不让中州独专美——《钟情丽集》与明前期海南历史文化

文言中篇小说《钟情丽集》问世于明前期海南文教事业取得跳跃式大发展的背景之下,具有鲜明的地域特色和时代特征。它的问世填补了海南在古典小说领域的空白。作者＂不让中州独专美＂的创作心态赋予《钟情丽集》特殊的文化意义。只有将《钟情丽集》与明前期海南历史文化相结合,才能对其思想、艺术特点作出更加深入合理的解读。     

传统儒商文化与现代商人理想人格的型塑

传统儒商文化与现代社会的重要结合点之一,即是从传统商业文化的现代转型出发,将儒商文化作为现代商人理想人格型塑的必要思想资源,从商人精神的觉醒与儒商身份意识的自觉,以地方商帮为依托进行商业文化生态的现代性重建。     

地方政府债务风险预警研究评价及对策探讨

在梳理和回顾地方政府债务风险预警研究文献的基础上,分析了目前地方政府债务风险预警管理研究存在的问题,从实践的角度探讨完善地方政府债务风险预警系统的相关对策,为积极预防地方政府债务风险提供了有益的思路。     

台湾地区消费警讯制度的生成、现况及其启示

消费警讯是我国台湾地区在消费者保护方面的一项重要制度。通过对消费警讯的规范性依据、发展历程、具体运行机制的分析与阐释,进一步了解台湾地区的消费警讯制度。在此基础上,总结其成功经验,以期为大陆地区相关制度之构建提供借鉴。     

财务危机预警系统在商业银行信贷风险管理中的应用

目前,商业银行信贷风险管理中财务分析存在的贷款企业资料不真实、现金流量没得到应有重视、财务分析手段不丰富等主要问题,都会引发财务危机。在信贷风险管理中应用财务危机预警系统,通过对上市公司运营因子、盈利因子、偿债因子、成长因子、现金流量因子、规模因子、行业因子、股权集中度因子的分析,能够及时发现企业可能带来的危机影响。商业银行应准确合理地选择财务危机预警指标,为信贷风险管理提供强有力的依据;建立财务危机预警模型应在会计信息真实完整的基础上,通过对会计信息进行加工、处理来完成。     

Political booms and currency crises

This paper shows evidence that political booms, defined as the rise in governments’ popularity, are associated with a higher likelihood of currency crises. The reasoning behind this finding is that prudent economic policies to address underlying weaknesses in the economy may be political costly for incumbent governments in the short-term. Hence, popularity-concerned governments may not have enough incentives to take such corrective actions in a timely manner. This approach, in turn, can deteriorate economic fundamentals and increase related risks in the economy which can eventually lead to crises. This paper sheds light on this phenomenon in the case of currency crises, suggesting that currency crises can be viewed as “political booms gone bust” events. Moreover, it finds that higher international reserves, higher exports, and a higher degree of financial openness alleviate the effect of political booms on currency crises.     

Do significant risk warnings in annual reports increase corporate bond credit spreads? Evidence from China

Based on listed companies issuing bonds on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2007 to 2017, this study analyzes the relationship between significant risk warnings in Chinese companies’ annual reports and corporate bond credit spreads. The main findings are as follows. First, in the Chinese market, “substantial warnings of significant risks” can significantly improve corporate bond credit spreads, reflecting the risk-warning effect; second, state-owned property rights weaken this effect, which only pertains to listed companies with poor risk management and low information quality; third, significant risk warnings increase investors’ heterogeneous beliefs, also affecting credit spreads; and fourth, through textual analysis, it is found that the corporate bond credit spread is greater when the disclosed risk factors are more pessimistic and less similar to those of the previous year. The findings of this paper help to enrich the literature on credit spreads and risk disclosure.     

Bank distress prediction: Empirical evidence from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries

In this paper we apply a simple hazard model to develop an early warning system of bank distress in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Specifically, we identify a set of leading indicators of bank distress that are used subsequently to predict the probability of bank failure in these countries. The investigation covers a wide set of bank level variables and other variables including the influence of bank management, competition, diversification, ownership and regulation. Similar to the previous empirical evidence, we found that good management lowers the likelihood of distress. Moreover, competition and diversification were found to be bad for the health of banks. This result is consistent with some empirical evidence on diversification; however, it contradicts the bulk of literature on competition, which suggests a negative influence on the probability of distress. The ownership structure and the capital requirement index were uninformative. Similar to the previous literature, the institutional development index was statistically relevant predictor. The bank specific and other CAMEL type variables as well as the systematic shocks in the financial and macroeconomic environment were all found to be in line with the findings of related empirical studies. Finally, we find that by conditioning on the relevant covariates, a simple hazard model has performed fairly well in predicting bank distress in the GCC countries.     

Demand for fair value accounting: The case of the asset revaluation boom in Korea during the global financial crisis

When the fair value accounting (FVA) option for property, plant, and equipment was introduced in the midst of the global financial crisis, a significant proportion of Korean firms elected FVA. We attribute this unusual boom in asset revaluations to the nation's culture of government intervention and civilian compliance, which was particularly espoused during this period of financial turmoil, and a foreseeable option to switch back to historical cost accounting. We find that among those firms whose debt‐to‐equity ratios are low, public firms opt for the FVA option more often than private firms, suggesting that the need to communicate fair value information with diversified equity holders is more important than the need to do so with creditors. In contrast, among those firms whose debt‐to‐equity ratios are high enough to warrant such unfavorable dispositions as new debt freezes and monitoring by regulators, we find no difference in the FVA choice between private and public firms. These findings imply that during the global financial crisis, private firms that rely heavily on debt financing have a strong incentive to utilize FVA to comply with government guidelines for the debt‐to‐equity ratio and to ease a potential hold‐up problem by influential creditors.     

Men at work. Wages and industriousness in southern Sweden 1500–1850

ABSTRACT

In his classic works on the industrious revolution, Jan de Vries argues that demand for new consumer goods trigged eighteenth century Europeans to work more. This implies that industrious behaviour and new consumption patterns were two parallel and interdependent processes that preceded the industrial revolution. However, there is an alternative explanation for any increase in labour output on household level, namely that the labourers were forced to work more to meet ends. An indication of this could be that day labourers’ relative wages decreased over time. In this article, we investigate this by studying wages from annual and casual labour in southern Sweden and compare their levels with consumption baskets.