State corporatism and environmental harm: Tax farming and desertification in northwestern China

Research on environmental governance in China has shown that centre–local relations often influence the implementation and efficacy of environmental regulations. By examining changes in resource allocation and rural development between 1982 and 2005 in the region worst affected by desertification in China—the Minqin oasis in Gansu—we argue that changes in macro‐level fiscal and commodity grain policies contributed to severe regional disparity and a reduction in local state capacity in hinterland China. Intergovernmental competition over fiscal revenue encouraged cash cropping and land reclamation, and the continuous decline of the oasis ecology further reduced legitimacy in rural governance. These institutional and ecological constraints shaped the behaviour of grassroots cadres and formed the conflicting interests of the state in resource distribution and environmental conservation that continued to exist until the implementation of a centralized conservation program in 2006. The data came from 157 interviews and 628 policy documents from local archives in Gansu.     

State-controlled banks and income smoothing. Do politics matter?

This paper uses a new dataset to reassess the relationship between government ownership and income smoothing of commercial banks. We also evaluate how political connections affect the impact of government ownership on earnings management. We find that banks with more state-controlled shareholders located in developing countries tend to have more incentives to smooth income. The paper finds no significant difference in earnings manipulation between government-controlled and non-government banks in developed countries. Next, to investigate whether the income smoothing behavior of state-controlled banks is driven by political objectives, the paper tests whether this behavior widens during national election years; the results provide strong support for this conjecture. The magnitude of the income smoothing behavior also varies with different countries and electoral characteristics. These findings suggest that the political channel plays an important role in determining the income smoothing incentives of state-controlled banks, especially in developing countries.     

Joint or separate? The effect of visual presentation on imagery and product evaluation

In this research, we examine the effect of joint versus separate visual presentation on consumers’ product evaluation. Counter to prior research on hedonic editing and unpacking, which suggests that separate presentation or unpacking produces greater utility, we propose and demonstrate in this paper that joint visual presentation can increase product evaluation. This pattern of effects occurs because presenting products together facilitates mental imagery of the product consumption, which leads to greater perceived psychological ownership and higher product evaluation. As such, the effect of joint presentation on product evaluation is attenuated when mental imagery is disrupted under joint presentation, encouraged under separate presentation, or when products lack complementarity to elicit mental imagery of one cohesive consumption episode. Evidence from seven studies provides converging support for these hypothesized effects and their underlying process. Our findings contribute to the literature on visual presentation, unpacking, and imagery, offering relevant implications to marketers and retailers.     

官员晋升激励、债务杠杆与企业技术创新

以2007-2016 年沪深的非金融上市公司为样本，研究了地级市官员晋升如何影响企业的 债务杠杆，以及这种债务杠杆又如何进一步影响技术创新。研究发现：地方官员的晋升压力越大， 企业更容易获得债务融资，但这种债务杠杆更容易抑制企业的技术创新；进一步，官员晋升激励 下债务杠杆对技术创新的这种抑制效应在官员的长任期组中更为明显；债务杠杆对企业技术创新 的负面影响也因债务结构而存在差异，即当官员晋升压力越大，短期债务杠杆越不利于技术创新 投入，而长期债务杠杆则不利于技术创新产出。     

Survival or die: a survival analysis on peer‐to‐peer lending platforms in China

This study examines the probability of survival of online peer‐to‐peer (P2P) lending platforms in China. Our empirical findings show that shareholder's background, platforms’ risk management and institutional environment are three major factors that influence the probability of survival of P2P platforms in China. In addition, the effects of risk control and institutional environment are less pronounced in state‐owned P2P platforms. We also show that platforms that die from abscondence of owners tend to be more short‐lived than others, while platforms that die from liquidity problems are usually due to lack of high‐quality risk management techniques.     

经济发展与环境治理的跷跷板：官员竞争博弈下的策略变化

经济发展和环境治理是关系社会福利水平的两个重要指标，但具体到地方官员施政中，不同的官员有不同的策略安排。文章首先基于博弈模型构建了一个官员竞争博弈场景，通过逻辑推导，证明官员在竞争博弈中的相对优劣状态差异是导致官员策略差异的原因。其次，运用倾向得分匹配方法实证检验官员策略差异对辖区“经济福利”和“环境福利”的影响。回归结果发现，官员年龄差对环境治理会有不同影响;低于平均年龄的官员在FDI、税收、固定资产投资等“经济福利”指标上显著高于同级官员2.59万元、0.13万元和0.41万元；而高于平均年龄的官员比同级同行在“环境福利”上有更优秀的表现，在固体废弃物、废气、废水等指标上显著低于同级官员的52吨、21吨和6吨。作为弥补，较年轻官员会采取“踩跷跷板”策略，在一些显性环境治理指标上“适度有为”，例如提高环保投入占比，以回应中央及公众的关切。从理论分析和实证结果中得到的政策启示是在干部晋升考核体系中应进一步突出“绿色发展”的重要性并强化官员的全局意识，激励官员关注辖区非经济福利。     

Climate zone crucial for efficiency of ski lift operators

This paper investigates the efficiency of ski lift companies across different climate zones in a group of countries based on establishment data. By a joint estimation of the stochastic frontier production and efficiency equations, the results indicate that ski areas in subarctic climate zones are far more efficient than their counterparts in warmer zones. The presence of a large local market and elevation of the ski area are factors not relevant for efficiency. Output of ski lift operators (companies) increases with the length of ski runs, number of ski lifts, share of slopes covered by snowmaking facilities and availability of fast lifts. Productivity is also significantly higher for ski lift companies owned by a large conglomerate.     

The Empirical Study on Interaction between Corporate Ownership and Board Structure

Corporate ownership, board structure and leadership structure are important internal governance mechanisms. They have effect on firm performance, and also are affected by many internal factors of the firm. In this paper, by means of theory and empirical analysis, we discuss the relation between ownership and board structure and the determinants of them, find some significant results such as management ownership which is affected by firm performance, as well as relates to outside director ownership. These findings tell us that there exist some substitutions and complement relations in govemance mechanisms, which is important to the research on manner that corporate governance works.     

基于对一个理论前提质疑下的国有企业所有权结构的重新安排

该文回顾了现代企业理论对企业所有权结构安排的相关文献论述,认为委托代理理论中所有者目标函数和经营者目标函数不一致的理论假设并不符合我国国有企业的实际情况。当前国有企业改革的首要任务不应该是完善公司内部治理机制,而是改造所有权结构安排。重点分析了人力资本所有     

确定我国企业家合理报酬的一种简易方法

以发达国家企业家的平均报酬为其人均GDP的倍数作为基准,通过一定的方法,可以确定出我国企业家合理的平均报酬、基本工资,由此,还可以确定出某企业企业家的合理报酬、基本工资,以及奖金、股权数量和股票期权数量。