Treasury return predictability and investor sentiment

We document that the Treasury market investor sentiment (TSENT) of institutional investors is a powerful predictor of bond risk premia. Specifically, TSENT positively predicts Treasury bond excess returns in and out of sample. The forecasting gains of TSENT are incremental to those in conventional bond return predictors: Fama–Bliss forward spreads, Cochrane–Piazzesi forward rate factor, and Ludvigson–Ng macro factor, as well as equity market sentiment proxies such as the investor sentiment index and the partial least squares sentiment index. Asset allocation analysis indicates the forecasting power of TSENT is economically valuable to investors. Finally, we show that the time-series bond risk premia predictability associated with TSENT relates to its predictive power for macroeconomic performance, such as payroll employment, unemployment rate, and industrial production.     

Does short sales deregulation affect qualitative information disclosure?

We examine the impact of short sales deregulation on firms' disclosure of non-financial qualitative information. Our simple analytical model predicts that, after short sales deregulation and when the cost of disclosing proprietary qualitative information to the firm and its executives is sufficiently high, shortable firms respond by disclosing less proprietary and more non-proprietary qualitative information than non-shortable firms. Using a textual analysis of qualitative information about the supply chain, available in the management disclosure and analysis sections of the annual reports of a sample of Chinese firms, and applying a staggered difference-in-differences research design, we find evidence consistent with the model's prediction.     

夫妻共同持股、公司治理与家族企业社会责任

婚姻和家庭关系可以通过家庭成员的嵌入而深刻影响家族企业的公司治理及战略决策。文章采用手工搜集的2010-2018年中国A股上市家族企业实际控制人及其配偶持股数据，检验了夫妻共同持股的治理模式对家族企业社会责任的影响。结果发现：相比丈夫单独持股企业，夫妻共同持股家族企业的社会责任表现更差，其CSR总得分与CSR评级均显著更低。机制检验表明，夫妻共同持股时，双方家族成员会更多的介入企业经营治理并担任董监高职务、企业内部控制质量更差、大股东利益侵占更加严重，低效的公司治理水平抑制了家族企业的社会责任表现。文章结论在采用工具变量法、PSM、安慰剂检验、实际控制人婚变等一系列稳健性检验后仍然成立。文章研究表明女性“她力量”未能在家族企业社会责任领域发挥决定性作用。     

The effect of the informal economy on bilateral exports from sub-Saharan African countries

The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of the informal economy on bilateral exports in sub-Saharan African countries. We use a gravity model, to which we add indicators of the informal economy and indicator variables for different economic regions. The study used Pseudo-Poisson Maximum Likelihood (PPML) and Heckman estimation techniques on data from the period 2002–2018. The results show that the informal economy has a negative impact on bilateral inter-community exports and a positive impact on bilateral intra-community exports. These results thus support the idea that the informal economy can accelerate the integration of regional economic communities and ultimately facilitate the establishment of bilateral export free trade areas at the continental level.     

Improving risk classification and ratemaking using mixture-of-experts models with random effects

In the underwriting and pricing of nonlife insurance products, it is essential for the insurer to utilize both policyholder information and claim history to ensure profitability and proper risk management. In this paper, we apply a flexible regression model with random effects, called the Mixed Logit-weighted Reduced Mixture-of-Experts, which leverages both policyholder information and their claim history, to categorize policyholders into groups with similar risk profiles, and to determine a premium that accurately captures the unobserved risks. Estimates of model parameters and the posterior distribution of random effects can be obtained by a stochastic variational algorithm, which is numerically efficient and scalable to large insurance portfolios. Our proposed framework is shown to outperform the classical benchmark models (Logistic and Lognormal GL(M)M) in terms of goodness-of-fit to data, while offering intuitive and interpretable characterization of policyholders' risk profiles to adequately reflect their claim history.