Unleashing the Power of Networks: Shareholder Activism,Sustainable Development and Corporate Environmental Policy

In recent years, a new trend has emerged in which shareholder activists have formed networks to empower shareholders and magnify shareholder voices. This study explores the structural patterns and effectiveness of shareholder activism networks and shows how those networks affect corporate sustainability policies. We draw upon stakeholder influence theory, stakeholder network management theory and recent studies on activism networks to examine a shareholder activism network formed around environmental issues. The study found that (1) the structure of shareholder activist networks is largely driven by organizational attributes such as organization type, organizations’ human resources, media visibility and history; and (2) activist organizations with high centralities and eigenvector centralities enjoy more efficient results. This study contributes to our understanding of the business responses to shareholder demands on improving environmental performance and paves the way for future research on sustainable development through partnerships with shareholder networks. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Labour unions and leverage: evidence from firm-level union data

ABSTRACT

Using firm-level labour union data from Japan, this paper investigates the effect of labour unions on firm leverage. We find that as union coverage increases, both the level of and extent of change in leverage decreases. These relations remain robust when a firm falls into deficit. We also find that firms with higher union coverage have a higher interest coverage ratio. In addition, we find that firms with higher union coverage are less likely to choose issuing debt compared to issuing equity when they face financial distress. Our results imply that significant employee influence enhanced by labour unions increases fixed costs, crowds out the firm’s debt capacity and consequently reduces the firm’s leverage.     

Fuzzy Chronic Poverty: A Proposed Response to Measurement Error for Intertemporal Poverty Measurement

A number of chronic poverty measures are now empirically applied to quantify the prevalence and intensity of chronic poverty, vis‐à‐vis transient experiences, using panel data. Welfare trajectories over time are assessed in order to identify the chronically poor and distinguish them from the non‐poor, or the transiently poor, and assess the extent and intensity of intertemporal poverty. We examine the implications of measurement error in the welfare outcome for some popular discontinuous chronic poverty measures, and propose corrections to these measures that seeks to minimize the consequences of measurement error. The approach is based on a novel criterion for the identification of chronic poverty that draws on fuzzy set theory. We illustrate the empirical relevance of the approach with a panel dataset from rural Ethiopia and some simulations.     

上市公司信息披露策略的理论基础

上市公司信息披露策略的理论基础是寻租理论、经济后果理论和印象管理理论。寻租理论说明上市公司为什么披露信息，经济后果理论解释上市公司为什么会选择性信息披露，而印象管理理论则说明上市公司如何通过管理信息披露以实现自己的最大利益。     

刍议证券市场中的投资者保护理论

资者保护是全球证券市场发展过程中的一个十分重要问题,一直为各国官员和学者所关注,作为一个近二十年历史的新兴市场,中国目前在投资者保护方面还存在一些突出的问题,主要从投资者保护的概念,探讨投资者保护的两个理论：契约论和法律论,以及投资者保护的意义,借此为如何维护中国证券市场的持续、健康发展,保护中小投资者利益提供参考。     

多关系条件下多代理人行为分析与激励机制设计

针对多个代理人之间存在多种关系———竞争、合作和中立的情况,建立了信息对称和信息非对称条件下的多代理人行为选择模型,通过模型求解与模拟计算分析多关系条件下多代理人的行为选择和委托人的最优选择或激励机制。结果表明:信息对称条件下,员工薪酬与员工间的竞争程度无关,但合作关系更能激励员工努力工作;信息非对称条件下,员工间关系影响其薪酬和企业利润,合作关系下的企业总收益比其他关系下的企业收益高,员工间的合作关系会影响并提高处于其他关系下员工的努力程度。最后提出:企业面对多员工管理问题时应尽量构建合作的工作环境,以减小员工工作努力程度的不确定性、实现利益最大化。     

Estimation of tail‐related risk measures in the Indian stock market: An extreme value approach

The purpose of the study is to estimate tail-related risk measures using extreme value theory (EVT) in the Indian stock market. The study employs a two stage approach of conditional EVT originally proposed by McNeil and Frey (2000) to estimate dynamic Value at Risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES). The dynamic risk measures have been estimated for different percentiles for negative and positive returns. The estimates of risk measures computed under different quantile levels exhibit strong stability across a range of the selected thresholds, implying the accuracy and reliability of the estimated quantile based risk measures.     

末位淘汰——管理中的一柄“双刃剑”

末位淘汰作为一种管理手段在企业界被广泛采用,在实践中具有优缺点,实施末位淘汰要根据企业的实际情况,选择一个部门或几个部门进行。同时要注重培育良好的绩效文化,让刚性的末位淘汰变得充“满柔性”以有利于末位淘汰制的实施。     

弘扬生态公德 建设生态文明

建设生态文明是中共十七大对有中国特色社会主义理论体系的新发展。要建设生态文明,必须大力提倡弘扬爱护环境,节约资源的生态公德。生态公德主要包括:珍惜资源,保护生态;尊重生命,爱护生态;发展经济,协调生态;爱惜水源,呵护生态;广泛宣传.心系生态。人人明了生态公德,人人遵守生态公德,事事以生态为先,时时以生态为念,生态文明的大厦才能高高建起。     

中国经济的高增长与低就业——货币有效就业假说与经验检验

对于中国经济增长与就业增长之间的关系的研究由来已久,本文在肯定和批判已有的从微观边际生产力视角出发的实物有效就业研究的前提下,提出从宏观的、长期的层面研究经济增长对就业增长的推动作用,提出并经验检验了货币有效就业假说。分析表明:中国经济中确实存在高增长与低就业的并存,原因是现有的就业增长是低工资水平的就业增长,不能够扩大有效需求而自动产生对就业的需求,解决的途径应该是,将就业增长纳入宏观有效需求的问题当中,用适当工资水平的就业增长来调节收入分配差距,进而扩大有效需求,增加就业。