利率市场化形势下松原市农村信用社贷款利率定价机制存在的问题及对策

2015年5月1日《存款保险条例》的出台,标志着我国利率市场化工作已基本完成。但在这样的大背景下,松原市农村信用社贷款利率仍然执行“一刀切”的利率政策。这在一定程度上制约了农村信用社的发展。农村信用社贷款利率定价机制缺失,定价不合理的问题突显。对于以农业经济发展为主的松原市来说,做为支农主力军的农村信用社,面对这种多元化矛盾的金融市场,如何努力提高款定价技术水平,科学合理地调整贷款定价方式,把信贷支农和贷款定价机制有效整合,对增加金融支农力度,实现金融信贷支农的“双赢”有着非常重要的意义。     

COOPERATIVE ESSENCE AND ENTREPRENEURIAL QUALITY: A COMPARATIVE CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS

This article links two different fields of research, entrepreneurship and cooperatives, and studies whether, depending on the context, differences in terms of the fulfilment of the cooperative philosophy (cooperative essence) and entrepreneurial quality exist. To this aim, a statistical analysis is carried out using data from two Spanish regions: Andalusia and the Basque Country. The results enable us to conclude, firstly, that cooperative essence differs in relation to regional context, but not in relation to entrepreneurial quality. Secondly, cooperative essence and entrepreneurial quality are positively related, suggesting that cooperative essence may be part of the entrepreneurial quality of these kinds of firms.     

Does acquisition of a cooperative generate profits for the buyer? The Dairyworld case

This article examines the takeover of a cooperative (Dairyworld) by an investor‐owned firm (Saputo) that was not previously present in the industry, determines if this takeover generates greater returns for the investor‐owned firms (IOF), and on the basis of this evidence makes some inferences about the behavior and performance of cooperatives and IOFs. The empirical evidence strongly supports the conclusion that Saputo's stock price rose with its takeover announcement. This outcome is consistent with a number of explanations, including that Saputo was unaffected by hubris, a factor often suggested as the reason that many firms overbid when they undertake acquisitions. Dairyworld's poor liquidity and capital shortage problems, as well as a limited number of suitors, may have weakened its bargaining position in its dealings with Saputo. The observed increase in Saputo's stock price is also consistent with the possibility that, by taking over a cooperative, Saputo was able to decrease competition and thus increase its profits. A fruitful area for future research would be a rigorous theoretical and empirical determination of the impact that these various factors have on acquisition profitability. Such analysis is required before inferences about the behavior and performance of cooperatives and IOFs can be fully answered.     

Degrees of Connection: A Critique of Rawls’s Theory of Mutual Disinterest

John Rawls's solution to the problem of justice between generations is premised on the idea that “a generation cares for its immediate descendants, as fathers say care for their sons” (John Rawls 1971: 288, emphasis added). This paper brings mothers into the Rawlsian social contract. I argue that, when children have more than one parent, there is a contradiction between the assumption of concern for descendants, which underpins Rawls's account of justice between generations, and the mutual disinterest assumption, which characterizes parties negotiating in the “original position.” Concern for descendants creates connections within generations as well as across generations. The critique is internal and nonradical, but its implications are subversive. It demonstrates that an “add women and stir” liberal feminist reworking of Rawls's theory cannot be successful; bringing sexual reproduction out of the realm of nature and into the social contract necessitates a radical reconstruction of Rawls's theory.     

PUBLIC POLICY SUPPORT FOR AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES: AN ORGANIZATIONAL ECONOMICS APPROACH

This paper addresses the issue of whether nontraditional agricultural cooperatives should be eligible for receiving public policy support. We adopt an organizational economics approach that appears to better inform policy design and suggest critical questions that both policy makers and regulators need to address before introducing measures and sanctions. After discussing the introduction of innovative cooperative models characterized by a whole new set of ownership and control rights, we recast vaguely defined property rights problems as attempts to maximize efficiency and avoid organizational decline rather than to take advantage of excessive market power in highly concentrated oligopsonistic/oligopolistic markets.     

南浔银行的实践及对农信社改革的启示

浙江南浔农村商业银行简称南浔银行,在刚与农行"脱钩"时,绩效与资产质量都很一般.2000年开始"腾飞",迄今已取得浙江省农信机构的五项第一.其中,2009年资产利润率达到2.57%,为全国所有银行第一."南浔银行实践"的实质是:依靠优秀经营者的带领,实现了经营机制转换,进而实现了"腾飞".其对农信社改革的启示主要是:①实现经营机制转换,即实行"市场化"的用工薪酬制度和营销制度,是地方性小金融机构实现健康发展的关键;②地方性金融机构在产权还不明晰或者还不够明晰的条件下,只要主要经营者足够优秀,也是可以实现经营机制转换的;③"省级管理"最主要的任务便是,发现、选任优秀的CEO,并且有效地监督;④我省下一步的农信社改革与发展应当更多地"着眼"于优秀CEO与优秀机构.     

Government policy and ownership of equity securities

Since World War II, direct stock ownership by households across the globe has largely been replaced by indirect stock ownership by financial institutions. We argue that tax and retirement policies are among the factors behind these changes. We develop empirical measures of two tax incentives of holding stocks inside tax-deferred plans, tax-free investment income and the smoothing benefit. Using long time-series from eight countries, we show that the fraction of household ownership decreases with these measures of the tax benefits. This finding contributes to policy debates on effective taxation and to financial economics research on the long-term effects of taxation on corporate finance and asset prices.     

Portfolio concentration and mutual fund performance

Mutual fund managers should choose to increase their portfolio concentration when their information set is valuable enough that the benefits of the expected increase in alpha more than offsets the costs of the expected increase in idiosyncratic volatility. Consistent with that idea, we find that fund performance improves after concentration increases. Because the expected costs of increased concentration vary between funds and over time, the required expected benefits before managers choose to increase concentration should also vary. Among other results, we show that the concentration-performance relation is stronger for funds with less institutional ownership and when investor sentiment is low.     

Blurred stars: Mutual fund ratings in the shadow of conflicts of interest

Using unique data on trading commission payments to mutual fund rating companies (MFRCs) by mutual funds in China, this paper investigates whether the conflicts of interest arising from trading commission payments bias MFRCs’ mutual fund star ratings and hence affect their informativeness. We find the rating of a mutual fund is more optimistic when the MFRC either (i) receives trading commission fees from the mutual fund or (ii) can potentially receive fees in the future. The paper further shows that the usefulness of ratings in terms of predicting a fund’s future performance is negatively impacted by conflicts of interest. There is also evidence that investors can see through the problem, responding less enthusiastically (in terms of fund flows) to the ratings of conflicted MFRCs. We further find that the introduction of a rating qualification system that aims to improve mutual fund rating quality exacerbates the rating bias.     

Can mutual funds time risk factors?

Using daily observations from 448 actively managed funds, we employ the methodology in Bollen and Busse (2001) in order to assess the ability of fund managers to time systematic risk factors. We first construct synthetic portfolios in order to obtain the empirical distribution of timing coefficients under the null hypothesis of no timing ability and then compare this distribution to that of the timing coefficients of the actual funds. Fund managers do not seem to be timing any of the risk factors. We interpret this result as evidence that factor timing ability does not persist over long time periods.