The Horizontal Merger Guidelines of 1992

The 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission outline an enforcement policy which makes a long overdue break with its predecessors in awarding no decisive or predominant role to market concentration as a criterion of anticompetitive effect. However, the new policy does not provide an adequate substitute criterion: the tests that it prescribes for screening merger proposals are so specified that a potentially large proportion of anticompetitive mergers can escape challenge without showing any promise of improving efficiency. The time is ripe for a comprehensive inquiry aimed at formulating a more satisfactory policy.     

Another Look at the Cross-section of Expected Stock Returns

Our examination of the cross-section of expected returns reveals economically and statistically significant compensation (about 6 to 9 percent per annum) for beta risk when betas are estimated from time-series regressions of annual portfolio returns on the annual return on the equally weighted market index. The relation between book-to-market equity and returns is weaker and less consistent than that in Fama and French (1992). We conjecture that past book-to-market results using COMPUS-TAT data are affected by a selection bias and provide indirect evidence.     

银企关系与会计信息稳健性——中国资本市场的经验证据

本文以Watts（2003）的契约理论为基础，分析股东与债权人之间利益冲突对会计信息稳健性的影响。虽然会计信息稳健性有助于保护债权人的利益，但是如果股东可以作为公司的债权人，则投资者对会计信息稳健性的需求下降。本文采用Basu（1997）模型分析了2004年中国上市公司会计信息稳健性，发现国家控制的上市公司的会计信息稳健性程度较低，而民营控制的上市公司会计信息稳健性程度较高，但是股东特征对会计信息稳健性的影响，随着银行在公司中利益的增加而趋于一致。     

Bank Monitoring and Environmental Risk

Abstract:  Loan announcement effects for 152 Canadian companies are examined to investigate the efficiency of monitoring by banks facing lender environmental liability. Market reaction to the announcement of bank debt to 'environmental' firms is more positive and significant than for 'non-environmental' firms and, for firms in industries with a higher likelihood of experiencing spill events, is more positive and significant, reinforcing earlier results that establish a relationship between specific loan/borrower characteristics and announcement period excess returns and providing further evidence on the 'uniqueness' of bank loans by demonstrating the superior ability of banks to monitor corporate borrowers exposed to environmental liability.     

Oppression and resistance: the powerless and the future

Relations between rich and poor (across and within countries) appeared in some questions in Images; there were clear differences between what the powerful and the powerless hoped and expected from the future. This is compared with what actually happened and a deeper analysis is made of ‘power’ as an organizing concept. It turned out that the pessimism associated with powerlessness tended to make better predictions.