The effect of mergers and acquisitions on environmental,social and governance performance and market value: Evidence from EU acquirers

This study explores the effect of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance on market value and performance in the context of mergers and acquisitions. We examine whether acquisition of targets with better ESG performance can help acquirers to increase their own ESG performance and whether the market values the increased ESG performance positively. Moreover, we explore whether the acquisition of targets with better ESG performance affects the market value of acquirers. For this study, we utilize a sample of 100 European mergers and acquisitions between 2003 and 2017, for which matching data on the ESG performance of both the target and acquiring firms are available. Our results show that the postmerger ESG performance of the acquirer increases following the acquisition of a target that has higher ESG performance than that of the acquirer in the premerger stage, whereas the postmerger market value of the acquirer increases following an increase in the acquirer's postmerger ESG performance in relation to its premerger ESG performance. Finally, we provide partial evidence of a positive relationship between the postmerger market value of the acquirer and the acquisition of a target with higher ESG performance than itself in the premerger stage.     

基于中国股市微观结构的流动性与执行成本分析

运用市场微观结构理论来分析中国股市的交易制度、流动性和执行成本后发现:(1)在佣金和交易税相等的条件下,B股的知情交易者执行成本普遍大于A股,导致B股的流动性小于A股,买卖价差显著大于A股,表明投资者对B股交易要求较高的风险报酬;(2)一旦控制住执行成本中普通交易者对知情交易者所要求的风险补偿,A、B股买卖价差的区别就消失了。因此,证券管理部门应在B股市场引入做市商制度并在微观结构理论的指导下,加强交易监管系统,从而提高B股的流动性并降低其执行成本。     

Mankind at the Starting Point

The most striking feature of the current economic situation in Spain is the huge unemployment rate, above 25 percent. From an orthodox perspective, we suggest that this unemployment is the result of a highly inflexible labor market, which needs to be reformed by introducing flexibility measures. The paper argues, however, that labor market reforms introduced since the early 1980s, allowing an excessive use of temporary employment contracts, have had perverse effects on the Spanish economy. They have affected negatively not only aggregate demand and supply, but also income distribution. The emergence of these market reforms helps explain the current rate of unemployment as well as the deep impact of the global financial crisis on overall Spanish economic activity.     

The 2007-2009 Financial Crisis on Emerging Markets： Quantitative Identification of Crisis in Continent-based Regions

This paper focuses on a direct quantitative identification of crisis periods in selected emerging stock markets from four continent-based regions of Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and Middle East and North Africa （MENA）, in the context of an influence of the 2007 U.S. subprime financial crisis. The 17 emerging stock markets and, for comparison, the U.S. stock market are investigated. A statistical method of dividing market states into bullish and bearish markets, based on monthly logarithmic returns of major stock market indexes, is employed. The analyzed sample period begins in January 2003 and ends in December 2013. As there is no unanimity in the literature about the crisis periods in the continent-based regions, a formal statistical identification of crises is worthwhile to conduct. Furthermore, the effect of increasing cross-market correlations in the crisis compared to the pre-crisis period in the context of contagion is examining. To address this issue, both standard contemporaneous cross-correlations and volatility-adjusted cross-correlations are applied. The results are consistent with the literature and confn＇m that tests for contagion based on cross-market correlations are problematic due to the bias introduced by changing volatility in market returns. As contagion can be confused with globalization, the globalization tests in the group of international investigated markets are employed. The results generally do not confirm a global world market integration effect, i.e. there is no reason to reject the research hypothesis of no globalization during the 2007-2009 financial crisis.     

江苏省物联网产业培育机制研究

物联网产业培育机制的设计是物联网产业化发展的关键,对物联网产业培育机制进行研究具有重要的现实意义。文章从物联网产业市场培育、技术培育、政策支撑的角度对江苏省物联网产业的培育机制设计进行了系统的研究。从产业属性、产业培育原则、产业培育内容三个维度构设计了江苏省物联网产业的整体培育思路,并提出了建立江苏省物联网产业市场培育机制、技术培育机制、政策支撑体系的对策,将为江苏省物联网产业的培育提供参考。     

银行卡平台营利性质对投资激励的影响

构建了基于双边市场理论的投资策略模型,分析了银行卡平台营利性质对平台投资者的投资激励的影响,发现在差异化营利市场条件下,非营利性银行卡平台具有更强的投资激励效应。同时,利用2002～2011年全球主要银行卡公司财务数据对投资激励效应的性质和强度进行了实证检验。在一定程度上解释了现实经济中非营利性银行卡平台的融资规模高于营利性银行卡平台的原因。     

投资者会听话听音吗??--基于管理层语调视角的实证研究

我国投资者会听话听音吗？文章利用文本分析方法,基于我国上市公司2005－2012年年度业绩说明会上的管理层语调数据对此进行了实证检验。研究发现,投资者对管理层的净正面语调做出了显著的正向反应,尤其是对负面语调做出了显著的负向反应。这表明在我国强调“意会”的语境文化背景下,投资者会听话听音,管理层语调具有信息含量,上市公司的业绩说明会具有其自身的存在价值。文章的研究结果还意味着,“词袋”方法及其构建的管理层语调用词列表在我国儒家文化背景下具有一定的适用性,值得开展进一步的研究。     

Order aggressiveness and order book dynamics

In this paper, we study the determinants of order aggressiveness and traders’ order submission strategy in an open limit order book market. Applying an order classification scheme, we model the most aggressive market orders, limit orders as well as cancellations on both sides of the market employing a six-dimensional autoregressive conditional intensity model. Using order book data from the Australian Stock Exchange, we find that market depth, the queued volume, the bid-ask spread, recent volatility, as well as recent changes in both the order flow and the price play an important role in explaining the determinants of order aggressiveness. Overall, our empirical results broadly confirm theoretical predictions on limit order book trading. However, we also find evidence for behavior that can be attributed to particular liquidity and volatility effects.

A Gendered Model of the Peasant Household: Time poverty and Farm Production in Rural Mozambique

Using insights from a case study on the allocation of labor in subsistence households in Mozambique, this study develops a conceptual framework for examining linkages between time poverty and farm production. An unexpected event such as a health crisis increases the demand for labor provided by women, thus making them more time poor. The model and numerical simulations show that a deterioration in a woman's time constraint will have an adverse effect on agricultural output of the household. This occurs because most women respond to an increase in household work by reducing their work hours on the farm and by reducing their leisure time. The latter outcome is expected to have a negative effect on women's physical and mental health, which will then cause a decline in their productivity on the farm.     

Dynamic relationship between stock market trading volumes and investor fear gauges movements

This article applies multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) and multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis (MF-DCCA) to investigate cross-correlation behaviours between two kinds of stock markets trading volumes and investor fear gauges covering the data of U.S. stock markets from 2 January 2004 to 31 July 2018. The empirical results show that the dynamic relationship between stock markets trading volume fluctuations and different kinds of investor fear gauges are multifractal and find that the dynamic relationship is strongly anti-persistent. Moreover, financial crisis in 2008 has a significant impact on the cross-correlated behaviour, suggesting that stock market trading volume fluctuations and investor fear gauges are more susceptible to each other during the financial crisis period. Through the rolling windows analysis, we also find that the stock markets trading volume fluctuations and different kinds of investor fear gauges are anti-persistent dynamic cross-correlated.