Buying reputation as a signal of quality: Evidence from an online marketplace

Seller reputation, generated by buyer feedback, is critical to fostering trust in online marketplaces. Marketplaces or sellers may choose to compensate buyers for providing feedback. Signaling theory predicts that only sellers of high-quality products will reward buyers for truthful feedback, especially when a product lacks any feedback and when the seller is not established. We confirm these hypotheses using Taobao's reward-for-feedback mechanism. High-quality products, especially without established feedback, are chosen for feedback rewards, which cause sales to increase by 36%. Marketplaces and consumers can therefore benefit from allowing sellers to buy feedback and signal their high-quality products in the process.     

Does economic policy uncertainty raise corporate precautionary cash holdings? Evidence from China

Using China as the research setting, this paper investigates the relationship between economic policy uncertainty and corporate precautionary cash holdings. Empirical results show a U-shaped relation between economic policy uncertainty and corporate precautionary cash holdings. Empirical analysis, in terms of ownership structure, firm size, corporate competitiveness and geographical location, further shows that (i) the effects for economic policy uncertainty in both state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises are significant, but the effect is stronger for state-owned enterprises; (ii) such significant effect is also found more strongly in small and medium-sized enterprises and highly competitive enterprises; and (iii) the effects for eastern, central and western China are all statistically significant, but the effect is strongest for eastern China.     

累进计分和增量增酬在卫生院绩效管理中的应用探讨

随着卫生体制改革,政府对基层卫生机构的投入要要求也在不断加大,卫生院采用绩效管理制度,提高卫生院医护工作者的工作效率,从而提高卫生院的整体水平。但在实际应用中,绩效管理工作开展出现了较多问题,导致工作开展不顺利,因此,有效的绩效管理制度制定特成为了目前基层卫生院重点关注和思考的问题,本次研究将累进计分和增量增酬应用到卫生院绩效管理中,并取得了较高的应用效果。     

产业转型升级示范区高质量发展的大数据分析

2017、2019年,国家发展改革委、科技部、工业和信息化部、自然资源部、国家开发银行在全国分两批遴选创设了20个产业转型升级示范区。以第一批12个示范区为对象,通过社会媒体报道和地方政府工作报告大数据分析,研究其在探索传统产业改造、新兴产业发展、绿色发展、园区建设、产业集聚、以及优化营商环境、融入国家战略、加强区域协作等方面的建设成效和典型经验,可以发现,推动国家产业转型升级示范区高质量发展,应因地制宜谋划示范区发展定位,依据功能定位实施差异化产业战略,进一步完善示范区评估考核指标体系,充分发挥中央预算内投资激励导向作用。     

Does individualistic culture impact operational risk?

Employing a sample of 2,957 operational‐risk events across 31 countries from 1990 to 2011, we find that financial institutions located in countries with higher individualism tend to have higher operational risk. This positive relation is achieved through the risk‐taking channel and the earnings‐management channel. In addition, the magnitude of operational losses is higher in more individualistic countries. The results suggest that individualism serves as an important informal institutional determinant of operational risk in an international context. Endogeneity tests and various robustness checks confirm our findings.     

Social connections between media and firm executives and the properties of media reporting

Review of Accounting Studies - We study how social connections between top executives of media and listed firms affect the properties of media reporting. We find that socially connected media are...     

Modelling with flexibility through the business cycle: using a panel smooth transition model to test for the lipstick effect

ABSTRACT

Consumer spending typically declines during periods of economic distress, but observers have noted that lipstick purchases appear to increase during recessions, which is often referred to as the lipstick effect. However, the existence of such effect has remained empirically unconfirmed. Using weekly retail scanner data on lipstick sales from 2006 to 2016 in the United States, we applied a Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) demand model to test the relationship between economic distress and lipstick sales. This flexible demand specification allows regression coefficients to vary as a function of an exogenous macroeconomic variables and fluctuate asymmetrically, non-linearly, and time-varyingly across an unlimited number of regimes. Empirical results show the income elasticity of demand for lipstick decreased rapidly from 0.31 to 0.05 during the 2007–2009 recession, then slowly rebounded to 0.31 by the second quarter of 2014, thus first empirically confirming the existence of the lipstick effect.     

高校实验教学队伍建设的研究与探索

本文就地方高校实验室队伍建设、人员要求进行了研究与探索,提出实验室队伍的改革与研究。     

校企关系与企业R & D投入研究

校企关系被看作是企业与高校交换创新资源的重要纽带,备受国内外学者关注，但其对企业的影响尚未得到一致结论，校企关系是否促进企业技术创新能力提升、降低企业创新投入成本有待进一步研究。以我国2009—2014 年高校上市公司为研究样本，建立回归方程模型，研究了高校和企业间关系对公司R&D投入的影响。实证研究表明，我国高校上市公司中不同属性的校企关系对企业研发投入的影响不同。其中，以高校持股比例为指征的校企关系与公司研发投入呈正相关关系，高校股权可以促进企业研发投入；以高校股东分红比例和高校从业经历高管比例为指征的校企关系与研发投入呈负相关关系，以政府补助为指征的校企关系对高校控股上市公司和非控股上市公司研发投入的影响不同。     

Does corporate governance still affect firm performance after controlling the distress factor?

We explore the impact of corporate governance on firm performance. We first identify whether corporate governance can still be an influential factor or has been largely captured by the traditional Fama-French three-factor model. More importantly, our study adds a financial distress factor to the Fama-French three-factor model to form a four-factor pricing model (labelled as the ‘financial distress four-factor model’). We find that for the US Russell 1000 firms, the financial distress four-factor model is the better model of the two models considered. We further find that the financial distress four-factor model has a higher explanatory power in capturing the return variation. We find that the differences between the return of firms with good (weak) corporate governance and the expected return are insignificantly different from zero for most portfolios in all the two models. The financial distress four-factor model, however, has the fewer portfolios with return difference being significantly different from zero, implying that corporate governance has been better priced in the financial distress factor.