Lutz M. Hagen,Technische Universität Dresden

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Corporate Governance and Expected Stock Returns: Evidence from Germany

Recent empirical work shows evidence for higher valuation of firms in countries with a better legal environment. We investigate whether differences in the quality of firm‐level corporate governance also help to explain firm performance in a cross‐section of companies within a single jurisdiction. Constructing a broad corporate governance rating (CGR) for German public firms, we document a positive relationship between governance practices and firm valuation. There is also evidence that expected stock returns are negatively correlated with firm‐level corporate governance, if dividend yields are used as proxies for the cost of capital. An investment strategy that bought high‐CGR firms and shorted low‐CGR firms earned abnormal returns of around 12% on an annual basis during the sample period.     

Retail banking and behavioral financial engineering: The case of structured products

We apply cumulative prospect theory and hedonic framing to evaluate discount reverse convertibles (DRCs) and reverse convertible bonds (RCBs) as important examples of structured products from a boundedly rational investor’s point of view. While common expected utility theory would also conclude that DRCs and RCBs are of interest to investors with moderate return expectations and underestimated stock return volatility, that theory would overestimate the market success of DRCs and underestimate that of RCBs in comparison to a situation with bounded rationality. Hedonic framing and relatively low subjectively felt competence levels of investors are decisive for the demand for RCBs.     

对盈余管理的再认识

盈余管理普遍存在,主要原因是企业管理层有强烈的追求与预先制定的盈余目标相一致的动机以及盈余结果的不确定性。会计政策和会计事项处理方法的可选择性导致没有绝对"真实"的盈余数据,只有相对合理的盈余结果。盈余管理具有合法性,在会计准则(或制度)允许的范围内进行正当的盈余管理是合乎道德的行为,目的是为使企业价值最大化,帮助报告使用者更好地理解公司业绩。盈余管理又具有秘密性,而这种秘密行为为社会所迫;消除盈余管理是不现实的。     

Changes in the Austrian structure of wages, 1996–2002: evidence from linked employer-employee data

Analyzing data from the Structure of Earnings Surveys we find that wage dispersion in Austria increased only marginally between 1996 and 2002. There was an increase in the returns to education which accrued only to male workers. The positive effects of tenure and especially of experience on wages decreased over time. We adopt the Machado–Mata (J Appl Econ 20:445–465, 2005) counterfactual decomposition technique which allows to attribute changes in each wage decile to changes in worker and workplace characteristics and into changes in returns to these characteristics. Behind the small net increase in inequality we document a number of interesting gross effects that influence the change in the wage distribution. We find that both composition effects due to gender, education and age and market-driven effects such as changes in returns and changing workplace characteristics contributed to a higher dispersion of wages.     

The European Monetary System as a factor of integration

Critics of the EMS claim that it has failed to realise the hopes aroused at the time of its inception; a convergence of economic policies, they maintain, has not been induced by fixed exchange rates. What is the true position with regard to the convergence of economic policies?