The paradoxes of risk management in the banking sector

This paper uses empirical evidence to examine the operational dynamics and paradoxical nature of risk management systems in the banking sector. It demonstrates how a core paradox of market versus regulatory demands and an accompanying variety of performance, learning and belonging paradoxes underlie evident tensions in the interaction between front and back office staff in banks. Organisational responses to such paradoxes are found to range from passive to proactive, reflecting differing organisational, departmental and individual risk culture(s), and performance management systems. Nonetheless, a common feature of regulatory initiatives designed to secure a more structurally independent risk management function is that they have failed to rectify a critical imbalance of power - with the back office control functions continuing to be dominated by front office trading and investment functions. Ultimately, viewing the 'core' of risk management systems as a series of connected paradoxes rather than a set of assured, robust practices, requires a fundamental switch in emphasis away from a normative, standards-based approach to risk management to one which gives greater recognition to its behavioural dimensions.     

Investor attention,firm-specific characteristic,and momentum: A case of the Korean stock market

This study examines the sources of negative momentum profits by combining investor attention and the properties of common and firm-specific factors. We choose the Korean stock market as a good case to characterize the negative momentum profits identified in Asia. In both portfolio and stock analyses, a method is devised to generate return data involving the property of each common and firm-specific factor within stock groups by investor attention. This study found significant negative momentum profits within the stock group with high investor attention. This momentum effect is highly dependent on the reversed performance of the past loser portfolio, not the continued performance of the past winner portfolio, and this reversal is strongly attributable to the properties of firm-specific factors, and not those of common factors. These results are robustly consistent regardless of changes in empirical design and the consideration of influence factors, market dynamics, and other stock markets.     

Milton Friedman's monetary economics and the quantity-theory tradition

This article provides a selective review of Milton Friedman's contributions to monetary economics focusing on five areas in particular: the demand for money, the joint historical and empirical work with Anna J. Schwartz, the theoretical and empirical analyses of the Phillips Curve, monetary policy and monetary dynamics.     

财务治理效率论纲

效率是经济学和管理学研究的核心与主线。在将公司本质界定为利益相关者产权契约联结体的基础上,推演出财务治理效率论说,其核心思想包括:公司产权契约的核心是公司财权契约;财权契约不完备与代理问题的存在导致财务治理问题的产生;财务治理的本质是剩余财权配置,根本目标是实现财务治理效率最大化;财务治理效率最大化的核心是剩余财务索取权与剩余财务控制权对应,基本衡量标准是财务治理收益与财务治理成本对比。     

农民工家庭城乡消费决策的影响因素——基于东部9城市抽样调查数据的分析

基于东部9城市的抽样调查数据,结合生命周期—持久收入假说和预防性储蓄假说,考察了农民工家庭城乡消费的影响因素。总体来看,农民工家庭消费的3/4发生在城市,且城市消费比重有进一步上升的趋势;农民工家庭的城乡消费有着不同的决策机制,但都呈现出明显的生命周期特征;持久收入、收入的不确定性以及人均住房资产是影响城市消费的重要因素。     

Stochastic regularization for the mean-variance allocation scheme

Despite being based on sound principles, the original Markovitz portfolio allocation theory cannot produce sound allocations, and restrictions or modifications need to be imposed from outside the theory in order to obtain meaningful portfolios. This is unsatisfactory, and the reasons for this failure are discussed, in particular, the unavoidable small eigenvalues of the covariance. Within the original principles of risk minimization and return maximization, several modifications of the original theory are introduced. First, the strategic and tactical time horizons are separated. A base long-term allocation is chosen at the strategic time horizon, while the portfolio is optimized at the tactical time horizon using information from the price histories. Second, the tactical portfolio is financed by the strategic one, and a funding operator is introduced. The corresponding optimal allocation (without constraints) has one free parameter fixing the leverage. Third, the transaction costs are taken into account. This includes the current re-allocation cost, but crucially the expected costs of the next reallocation. This last term depends on the sensitivity of the allocation with respect to the covariance, and the expectation introduces another dependency on the (inverse) covariance. The new term regularizes the original minimization problem by modifying the lower part of the spectrum of the covariance, leading to meaningful portfolios. Without constraints, the final Lagrangian can be minimized analytically, with a solution that has a structure similar to the original Markovitz solution, but with the inverse covariance regularized by the expected transaction costs.     

美国混合合并反垄断法规制研究

关于混合合并的问题,美国在不同历史时期的态度是不同的,甚至是互相矛盾的。因此,美国的混合合并经历了合法—非法—基本上合法的一个过程。在这个过程中,尤其是美国视混合合并为非法的时期内,通过一系列的具体案件,美国混合合并理论得到了蓬勃发展。我国应当借鉴美国的经验,在反垄断法的实施过程中来具体分析混合合并行为,从而促进我国反垄断法的发展。     

Political interventions in state-owned enterprises: The corporate governance failures of a European airline

This paper is based on the theory of hybrid organizations and we investigate the context, factors, mediators, and outcome of a public scandal involving a Romanian state-owned company in the civil aviation sector. This retrospective case study is part of a research design that alternates between inductive and deductive procedures devised to test relevant hypotheses, integrate several theories, and construct the causal mechanism of the corporate scandal. Four theories have been selected to address multiple aspects of the case: the hybrid organization theory, the agency theory, the fraud triangle theory, and the legitimacy theory. Several hypotheses have been proposed at the confluence of these frameworks, and the data collection process was conducted to ensure the credibility, dependability, and transferability of results. In addition to the themes and categories that have emerged from the thematic analysis, the paper also uses the process-tracing method to propose a causal graph and an event-history map in support of the hypotheses. The paper puts forward a series of recommendations on how to improve the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises, and to prevent potential scandals. The authors suggest that the separation of ownership and control is beneficial for strategy implementation in state-owned enterprises and can alleviate an entity’s financial difficulties.     

Institutional changes in university accounting education in post-revolutionary China: From political orientation to internationalization

Since the formation of the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the broad field of accounting education in China has undergone many changes in the context of a dramatically changing sociopolitical environment. The institutional mechanisms in Chinese university accounting education are examined in this paper, principally through a re-reading of the historical experience since 1949. We utilize an institutional theory frame to examine how action in the regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive pillars have shaped accounting education from its heavily political orientation in the early years of the PRC to a more internationalized university accounting education system that has begun to take shape in contemporary China. We seek to contribute a contextualized understanding of contemporary China's accounting education, while adapting and extending the role of institutional theory in explaining education changes more broadly.     

Here come the men in black Technology and anxiety in the postmodern age

This review of the film Men in Black argues that what used to be alarming in the science fiction genre has now become its main source of humour. As a reactionary response to the dystopic X-Files, MiB is an elaborate parody which seeks to recuperate ideological ground lost by the X-Files' examination of gender and technology in contemporary culture. Anxiety about the roles of technology, gender and the state are replaced by humour about the notion of anxiety itself. Anxious we may be at the close of the millenium, but MiB tells us to just laugh it all away.