Independent directors and earnings management: The moderating effects of controlling shareholders and the divergence of cash-flow and control rights

The research results on the suppressing effect of independent directors on earnings management are not consistent in existing literature. In addition, it has been argued that using financial statements provided by top management to investigate top management's earnings management is not appropriate. Therefore, the purpose of this study is twofold. First, we used external auditors (including the auditors of Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation and the auditors of two Big Four accounting firms – Deloitte & Touche and KPMG in Taiwan) as respondents in order to obtain less biased data. Second, we investigate the moderating effects of controlling shareholders and the divergence of cash-flow and control rights on the relationship between independent directors and earnings management. The results show that both the existence of controlling shareholders and the divergence of cash-flow and control rights have significant suppressing effects on the relationship between independent directors and earnings management. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.     

Sustainability of macroeconomic policies in selected MENA countries: Post financial and debt crises

In the wake of the recent financial and debt crises, the conduct of macroeconomic policies in the emerging MENA economies has recently become critical in determining those countries future economic situation, due to the accumulation since the early 1990s of a sizable level of external debt, and the pursuit by some countries of a fixed exchange rate regime. Using time series econometric models, this study assesses the sustainability of macroeconomic policies in a selected sample of 4 MENA countries. The empirical results point to sustainable fiscal and exchange rate policies in Tunisia and Morocco, and unsustainable external debt and exchange rate policies in Egypt and Jordan. While Egypt has recently moved to a flexible exchange rate regime, if Jordan still opts for maintaining a fixed exchange rate arrangement, it will have to implement crisis-prevention measures, namely by exercising fiscal discipline, and managing properly its external debt and foreign reserves.     

A new look at variation in employment growth in Canada: The role of industry,provincial, national and external factors

We examine fluctuations in employment growth using Canadian data from 1976 to 2010. We consider a wide range of models and examine the sensitivity of our findings to modelling assumptions. The results from our most preferred model, which we selected using the Bayesian Information Criteria, indicate that most of the variance in employment growth that is not due to the idiosyncratic error comes from domestic sources, with most of this coming from industry and provincial factors. Overall, we find that external and national factors play a much smaller role in employment fluctuations than in earlier research. We provide some possible explanations for these differences and discuss the implications of our findings for public policy and theory.     

Corporate smart phones: professionals' conscious engagement in escalating work connectivity

This article explores how the adoption of company sponsored smart phones inflicts upon the lives of professionals. Drawing upon qualitative interviews at a law firm in Brazil, the experiences of new smart phone users are reported upon in detail. Increased accessibility, accuracy and speed in exchanges gave the users a sense of autonomy and flexibility. However, the technology also helped to intensify the organisation's hold on employees outside of regular working hours, reaching into new settings, time slots and social contexts. Employees expressed concerns regarding demands from superiors that negatively affected their private spheres, yet many of them paradoxically requested more efficient smart phone connectivity. The article focuses on the justifications, the different narrative strategies, employed by professionals for their conscious engagement in escalating work connectivity. It is suggested that these justifications display users' attempt to ‘dis‐identify’ with the role and practice they perform.     

Sources of business fluctuations: Financial or technology shocks?

Despite the widespread belief that technology shocks are the main source of business fluctuations, recent empirical studies indicate that in the absence of financial frictions, a shock to the marginal efficiency of investment is the main source and is closely related to financial conditions for investment. We incorporate a financial accelerator mechanism and two types of financial shocks to the external finance premium and net worth in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with shocks to the marginal efficiency of investment, the investment-good price markup, and the rates of neutral and investment-specific technological changes. This model is estimated using eleven US time series that include data on loan, net worth, the loan rate, and the relative price of investment. Our estimation results show that the (non-stationary) neutral and investment-specific technology shocks primarily drive output and investment fluctuations, while the external finance premium shock plays an important role for investment fluctuations. This financial shock induced substantial falls and subsequent sharp hikes in the external finance premium and caused boom–bust cycles over the past two decades.     

Industrial land price between China’s Pearl River Delta and Southeast Asian regions: Competition or Coopetition?

The planned economy system’s previous form of industrial land market control in China has led to current market failure because of a large amount of industrial land being sold at a very low price, causing extensive overuse of land and negative effects on land management. As the “World Factory”, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) is well known for its rapid urbanization largely driven by Foreign Direct Investment in labor-intensive industries. A low-land price strategy has been commonly adopted by the local government in order to attract industrial investment. In the past decade, the PRD has increasingly faced the increasing competition from its neighboring competition from its neighboring countries in Southeast Asia that have established preference policies to attract FDI and foreign enterprises. Despite a growing body of literature on the internal forces of industrial land in China, little is known of the external forces involved except for the importance of FDI and the intensity of interregional competition between China and other countries in attempting to attract foreign investment. This research fills the knowledge gap by modeling the situation in the form of an international cooperative game model aimed at revealing the industrial land price formation mechanism between the PRD region and Southeast Asian regions. The conditions of industrial land in the area and several Southeast Asian countries are first analyzed for their industrial land price movements in recent years. A game theoretic model is then built that exhibits similar characteristics. The result indicates that the governments’ low land price strategy and the competition between the PRD and its neighboring countries have created unnecessarily high social and environmental costs. Policy suggestions are made to encourage a more appropriate use of industrial land in China, and the most important being the need for a mindset shift from competition towards coopetition between the PRD and Southeast Asian regions.     

Assessing the efficacy of borrower-based macroprudential policy using an integrated micro-macro model for European households

We develop an integrated micro-macro model framework that is based on household survey data for a subset of the EU countries that the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) contains. We use the model for the purpose of assessing the efficacy of borrower-based macroprudential instruments, namely loan-to-value (LTV) ratio and debt service to income (DSTI) ratio caps, and illustrate its outcome for four European countries. The simulation results from the model can be attached to bank balance sheets and their risk parameters to derive the impact of the policy measures on their capital position. The model framework also allows quantifying the macroeconomic feedback effects that would result from the policy-induced reduction of demand for mortgage loans. An assessment as to the comparative efficacy of LTV- versus DSTI-based policy suggests that DSTI caps may be more effective in containing household risk.     

论我国按揭贷款市场风控体系的协调性

按揭贷款发展至今已经基本形成了风险控制体系.按揭贷款的风险控制体系包括外部监管与内部风控,具体又可分为三个层面：基础业务制度、表外业务制度与系统性风控制度,两者之间的联系在于信息不对称性,而最终的目标是确定政府与企业在各自市场中的职能.     

财政赤字规模应把握社会承受力限度

平衡财政赤字有举债和银行透支两个途径，二者可兼用。举债要视当期财政收入状况为前提，银行透支超越社会承受力一定限度将致发通胀。因此，必须关注财政赤字规模的社会承受力。从全国看，财政赤字规模---一定限量银行透支应以一定限量社会闲置货币资金的存在---社会承受力为依托。财政赤字宜用积极手段平衡。     

Endogenous ranking and equilibrium Lorenz curve across (ex-ante) identical countries: A generalization

This paper proposes a symmetry-breaking model of trade with a finite number of identical countries and a continuum of tradeable consumption goods, which differ in their dependence on nontradeable intermediate inputs, “producer services”. Productivity of each country is endogenous due to country-specific external economies of scale in its service sector. It is shown that, in any stable equilibrium, the countries sort themselves into specializing in different sets of tradeable goods and that a strict ranking of countries in per capita income, TFP, the service sector share, and the capital–labor ratio emerge endogenously. Furthermore, the distribution of country shares, the Lorenz curve, is unique and analytically solvable in the limit, as the number of countries grows unbounded. Using this limit as an approximation allows us to study what determines the shape of distribution, perform various comparative statics and to evaluate the welfare effects of trade. In doing so, this paper extends the analysis of Matsuyama (Econometrica, 81:5 (September 2013), 2009–2031) for more general and flexible forms of scale economies. It turns out that the technique introduced in Matsuyama (Econometrica, 81:5 (September 2013), 2009–2031) is useful for the equilibrium characterization in this general case as well. Although some results of comparative statics and on welfare inevitably need to be modified, they change in ways that illuminate the underlying mechanism of symmetry-breaking.