The Attitudes of British National Health Service Managers and Clinicians Towards the Introduction of Benchmarking

This paper describes an empirical study, conducted in three acute hospitals, of the attitudes of central managers, medical managers and clinicians towards the adoption of benchmarking. Benchmarking was portrayed in The New NHS White Paper (1997) as an important means of improving efficiency over the next decade. The present paper examines the context of change and nature of benchmarking. Findings are presented in seven sections including: the understanding which respondents had of benchmarking; their willingness to be involved in benchmarking; the existence of strategies and policies for implementing benchmarking; the relevance of existing costing information; and the role of networks in facilitating benchmarking. The study concludes that the process of change adopted contradicted most of the factors associated with creating receptivity to change. Also, that the publication of the National Reference Costs seemed to have more relevance to resource planning at central National Health Service Management Executive level, than to effecting improvements at operational level in acute hospitals.     

中国地方政府债务权责划分:实践探索与改革建议

地方政府债务权责划分是一国分级财政体制的重要内容。实现中国地方政府债务的合法化已经成为解决当前地方政府债务问题的前提条件。地方政府债务的合法化不仅是债务融资权的界定问题,更是管理责任的归属问题。近年来中国某些地方已经开始自发地探索地方层面上的政府债务权责划分的方法。国家应尽快制定统一的法规,赋予地方政府合法举债权,但应严格控制债务规模、界定使用范围。应在财政部和省市县财政部门设立债务管理机构,明确地方政府的债务偿还及风险管理责任,加大债务监督力度。     

树立人本管理意识乃管理之本

科学管理是企业永恒的主题,从严管理企业是振兴国企的必由之路,而强化科学管理正需要加强人本管理,充分发挥员工们的积极性,创造性,为广大员工创造一种能够掌握自己命运,激励其潜在能力的文化氛围,一个企业是否注重人本管理,在某种程度上是衡量该企业管理是否现代化的一个重要标准。人本性管理这种人性化管理方式必将成为２１世纪管理的主流。     

从2000年基金年报信息追溯基金研究中心的三个问题

本文从三个方面对2000年基金年报信息进行了剖析。第一，从多角度对33只证券投资基金进行分类的结果表明，最能体现基金业绩与投资风格差异度的分类方法不是基金的投资目标而是基金管理公司。基金管理公司内部的资源共享是造成这一现象的原因。第二，指数型基金在2000年的表现尚不尽人意，投资理念亦不清晰。第三，保险公司选择基金的标准相当理性，注重基金的分红市价比、夏普指数、资产净值收益率几项指标，其选择的正确性亦得到2000年基金业绩的证实。     

The valuation consequences of voluntary accounting changes

Firm management typically claims that voluntary accounting method changes (VACs) are made to enhance the informativeness of earnings by better matching accounting practices with economic reality. In contrast, skeptics argue that managers adopt new accounting procedures to opportunistically manage earnings and influence their firm’s stock price. In this paper, we investigate these alternative motives for VACs. Specifically, we investigate whether VACs cause equity prices to deviate from their fundamental values in the short-term by studying the long-run stock-price performance for a sample of firms that voluntarily change accounting methods. In addition, we investigate changes in earnings informativeness by examining the behavior of earning response coefficients and the relationship between earnings and future cash flows in years surrounding the VAC event. In contrast to prior research, we find little evidence that a strategy based solely on the earnings effect of a VAC can generate abnormal returns. While we find weak evidence of post-VAC abnormal returns for extreme VACs, this result appears to be driven by the accruals anomaly documented in Sloan [Sloan, R. G. (1996). The Accounting Review, 71, 289–315]. Our evidence further suggests that earnings informativeness is not significantly altered by voluntary changes in accounting methods. Taken together, our evidence suggests the market recognizes the financial statement effects of alternative acceptable accounting methods and efficiently processes the valuation implications of VACs.

Corporate cash flow and stock price exposures to foreign exchange rate risk

This paper estimates the foreign exchange rate exposure of 6917 U.S. nonfinancial firms on the basis of stock prices and corporate cash flows. The results show that several firms are significantly exposed to at least one of the foreign exchange rates Canadian Dollar, Japanese Yen and Euro, and significant exposures are more frequent at longer horizons. The percentage of firms for which stock price and earnings exposures are significantly different is relatively low, though it increases with time horizon. Overall, the impact of exchange rate risk on stock prices and cash flows is similar and determined by a related set of economic factors.     

Demand for the truth in principal–agent relationships

Consider the following puzzle: If earnings management is harmful to shareholders, why don’t they design contracts that induce managers to reveal the truth? To answer this question, we model the shareholders–manager relationship as a principal–agent game in which the agent (the manager) alone observes the economic outcome. We show that the limited liability (LL) of the agent, defined as the agent’s feasible minimum payment, might explain the demand for earnings management by the principal. Specifically, when the LL level is high (low), a contract that induces earnings management may be less (more) costly than a truth-revealing contract. This finding offers a new explanation of the demand for earnings management.     

从企业产权制度建设上推进企业治理结构的完善

公司治理结构从某种意义上可以说是公司法人产权制度的组织形式,公司法人产权的有效安排是公司治理结构有效性的基本前提。由于我国的企业改革基本上是沿着各种形式的委托－－代理思路展开的,现代企业制度的一个基本特征,即区别于通常所说的古典企业的突出特点,恰在于产权方面的委托－－代理,因而考察我国现代企业制度建设,把企业法人产权与企业治理结构统一起来加以分析,便有着重要的理论意义和实践价值。     

From rationality to hyperreality: paradigm poker

This paper, following McGoun's (1997) seminal article comparing the economy of financial securities to a hyperreal poker game, argues that finance and accounting researchers should take the “linguistic turn” that has rejuvenated theory and research in many, if not most, of the social science and humanities in recent decades. In general terms, this means following Ludwig Wittgenstein's language game paradigm rather than Karl Popper's scientific deductive hypothesis testing methodology. The paper illustrates this by drawing on some of Jean Baudrillard's' ideas, particularly his concept of hyperreality and his phases of the image theoretic.The paper presents a poststructuralist genealogical analysis of the radical ruptures and reformulation of the meaning attributed to the accounting sign of earnings over the feudal, counterfeit, production, and simulation eras. It concludes that, as with many other signs in contemporary society, the earnings sign no longer has any relationship with, nor does it any longer refer to, any real or intrinsic profit but instead floats ungrounded in today's financial economy.The paper recommends that researchers in finance and accounting adopt paradigms from literary theory, semiotics, linguistics, and semiology rather than continue to rely on economics-based theory, which has lost its power for explaining and predicting happenings in today's financial economy of self-referencing models and images.     

试论银行上市后的投资者关系管理

上市银行投资者关系管理的特殊性包括复杂性和重要性， 其重要意义在于能使投资者支持银行发展，让市场正确理解银行的价值；其双向沟通机制能够使上市银行高级管理层及时了解市场的看法；良好的投资者关系管理能保证上市银行以后的融资活动成功完成。因此，上市银行必须认真做好投资者关系管理工作，全体员工都应该对此有充分的认识，积极参与这项工作。上市银行做好投资者关系管理工作有以下几个关键点需要把握，即重视制度建设，创新沟通手段，持续地对投资者关系管理进行分析研究工作，防止出现选择性信息披露，适时进行市值管理。