Have SFAS 166 and SFAS 167 improved the financial reporting for securitizations?

Critics have alleged that securitization accounting prior to 2010 was among the causes of the recent financial crisis. In response to this criticism, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) implemented two new accounting standards, SFAS 166 and SFAS 167, to improve the financial reporting for securitizations. Bank regulators have stated their belief that SFAS 166/167 will result in a consolidated balance sheet (and risk-based capital ratios based thereupon) that better reflects a bank's exposure to risk related to securitized assets. We document that, by ceding retained power or influence through the servicing/special servicing functions to third parties, SFAS 166/167 resulted in real effects to the extent that banks (particularly those that were weakly capitalized) achieved their accounting objectives in the post-SFAS 166/167 period through legitimate transaction structuring in line with the intent of the new rules. Further, we use capital market participants’ assessments of risk retention by sponsoring banks as a benchmark, and provide evidence consistent with bank regulators’ beliefs. In particular, following SFAS 166/167, equity investors of sponsoring banks do not consider (consider) as risk relevant securitized assets that receive off-balance sheet (on-balance sheet) treatment. Securitized assets that are consolidated under SFAS 166/167 exhibit the same risk relevance as assets that are not securitized, despite contractual provisions that would seem to imply substantial risk transfer.     

论保险法上的因果关系

我国保险法欠缺因果关系原则及规则,不能给保险业务和保险司法提供必要的准则。本文分析了海上保险中的近因原则、英美法系与大陆法系非海上保险的因果关系原则以及若干具体规则,主张海上保险应当继续借鉴英美法上的近因原则,非海上保险应当吸收民法中相当因果关系规则,同时保险法还应规定若干因果关系的具体规则。     

Dividend decisions in the property and liability insurance industry: mutual versus stock companies

This article examines the effect of organizational forms on corporate dividend decisions by exploring the differences in dividend payout ratios between mutual and stock property–liability (P–L) insurers in the US. Our large sample evidence suggests: (1) mutual insurers tend to have a lower dividend payout ratio than stock insurers and the observed difference is about 4% points, holding other factors constant; (2) mutual insurers tend to adjust dividend payout ratios toward their long-run target levels more slowly than stock firms. These results are consistent with the capital constraints and/or greater agency costs of equity in mutual insurers.

2014年1季度国际金融市场运行综述

2014年1季度,美元指数小幅下跌;美元、英镑、日元短期利率下降,欧元短期利率上升;主要国家中长期国债收益率下降;主要股指出现分化。     

金融全球化与金融风险

中国入世标志着中国经济已开始融入世界经济体系之中 ,而在经济全球化进程中伴随着金融全球化的大趋势 ,金融全球化对各国经济和金融体系既是机遇 ,也加大了风险 ,在金融全球化的环境下中国银行体系中存在的大量不良贷款和远不能满足巴塞尔协议要求的资本充足率 ,使中国银行业存在现实和隐含的金融风险。中国的商业银行和金融监管当局必须采取有力的对策来应对挑战     

Computers BITE accounting education

The recent establishment of the £20 million Teaching and Learning Technology Programme by the Universities' Funding Council in the UK provides one of the largest boosts for IT and education since PLATO (in the USA) and NDPCAL (in the UK). This note describes the BITE project which is part of the above programme and highlights some of the problems that have affected both the development and evaluation of accounting courseware in the past. By using a strong interdisciplinary team of software, educational and subject specialists, the project hopes to overcome some or all of these problems.     

中国——东盟贸易自由化中的税收竞争与协调

中国和东盟国家同是发展中国家,为吸引外资发展本国经济,长期以来都采取了税收优惠等税收竞争手段。目前,中国——东盟自由贸易区正在构建,并已进入了“早期收获”阶段。本文主要围绕中国——东盟贸易自由化进程中各方利益的博弈和国际税收竞争与协调这两大因素,就自由贸易区建成前后的两个阶段,分析中国和东盟国家在吸引外资方面的税收竞争的影响,并认为在贸易自由化启动后,中国和东盟国家应走竞争与协调相结合之路。     

A structural framework for modelling contingent capital

This paper develops a structural model of contingent capital. In contrast to existing approaches we explicitly link the firm’s total payout to its cost of debt, leading to a total payout that is linear in—as opposed to proportional to—asset value. In the special case that asset value evolves as affine geometric Brownian motion we derive closed-form expressions for limiting (i.e. perpetual) bond values. The proposed model is flexible, so that it can be used to gauge the relative merits of different variations of contingent capital, and parsimonious, so that it is relatively easy to implement in practice. An empirical example using data from the Canadian banking sector is provided that illustrates how the model can generate insights into problems that are of interest to both regulators and issuers of contingent capital (e.g. what range of conversion prices would be consistent with regulatory guidelines, and how expensive is contingent debt over this range).     

城乡二元结构、三农问题与城镇化关系研究

1954年,美国著名经济学家刘易斯（W.A.Lewis,1915-1991）首次提出了二元经济结构理论。后经费景汉、拉尼斯和乔根森等人加以修改和发展,被认为是研究发展中国家经济的普遍理论。中国是个传统的农业大国,二元经济结构既包括工业与农业的对立,也包括城市与农村的对立。本文综合分析我国城乡二元经济结构的形成、城乡二元经济结构带来的＂三农＂问题与城镇化关系。城乡二元经济是现代化经济发展的阻碍,城镇化是解决我国城乡二元经济结构的根本出路。本文最后为加快城镇化建设、解决＂三农＂问题提出有效的建议。     

中国分红保险的机理与制度框架

分红政策在分红保险的经营和监管中始终发挥着核心作用。不论分红保险采用何种模式,分红政策都应当遵循一定的原则:既重视保单持有人的合理预期,贯彻诚信经营和红利分配的公平原则,又要充分考虑红利分配对公司未来红利水平、投资策略以及偿付能力的影响。为了实现分红保险的这些原则,必须辅以有效的工具,其中分红特别储备是实现这些目的的本质、核心和关键。本文以此为基础,阐述了分红保险的管理机制和报告制度。