Annual report readability and corporate agency costs

Annual reports are the main sources of information for outside investors’ investment decisions and enable shareholders to supervise the management. Difficulties with the readability of these reports may therefore have serious consequences. Using 19,221 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2001 to 2015, we investigate the association between annual report readability and corporate agency costs, where readability is proxied by report file length and/or file size. We find that firms with better annual report readability experience lower agency costs, and the negative association between readability and agency costs is more pronounced in firms with higher external audit quality, internal control quality or analyst coverage. These results hold after several robustness checks. The positive effect of annual report readability is stronger in private firms than in state-owned enterprises, and becomes stronger after the implementation of new accounting standards in 2007. Readable annual reports can help in monitoring corporate insiders’ opportunistic behavior and thus reduce agency costs.     

“丝路经济带”九省市经济金融竞争力评价

深入剖析丝绸之路沿线国内段九省市的综合发展实力,探索不同发展战略定位下省 区市竞合协同发展路径,对全面发展丝绸之路经济带具有重要意义。本文从经济发展竞争力、 环境设施与可持续发展竞争力、科技创新与财富竞争力、金融发展竞争力、对外开放竞争力五 个维度建立指标评价体系,运用分类主成分分析法全面衡量九个省市经济金融发展的分项和综 合竞争力,将九省市分为三个发展梯度,形成资源聚集与要素流动的直观剖析。在此基础上,利 用聚类分析法得出丝绸之路经济带区域经济关联的着力点与经济发展的增长极,并最终得出处 于不同梯度省区市间开展基于优势竞争力的产业间合作的三大有效路径。     

精准扶贫背景下农村资金投入与农民收入增长研究

本文采用时间序列数据对财政支农支出与农民收入之间的关系进行了实证研究。 结果显示财政支农资金对农村居民收入产生了显著的正面影响;财政支农结构中,支援农业生 产支出对农民收入的影响最大,然后依次是农业基本建设支出和农村救济费,而农业科技三项 费用对农民收入的影响不显著。综合考虑财政对三农、教育、健康的投入的研究结果显示,国 家在健康方面的投入对农村居民纯收入的正面影响最大,其次是对“三农”的支出,农村居民 的受教育水平对农村居民的纯收入的影响为负,但对农村居民的经营性纯收入和工资性纯收入 的影响为正。在此基础上,结合国家精准扶贫背景,本文建议应继续加大财政对“三农”的支 持力度,同时重视对农村健康和教育方面的投资,在健康与教育之间,应该优先选择提升农村 居民的健康水平。     

M2与社会融资规模偏离的原因及趋势研究

货币政策由数量型向价格型调控转型过程中,价格似乎变得更为重要。尽管如此, 货币数量与资金价格仍是观察“硬币”的两面,数量的趋势或能预判价格的变化。金融严监管 的背景下,货币数量尤其是广义M2在过去一年出现剧烈的收缩,而另一个货币数量指标社会 融资规模却仍然强劲,二者的分化使得我们感知货币松紧以及经济冷暖出现分歧。本文基于 M2和社会融资组成结构的异同点,分别对M2和社会融资近年来在金融自由化和金融监管收紧 过程中的变化机理进行梳理,并对未来趋势予以预判。首先,文章区分了M2和社会融资的组 成结构异同点,从共同的影响因素信贷入手进行分析和预判;其次,依据货币派生的机理,从 商业银行资产负债表来分析引起M2变动的主要矛盾进行深入解读;再次,对于引发社会融资 变动的信托和委托变化趋势予以分析。最后我们得出结论,由于监管重点的时间差异使得此轮 M2先于社会融资回落,未来二者分化将逐步收敛。     

What drives organic food consumption in Lebanon?

To increase the sparse knowledge about what drives organic food consumers in developing markets, Lebanese consumers' reasons and motives for buying organic food are studied in the framework of means‐end chain theory. A sample of N = 180 Lebanese consumers was interviewed in several retail outlets using a hard laddering questionnaire. The data were subjected to frequency analysis, cluster analysis, and structural equation modelling. Hierarchal value maps constructed from the laddering interviews revealed that “quality of life,” “pleasure,” and “peace of mind” are the main values driving organic food consumption in Lebanon. Frequent organic consumers displayed higher concern for their family's health and for the environment, whereas occasional organic consumers cared more about their own pleasure and were more likely to perceive organic food as a traditional and nostalgic product. Structural equation modelling revealed that “care for nature” and “care for children's health” significantly affect consumers' (self‐reported) purchasing behaviour. The found means‐end chains are a useful basis for marketing campaigns for organic food products in the Lebanese market. One focus of marketing campaigns should be raising consumers' awareness on the environmental benefits of organic production and the fact that it does not allow the use of harmful chemical products.     

Optimizing the credit term decisions in supply chain finance

We study a credit term determination problem in the context of a supplier-buyer supply chain. The supplier's credit term decision is simultaneously made with its production and inventory decisions, and most importantly, it is impacted by the buyer's order quantity. We present a new game-theoretic framework to model this problem, which captures the interaction between the supplier's credit term decision and the buyer's order decision in a multi-period setting. An exact method based on nonlinear programming is implemented to obtain the optimal solutions. We apply our methodologies on a real world case. The computational results show that our approach significantly outperforms the heuristics with fixed credit terms, and either a short or a long credit term can be sub-optimal for the supplier in profitability. Our work offers the first data-driven model and solution approach that assists purchasing and supply managers to make optimal dynamic credit term decision in conjunction with production, ordering and inventory decisions in a game-theoretic setting.     

Inclusion climate: A multilevel investigation of its antecedents and consequences

This study investigates the antecedents and consequences of organization‐level inclusion climate. A national sample of human resource decision‐makers from 100 organizations described their firms' formal diversity management programs; 3,229 employees reported their perceptions of, and reactions to, their employers' diversity management. Multilevel analyses demonstrate that identity‐conscious programs (programs that target specific identity groups) generate an inclusion climate. Moreover, the analyses provide evidence of multilevel mediation: In organizations with an inclusion climate, individual employees perceive the organization as fulfilling its diversity management obligations and respond with higher levels of affective commitment. This study represents an important step toward understanding how a shared perception of organizational inclusiveness develops and how inclusion climate facilitates the achievement of diversity management objectives. The findings also shed light on the important role of identity‐conscious programs in promoting organizational commitment within a diverse workforce.     

Endogenous Money,Fiscal Policy,Interest Rates and the Exchange Rate Regime: A Comment on Palley,Tymoigne and Wray

One of the main collective contributions of the various heterodox schools of monetary thought, such as circuit theory, Post Keynesian theory, modern money theory (MMT) and others, has been to stress the importance of the endogeneity of money via bank credit creation. It is necessary to stress the notion of a collective contribution because of the various claims and counter-claims to academic priority made in the literature. The recent exchange between T.I. Palley and E. Tymoigne and L.R. Wray in this journal provides a clear example of this. This response examines the differences between these writers in some detail.     

Government Engagement,Environmental Policy,and Environmental Performance: Evidence from the Most Polluting Chinese Listed Firms

This study empirically examines the implementation of environmental policies and how government engagement impacts on a firm's environmental performance based on a sample of Chinese listed firms in the eight most polluting industries over a 10‐year period. The findings of the study demonstrate that government engagement, measured as ownership structure, is positively correlated with environmental performance, measured by environmental capital expenditure, for state‐owned firms, but no significant relation is found for non‐state‐owned firms. In addition, non‐state‐owned firms are more likely to perform better in terms of environmental investment after the 2006 enactment of a new policy explicitly linking environmental issues with political incentives to regional governments. This study also reports that corporate environmental performance impairs firm value for state‐owned firms but has no impact on firm value for non‐state‐owned firms, suggesting that investors negatively respond to environmental investments made by state‐owned firms as a result of government engagement/political pressure. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.