行调控。因此,采用对信贷市场做出反应的货币政策以及反周期性宏观审慎政策将具有相对较好的政策效果。     

农村宅基地流转法律问题研究

人与地的矛盾是掣肘我国经济发展的主要矛盾,虽然我国法律法规政策等层面严格限制农村宅基地的流转,但我国却已在相当长的时间内存在着农村宅基地的私下交易和隐性市场。为了使农民参与市场竞争、融入现代化进程、创新传统产业或重新创业、实现增收,本文通过对农村宅基地流转的现状及原因进行总结和分析,对农村宅基地流转的法律疏导、规制给出了具体的设计方案。