What Works in Securities Laws?

We examine the effect of securities laws on stock market development in 49 countries. We find little evidence that public enforcement benefits stock markets, but strong evidence that laws mandating disclosure and facilitating private enforcement through liability rules benefit stock markets.     

Expectations and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

Previous research has shown that stocks with low prices relative to book value, cash flow, earnings, or dividends (that is, value stocks) earn high returns. Value stocks may earn high returns because they are more risky. Alternatively, systematic errors in expectations may explain the high returns earned by value stocks. I test for the existence of systematic errors using survey data on forecasts by stock market analysts. I show that investment strategies that seek to exploit errors in analysts' forecasts earn superior returns because expectations about future growth in earnings are too extreme.     

To Segregate or to Integrate: Education Politics and Democracy

How is the quality of public education affected by the presence of private schools for the rich? Theory and evidence suggest that the link depends crucially on the political system. We develop a theory that integrates private education and fertility decisions with voting on public schooling expenditures. We find that the presence of a large private education sector benefits public schools in a broad-based democracy where politicians are responsive to low-income families but crowds out public education spending in a society that is politically dominated by the rich. The main predictions of the theory are consistent with state-level data and micro data from the U.S. as well as cross-country evidence from the Programme for International Student Assessment study.     

Managerial value diversion and shareholder wealth

The agents to whom shareholders delegate the management of corporateaffairs may transfer value from shareholders to themselves througha variety of mechanisms, such as self-dealing, insider trading,and taking of corporate opportunities. A common view in thelaw and economics literature is that such value diversion doesnot ultimately produce a reduction in shareholder wealth, sincevalue diversion simply substitutes for alternative forms ofcompensation that would otherwise be paid to managers. We questionthis view within its own analytical framework by studying, ina principal-agent model, the effects of allowing value diversionon managerial compensation and effort. We suggest that the standardlaw and economics view of diversion overlooks a significantcost of such behavior. Many common modes of compensation canprovide managers with incentives to enhance shareholder value;replacing such compensation would reduce these incentives. Asa result, even if the consequences of a rule permitting valuediversion can be fully taken into account in setting managerialcompensation, such a rule might still produce a reduction inshareholder wealth - and would not do so only if value diversionwould have some countervailing positive effects (a possibilitywhich our model considers) that are sufficiently significantin size.     

老年病防治

随着社会老龄化,老年病的防治和医疗保健日益受到重视。老年患者是一个特殊的人群,他们常常存在着脏器功能的退行性改变,导致临床表现症状不典型,因此需要更谨慎的诊治;而且一个患者常常合并多种疾病,要同时服用多种药物,因此还要注意药物的相互作用。     

中国农村金融制度演化60年回顾

新中国成立六十年间,中国农村金融制度的变迁是在政府主导下渐进式推进的,演化过程明显具有其它经济制度＂倒逼＂的特性。＂倒逼＂的特征,虽然保证了中央工业化、地方工业化、新农村建设和和谐社会的构建等目标的渐趋实现,确保了社会和国民经济的平稳发展,但对广大农村地区来说,却延缓了农村现代化、市场化的进程,增加了农村金融改革的成本。在今后农村金融制度的变迁中,我们要逐步由政府主导为主转向以市场为主、政府为辅的驱动机制,以克服农村金融制度变迁中的不足,避免出现问题后再治理的机制。     

Measuring the growth potential of towns in the Western Cape,South Africa

Urban settlements in the Western Cape sustain regional development and are vital to the national spatial economy, but because not all contribute or participate equally they do not grow at the same rate – some flourish while others decline. The Provincial Administration of the Western Cape therefore commissioned a study to evaluate and monitor their functions and performance. This paper assesses the study's methodology and procedures. It describes the variables used and explains how the raw data were transformed into comparative indices and combined into a single composite development potential index. It evaluates the sub-indices and the composite index by mapping the results and uses multivariate statistical techniques to explore the logic and validity of the results. It confirms that the indices created for measuring urban growth potential were well chosen and constructed, laying a sound theoretical and methodological base for future decisions about public investment in rural towns.     

Democracy,Rule of Law,Corruption Incentives,and Growth

We bridge the gap between the standard theory of growth and the mostly static theory of corruption. Some public investment can be diverted from its purpose by corrupt individuals. Voters determine the level of public investment subject to an incentive constraint equalizing the returns from productive and corrupt activities. We concentrate on two exogenous institutional parameters: the “technology of corruption” is the ease with which rent‐seekers can capture a proportion of public spending. The “concentration of political power” is the extent to which rent‐seekers have more political influence than other people. One theoretical prediction is that the effects of the two institutional parameters on income growth and equilibrium corruption are different according to the constraints that are binding at equilibrium. In particular, the effect of judicial quality on growth should be stronger when political power is concentrated. We estimate a system of equations where both corruption and income growth are determined simultaneously and show that income growth is more affected by our proxies for legal and political institutions in countries where political rights and judicial institutions, respectively, are limited.