Corporate Governance and Corporate Bond Liquidity

Using a unique dataset of corporate bond trading information and corporate governance evaluation scores, this study examines the determinants of corporate bond market liquidity in Korea. In particular, this study explores whether corporate governance performance of a company influences liquidity of bonds issued by the company. The paper reports three important findings. First, the issue size and age of bond are important determinants of bond liquidity. Second, liquidity of corporate bonds is influenced by changes in macroeconomic conditions. Third, and most importantly, better corporate governance increases liquidity of corporate bonds. This result suggests that corporate governance is an important determinant of bond liquidity, as it lowers transaction costs by improving transparency and reducing asymmetry of information. This paper contributes to the literature by providing new evidence that corporate governance performance is an important determinant of liquidity in corporate bond markets.     

Wall of cash: The investment-cash flow sensitivity when capital becomes abundant

In the mid 2000s the oil and gas industry was hit by what might be best described as a ‘wall of cash’ as oil prices successively reached new record levels and access to external financing improved greatly. In this article we investigate what this sudden abundance of liquidity implied for the investment-cash flow relationship, the interpretation of which continues to generate controversy in the literature. For financially constrained firms we find that the investment-cash flow sensitivity decreases in the abundance period (2005–2008), suggesting that the financing constraints became less binding in this period. For financially unconstrained firms the investment-cash flow sensitivity instead increases over time, suggesting that this relationship is driven by agency problems related to free cash flow. Our paper is the first in the investment-cash flow literature to bring evidence from a natural experiment in which there was an unexpected, exogenous, substantial, and persistent decrease in the cost of external financing.     

我国小企业的紧融资约束

紧融资约束是我国大多数小企业进一步发展所面临的瓶颈问题。其直接原因是信贷配给制下国有银行的自利性歧视,如企业规模歧视、治理结构歧视、所有权歧视、资金需求歧视和交易费用歧视等。其根本原因是我国的金融抑制和金融发展的水平偏低。重要的是,金融抑制往往是金融不发达的重要原因。因此,解决的办法主要有加强信用评价与管理、发展信用担保业、加强对国有银行贷款行为的规制、放松对民间融资的规制和在银行业中引入私人小银行等。其中,第三条措施是根源于国有银行的企业性质的,也是可以立即执行并在短期内见效的解决办法。     

Where to donate: The geographical distribution of corporate philanthropy in China

An emerging body of literature has demonstrated that corporate philanthropy can be an important part of a company’s business strategy. However, we know relatively little about how companies allocate philanthropic resources to achieve their strategic targets. Using geographical distribution data on corporate philanthropy in China from 2009 to 2016, we provide robust evidence of companies’ revenue-driven regional favoritism. Specifically, companies donate more to regions where they obtain revenue than to other regions. Further evidence suggests that this revenue-driven regional favoritism may have both reputational and political motivations. Further analysis suggests that China’s targeted poverty alleviation policy has compromised revenue-driven regional favoritism while increasing the amount of money donated to poor regions. Overall, we enrich understanding of decision-making on corporate philanthropy. We also demonstrate that companies can use the geographical distribution of corporate philanthropy strategically to obtain consumer and government favor in regions where they operate. The results also provide evidence at the micro company level of the effect of China’s implementation of a targeted poverty alleviation policy.     

CORPORATE TAX AVOIDANCE: A LITERATURE REVIEW AND RESEARCH AGENDA

Tax avoidance can range from reduction of the corporate tax burden by legitimate use of tax rules to violation of tax laws. In this paper, we endeavor to synthesize the major findings of tax avoidance research from the accounting and finance literatures over the past ten years. We consider theoretical developments and the related empirical findings about the interconnected issues of measuring tax avoidance, and the possible causes and outcomes of corporate tax avoidance. We present some ideas for further research to examine underexplored topics regarding tax avoidance.     

Can governance help in making an IPO “successful”? New evidence from Europe

This paper investigates the determinants of a “successful” IPO from a corporate governance perspective upon a representative sample of European listings from 2000 to 2015. We use an extensive dataset of market performance, financial data, and corporate governance characteristics to run the investigation. Differently from previous studies, our analysis embraces both a short‐term perspective and a medium–long‐term perspective, where the board of directors seems to perform different tasks, moving from a value creation to a value protection strategy. Among the others, we find that board size, board independence, and their qualifications, together with their experience in other boards, are associated with a positive performance of the IPO in a short‐term horizon and in the medium–long‐term period, although significant differences emerge among those time perspectives.     

Official rotation and corporate innovation: Evidence from the governor rotation

Rotation is a practice whereby officials are regularly moved between equally ranked positions. Focusing on governor rotation, this paper examines the effect of official rotation on corporate innovation in China. First, we find that official rotation significantly promotes corporate innovation, including enterprises’ innovation investment, quantity, and quality. Second, we find that the effect of official rotation on corporate innovation varies because of official and regional heterogeneity. Officials rotating from other provinces significantly stimulate corporate innovation, but officials rotating from the central government have an insignificant influence on corporate innovation. In addition, officials rotating to non-eastern regions significantly enhance corporate innovation, while officials rotating to eastern regions have a negligible impact on corporate innovation. We further examine the driving mechanism behind the effect of official rotation on corporate innovation and find that officials rotating from eastern regions to non-eastern regions can significantly promote corporate innovation, but officials rotating from non-eastern regions to eastern regions do not boost corporate innovation. These findings imply that the different effects of official rotation on corporate innovation are due to the official experience effect. We also find that official rotation can promote corporate innovation through reducing corporate charitable donations and increasing corporate innovation subsidies. In a supplementary analysis, we find that GDP-oriented performance appraisal pressure weakens the effect of official rotation on corporate innovation. The lower the pressure on officials regarding their performance, the more significant the effect of official rotation on corporate innovation. In addition, official rotation can significantly promote the development of the regional economy and improve the GDP growth rate via corporate innovation, which is a micro-level economic growth effect of official rotation. Overall, our findings further verify the economic effect of official rotation and extend our understanding of the influencing factors of corporate innovation from the perspective of the official governance system. Our findings also have clear policy implications for how the government can improve the official governance model to promote corporate innovation during the transition period of the national innovation system.     

European firms’ corporate biodiversity disclosures and board gender diversity from 2002 to 2016

We examine how board gender diversity is associated with biodiversity disclosures of a firm, and whether the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the EU biodiversity strategy reinforce this relationship. Using institutional theory and resource dependency theory, our sample comprises 4013 firm-year observations from European corporations covering data from 2002 to 2016. We use panel regressions with country, time and industry dummy variables to analyse the disclosure of biodiversity initiatives (DBI) and logit regressions to explain biodiversity impact assessment (BIA). We find that board gender diversity is positively associated with the DBI and BIA of a firm, and that the GRI framework and the EU biodiversity strategy positively moderate this relationship. Moreover, the GRI framework and the EU strategic plan show positive relationship with the DBI, rather than BIA. Altogether, our evidence suggests that corporate boards with a higher proportion of female directors are more sensitive to the concerns of institutional pressures and respond to those concerns by increasing corporate biodiversity disclosures. Overall, we find that firms tend to comply with the GRI framework and the EU 2020 strategy by undertaking symbolic biodiversity disclosures, rather than providing a comprehensive disclosure of their impacts on biodiversity.     

Pricing,greening, and transparency decisions considering the impact of government subsidies and CSR behavior in supply chain decisions

In this paper, we analytically model different government subsidy strategies in a supply chain manufacturing and selling a green product. We model the interaction between greening degree and transparency level set by a manufacturer and its impact on not only the supply chain, but also consumers and the government. The supply chain is composed of a manufacturer and a retailer. The manufacturer can choose two different strategies. First, he only cares about his production profit; and second, he concerns with CSR in addition to his production profit. We develop a new transparency-based index of consumer satisfaction to model how the market reacts to manufacturer CSR decisions. The government decide three different subsidy strategies. A three-stage Stackelberg game model is developed and solved to analytically derive managerial insights. As a result, if the transparency cost coefficient is sufficiently high, the greening degree and transparency level in CSR concerns strategy are higher than when the manufacturer is not concerned with corporate social responsibility. In addition, when the transparency cost coefficient is sufficiently high, the profit of supply chain members and government are equal in both strategies. We give a real-world example of Iranian brick industry.     

Home purchase restriction,real estate investment,and corporate innovation

It is ubiquitous for non-real estate firms to conduct real estate business in China. Home purchase restriction (HPR) affects corporate innovation by dampening the real estate investment of non-real estate firms. The extant literature has examined the impact of HPR on corporate innovation, but it has not focused on the expectation of HPR and the endogeneity problem. Employing a dataset of 1830 listed non-real estate firms over the period 2009–2016, this research explores the expectation of HPR on corporate innovation based on the motivations for real estate investment in non-real estate firms. We demonstrate that HPR facilitates the enhancement of research and development (R&D) investment in non-real estate listed firms by hindering real estate investment, particularly for non-high-tech firms. The effects of HPR arrive at the crest in the third implementation year and remain steady thereafter. The real estate investment of non-real estate firms rebounds and the R&D investment declines along with the cancellation of HPR. Tackling the selection bias and endogeneity problems, the baseline results are also robust. Hence, HPR should serve as a long-term vehicle to improving corporate innovation, in addition to preventing housing speculation.