Venture capital trusts and the expiration of IPO lock-up provisions

Venture capital trusts (VCTs) were introduced to provide private equity capital for small expanding companies and to promote innovation. Investors in initial public offerings are rewarded with tax relief on the cost of lock-up provisions to stabilize the market. This paper examines the market reaction and trading activity around the expiration of lock-up provisions of 148 VCTs listed on the London Stock Exchange from 1995 to 2006. Downward-sloping demand curve theory suggests that an increased supply of VCT shares at the expiry date could shift their value to a new equilibrium at a lower price. Supporting this prediction, we document evidence of negative abnormal returns as well as permanent increases in the price discount relative to net asset value and trading volumes at and around the expiries of the required holding periods of VCTs. In addition, less negative abnormal returns, lower abnormal discounts and lower abnormal trading volumes are associated with VCTs that invest in AIM-listed companies due to lower information asymmetry, that experience lower prior performance due to a less pronounced disposition effect, and that are subject to a shorter lock-up horizon or are offering more generous tax benefits.     

“两法合并”对浙江省国税收入及经济税源的影响分析

新的企业所得税法的出台,实现了内、外资企业适用统一的企业所得税法。短期内对财政收入有所影响;长期实行法定税率或名义税率的降低,将更有利于企业投资和扩大再生产,并对浙江省落实"十一五"规划目标,加快经济社会发展起到了积极的作用。并为浙江省经济持续健康发展和财政收入的稳定增长提供了坚实的保障。     

The effect of tax avoidance crackdown on corporate innovation

To constrain the use of intangible assets in tax-motivated state income shifting, many U.S. state governments adopted addback statutes. Addback statutes reduce the tax benefits that firms can gain from creating intangible assets such as patents. Using a sample of U.S. public firms, we examine the effect of addback statutes on corporate innovation behavior. First, the adoption of addback statutes leads to a 4.77 percentage point decrease in the number of patents and a 5.12 percentage point decrease in the number of patent citations. Second, the “disappearing patents” resulting from addback statutes have significant economic value. Third, after a state adopts an addback statute, a firm with material subsidiaries in that state assigns fewer patents to subsidiaries in zero-tax states, whereas the number of patents assigned to the other states does not change. Overall, our findings suggest that addback statutes impede corporate innovation.     

基础养老金统筹层次的收入再分配效应

推动基本养老保险由省级统筹向全国统筹过渡是我国现阶段社会保障制度改革的重心,对于实现经济的公平高效发展具有重要意义。为此,选取2006—2017年全国31个地区的面板数据,以基础养老金省级统筹过渡到全国统筹后,不同地区及不同收入群体间的收入再分配效应为研究对象,从统支视域出发,采用渐进式计发办法预测2041年统筹层次提升后,各地区不同收入群体的基础养老金待遇水平,并结合泰尔指数和离散系数进行比较静态分析,结果发现：养老金统筹层次提升存在着显著的收入再分配效应,但各地区养老金待遇差距与其经济发展水平并无必然联系。     

Bank earnings management and performance reporting of comprehensive income

FASB’s ASU 2011-05 mandated that comprehensive income (CI) and other comprehensive income (OCI) be reported in performance statements (a single income statement or a separate statement of CI) rather than equity statements. Employing a difference-in-differences research design with ASU 2011-05 as the treatment, I find that presenting accounting information in different statements affects bank earnings management, specifically, presenting CI and OCI in performance statements (especially in single-statements with net income) reduces earnings management through selective sales of available-for-sale (AFS) securities in the banking industry. I also find that the influence of ASU 2011-05 is primarily on banks with high equity incentives in the CEO’s compensation package or less CEO job security. Additional analyses suggest that performance reporting of CI and OCI increases the predictive ability of realized gains and losses of AFS securities; however, banks may manage loan loss provision as a substitute strategy when they have to decrease selective sales of AFS securities.     

收入差距对家庭旅游消费的影响研究——基于中介效应与面板门槛模型的分析

基于2014年、2016年、2018年三期CFPS数据,分析收入差距对家庭旅游消费的影响程度;并以家庭收入作为中介变量与门槛变量,探究收入差距对家庭旅游消费的作用机制。结果表明：收入差距扩大会抑制家庭旅游消费,收入差距以家庭收入为中介影响家庭旅游消费,收入差距与家庭旅游消费之间存在以家庭收入为门槛变量的双重门槛效应。因此,需要进一步优化收入分配结构、完善社会保障体系、改善居民消费结构,以推动家庭旅游消费规模和质量的提升。     

Earnings and capital management and signaling: the use of loan-loss provisions by European banks

This paper investigates the relationship between loan-loss provisions (LLPs) and earnings management in the context of the capital adequacy of Euro Area (EA) banks versus non-EA credit institutions. This paper also examines whether LLPs signal managements’ expectations concerning future bank profits to investors. Additionally, this paper traces the role of bank regulations and creditor protection systems in explaining income smoothing. Evidence drawn from the 1996 to 2006 period indicates that LLPs do reflect changes in the expected quality of a bank's loan portfolio for both groups of banks, and that earnings management is an important determinant of LLPs for EA intermediaries, whereas non-EA credit institutions use LLPs to signal private information to outsiders. The paper also finds that higher protection of creditors’ rights significantly reduces the incentives to smooth earnings for EA banks. During the recent financial crisis, EA bank managers are much more concerned with their credit portfolio quality and do not use LLPs for discretionary purposes, whereas LLPs at non-EA banks are used to smooth income more than for the purposes of managing capital ratios or conveying private information about future performance to the market.     

Forward-neutral valuation relationships for options on zero coupon bonds

This paper extends the literature on Risk-Neutral Valuation Relationships (RNVRs) to derive valuation formulae for options on zero coupon bonds when interest rates are stochastic. We develop Forward-Neutral Valuation Relationships (FNVRs) for the transformed-bounded random walk class. Our transformed-bounded random walk family of forward bond price processes implies that (i) the prices of the zero coupon bonds are bounded below at zero and above at one, and (ii) negative continuously compounded interest rates are ruled out. FNVRs are frameworks for option pricing, where the forward prices of the options are martingales independent of the market prices of risk. We illustrate the generality and flexibility of our approach with models that yield several new closed-form solutions for call and put options on discount bonds.     

Who Receives Medicaid in Old Age? Rules and Reality

Medicaid is a government programme that also provides health insurance to the elderly who have few assets and either low income or catastrophic health care expenses. We ask how the Medicaid rules map into the reality of Medicaid recipiency, and we ask what other observable characteristics are important to determine who ends up on Medicaid. The data show that both singles and couples with high retirement income can end up on Medicaid at very advanced ages. We find that, conditioning on a large number of observable characteristics, including those that directly relate to Medicaid eligibility criteria, single women are more likely to end up on Medicaid – so are non‐white people, but, surprisingly, their higher recipiency is concentrated in the higher income percentiles. We also find that people with low incomes who have a high‐school diploma or higher degree are much less likely to end up receiving Medicaid than their less‐educated counterparts. All of these effects are large and depend on retirement income in a very non‐linear way.     

Keeping Up With the Joneses: Analyzing the Effect of Income Inequality on Consumer Borrowing

Household debt relative to disposable income increased from 60% in 1980 to 104% at the end of 2003. ‘Buying on credit’ has become so popular that an increasing number of firms generate more profit from financing than from selling their products. In this paper, we show that rising income inequality has substantially contributed to increased consumer borrowing. Income inequality affects all components of total household debt, but the impact is strongest on non-revolving debt (installment loans), which is used to finance the purchase of consumer durables. We argue and provide evidence that the income inequality effect on consumer borrowing is a result of conspicuous consumption. Rising income inequality has forced households with smaller income gains to use debt to keep up their consumption level relative to households with larger income gains.JEL Classification: D12, G29, J31, M30