CEO power and annual report reading difficulty

We examine the impact of CEO power on reading difficulty of corporate annual reports. We find that CEO power is positively related to reading difficulty, implying that annual reports of corporations with powerful CEOs are difficult to read and understand. More importantly, we find that the relation between CEO power and reading difficulty is moderated by earnings performance or corporate governance. Additional findings suggest that this relation becomes stronger for firms with lower financial reporting quality or for CEOs with shorter tenure. Our study not only joins the debate on the consequences of powerful CEOs but also uncovers several factors that moderate the relation between CEO power and annual report reading difficulty.     

公司治理思想的历史演变及其经验启示

现代企业之间的竞争,也是治理结构的竞争.在此,以文献梳理的形式,对公司治理的内涵及理论渊源进行阐述,并评析了治理模式、形成原因及趋同表现.在我国治理模式选择的问题上,提出应汲取西方治理经验并结合我国国情,在基于利益相关者的原则下,着力构建内部治理与外部治理相结合,以内部治理为主的中国特色公司治理结构.     

Institutions and economic growth in Portugal: a quantitative exploration

This paper presents a broad diagnostic of the level of institutional development in Portugal in the legal, corporate governance and financial systems. A comparative assessment suggests that Portuguese institutions are less developed than their European Union and East Asian counterparts, more developed than Greek institutions and on a level similar to that of Spanish institutions. We use data for a wide cross-section of countries since 1960 and correlate indicators of institutional development with the long-term average growth rate, identifying issues where reform is likely to significantly affect economic growth. We construct three new indices that measure the potential of institutional reform - the impact of reform on growth, the required reform effort and the efficiency of reform index - by taking into consideration the institutional distance between Portugal and the European Union. These indices measure, respectively, which reforms have the most payoff in terms of growth, which are less costly to undertake and which deliver the most growth per required effort. Our results strongly suggest that in a large number of issues, institutional reform may translate into substantially higher rates of economic growth. Of the ten most promising reforms, six are in the legal area, irrespective of which of the indices is considered. Whereas legal reform is promising at the aggregate and the microeconomic levels, in the financial sector aggregate indicators offer the wider scope for productive reform, while in the corporate governance area it is indices at the micro level that hold the most promise. These results support the view that a comprehensive reform effort is likely to deliver higher rates of growth in Portugal, allowing faster real convergence with the rest of the European Union.Received: January 2003, Accepted: February 2004, JEL Classification: O0, O5, K00, K4, G2, G3This paper is based on Firms, Financial Markets and the Law: Institutions and Economic Growth in Portugal, prepared for the conference Desenvolvimento Económico Português no Espaço Europeu: Determinantes e Políticas, organized by the Banco de Portugal. Financial support by the Banco de Portugal, NOVA FORUM and FUNDAÇÃO Para a Ciência e tecnologia and Polti through feder are gratefully acknowledged. Comments from Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, two anonymous referees and the editor are sincerely appreciated. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Teams, Firms and the Evolution of Profit Seeking Behavior

Even as advances in information theory over the last quarter century have cast increasing doubt on the proposition that firms successfully maximize profits, the objective of profit maximization continues to be an axiomatic feature of the neoclassical theory of the firm. This paper attempts to improve our understanding firms by treating the objective function as an open question. Specifically, an ontogenetic thought experiment is undertaken to address the question of what differentiates production teams from firms by asking why team members would sell their control rights to a principal, thereby transforming the team into a firm. What results is an account of the emergence of the objective of profit seeking. Profit seeking emerges endogenously as a more fit alternative than the objective of value maximization, which is less capable of coping with uncertainty through purposive adaptation.     

Corporate Lobbying, Regulatory Conduct and the Porter Hypothesis

Michael Porter, the influential Harvard management guru, has promoted the idea that compliance with stricter environmental regulations can afford secondary benefits to firms through improved product design, innovation, corporate morale and in other ways. Once these secondary benefits are factored, the net cost of compliance is argued to be lower than conventionally thought and may even be negative. Whilst environmental economists have rejected the Porter Hypothesis as being based on excessively optimistic expectations of the likely size of such secondary benefits the underlying ideas do enjoy significant credence in the business community. In the context of a lobbying model of regulatory policy-making we argue that the EPA should change the way it conducts regulatory policy to take account of Porter's views – even if it knows those views to be misguided. The model serves to illustrate the more general point that fashions in management thinking can be expected to impact the optimal conduct of regulatory policy.     

企业技术创新网络治理机制研究

企业技术创新网络是在现代技术创新环境中产生的新型创新模式。其目的是在提高企业技术创新能力的同时,使网络中所有成员共同获益。在对企业技术创新网络的组织结构及特征进行论述的基础上,分析了其在运行过程中存在的主要问题,并针对性地给出了企业技术创新网络的一系列组合治理机制。     

论强制性环境治理制度的实施效率

In the eco-environmental governance system,the compul-sive institutions are the most important as well as the mostcommonly utilized.A nation utilizes its administrative,lawand economic power to forbid,boost,bestir and help indi-viduals’behavior concerning environmental governance toensure the realization of eco-environment conservation.The fact,however,turns out to be disappointing about theimpulsive institution’s implementation.Actually,the unsatis-factory practices sometimes even lead to“…     

公司治理结构·会计信息系统·独立审计:结构与效率分析

公司治理结构、会计信息系统和独立审计是微观经济运行系统的三个基本组成单元。三者以委托代理关系为中心形成了功能互补、共生互动的经济运行系统 ,共同维持着受托责任机制运行中的公平与效率。通过对三者的经济关系结构进行理论描述 ,分析其内在关系结构的缺陷以及与虚假会计信息之间的关联性 ,并在此基础上提出共同预防虚假会计信息的治理措施     

股权结构与公司绩效实证研究的发现及其评价

对中国国有企业改革的研究,主要有“委托—代理”“、法定产权与事实产权不一致”“、产业定位与产权特性相对称”等三个理论框架。对股权结构与公司绩效的实证研究,为这三个理论框架的逻辑分析提供了有力的经验证据,也为深化国有企业改革提供了明确的、有益的指导。     

酒店的跨文化管理——以广东东莞喜来登酒店为例

随着企业的国际化发展,跨文化管理问题也应运而生。文章在分析东莞喜来登酒店文化差异(中美文化差异)现象的基础上,探讨了该酒店跨文化管理存在的问题并提出了管理的建议。