Debt Covenant Restriction,Financial Misreporting,and Auditor Monitoring*

Theory suggests that financial report-based debt covenants engender incentives for the manager to relax covenant constraints through accounting choices in order to avoid costly covenant violations. Prior studies directly testing this hypothesis in the context of financial misreporting fail to find consistent evidence. Using a more refined measure of debt covenant restriction, we find that debt covenant restriction is positively associated with the probability of financial statement misstatements. This positive association is driven by performance covenants rather than capital covenants and is more consistent with the manager striving to avoid a “false-positive” violation than to delay the violation. Our results also imply that managers resort to both income-increasing and non–income-increasing misreporting to relieve covenant constraints and rely more on the latter when faced with greater earnings management constraints. Additionally, the auditor charges higher audit fees to firms with more binding covenants even outside the violation state, and audit fees increase with constraints relative to both performance and capital covenants, reflecting greater financial reporting risk and bankruptcy risk, respectively. Within capital covenants, we find some evidence of even higher audit fees for tighter intangible-inclusive versus intangible-exclusive capital covenants. Lastly, our evidence suggests that the positive association between covenant constraints and misreporting is attenuated when the auditor has more experience with debt covenants, has greater bargaining power over the client, or faces greater litigation risk.     

A quantitative study of financing efficiency of low‐carbon companies: A three‐stage data envelopment analysis

This study set out to evaluate the financing efficiency of low‐carbon companies. Applying a three‐stage data envelopment analysis with the data from 85 listed companies in China's low‐carbon industries over the period 2011 to 2017, this study has found that the overall financing efficiency of low‐carbon companies was relatively high, and the pure technical efficiency was quite steady over the period. The overall financing efficiency of these low‐carbon companies on average tended to change with the scale efficiency. This study has also shown that the scale efficiency was the main constraint influencing the financing efficiency of low‐carbon companies in China over the period. Our results are robust and have significant implications for policy makers and corporate managers.     

Socio-institutional determinants of educational resource efficiency according to the capability approach: An endogenous stochastic frontier analysis

We investigate the role of private and public resources in educational attainments and the socio-institutional determinants of educational resource efficiency in Italy. Following the Sen's capability approach, we consider social capital and the quality of government part of the social conversion factors through which resources can be converted into human capabilities, such as education. We analyze the case of Italy by constructing a new longitudinal dataset from 1993 to 2012, using repeated cross sections from the main social survey of the Italian Statistical Institute and a panel stochastic frontier model that takes into account endogeneity. The results show the relative importance of private resources (measured by an ad hoc constructed wealth index), the complementarity between private wealth and public expenditures on education, and the positive impact of social capital and the quality of government on educational resource efficiency.     

Credit card cash‐out as informal financing: Evidence from China

Using a proprietary account‐level database from a commercial bank in China, we document that credit card holders can ease their credit constraints through the practice of cash‐out based on bogus transactions using credit cards. We find that such behaviour might be beneficial to both cardholders and banks. First, we find that a 1% increase in the cumulative number of credit card cash‐out transactions lowers the probability of default by 9.59%. Second, for private businesses, a 1% increase in the number of abnormal cash‐out transactions lowers overdue risk by 13.45%. Third, by lowering the overdue risk, the card‐issuing bank earns a larger profit. Our results are consistent with the notion that unconventional credit card cash‐out can mitigate the extent of capital misallocation in emerging markets.     

金融集聚能缓解中小企业融资约束吗？——基于非线性和区域异质性的视角

以2009—2017年上市中小企业面板数据为样本，应用现金现金流敏感性模型分析了金融集聚对中小企业融资约束的影响。研究发现：整体上金融集聚可以一定程度缓解中小企业融资约束，但存在地区性差异，且门槛效应明显。金融集聚对低金融集聚水平地区的中小企业融资困境有明显改善，但其影响随着金融集聚水平的增加而减少。当金融集聚水平超过高门槛值时，这一作用非常微弱，总体上呈现非线性特征。这说明当金融资源高度集中时可能产生挤出效应。     

Protection for sale under monopolistic competition: Beyond the CES

We extend the protection for sale model of Grossman and Helpman (1994) by introducing a general model of monopolistic competition with variable markups and incomplete pass-through. We show that the structure of protection emerging in the political equilibrium not only depends on the weight attached by the government to consumer welfare when making its policy decision, but also on the degree of market power of firms and on the terms-of-trade variations due to the degree of pass-through. Our results highlight the importance of preferences in shaping the structure of protection and are consistent with the occurring of protectionism also in unorganized industries.     

基于融资行为的中小企业社会信任网络构建

中小企业社会信任网络的多层次性与其融资的可获得性有着密切的关系。通过社会信任网络解决中小企业内生资源不足问题，利用网络内含的默契、惯例、信任以及惩罚机制，构建以融资效率为核心的中小企业社会信任网络，有助于改善中小企业融资环境，消除中小企业融资障碍，提高中小企业融资效率。     

Financial liberalization: Poverty trap or chaos

We construct an overlapping generations model in which people are subject to limited pledgeability and uncertainty over entrepreneurial projects. We show that whether financial liberalization generates a poverty trap, an endogenous fluctuation, or both depends on the interaction of pledgeability and uncertainty. Endogenous fluctuation requires a high level of both pledgeability and uncertainty. Poverty trap requires a low level of both. For an intermediate level of both, the initially poor are trapped in poverty while the initially rich fluctuate endogenously.     

金融中介职能、会计质量与债券违约风险——海龙短期融资券案例分析

利用案例分析方法分析了短期融资券"11海龙CP01"的发行和兑付过程,发现债券发行公司在发行债券前后均存在会计质量、公司运营以及内部治理等方面的问题,包括评级公司、承销商和会计师事务所在内的金融中介机构并未对这些问题及时披露,而这不利于信用风险市场化体系的建立,阻碍了债券市场的长期健康发展。     

INVESTMENT BEHAVIOUR,CORPORATE CONTROL,AND PRIVATE BENEFITS OF CONTROL: EVIDENCE FROM A SURVEY OF UKRAINIAN FIRMS

We analyse the impact of ownership and corporate control on firms’ investment using the 2001 survey of Yacoub et al. on Ukrainian firms. The model explains investment by output, financial and soft budget constraints, and corporate control (and ownership) categories potentially enjoying private benefits of control. We find that the corporate control model fits better than the ownership model, a negative relationship between state and employee control and firms’ investment, and evidence for the presence of soft budget constraints. A negative relationship between firms’ investment and the relative size of non‐monetary transactions strengthens the conclusion of private benefits of control impacting investment.