Is earnings management opportunistic or beneficial? An agency theory perspective

Earnings management has been cast into negative light due to the recent corporate scandals and, therefore, is viewed as detrimental to the firm. Enron and Worldcom represent two of the most egregious cases of opportunistic earnings management that led to the largest bankruptcies in U.S. history. However, some argue that earnings management may be beneficial because it improves the information value of earnings by conveying private information to the stockholders and the public. We offer agency theory as a tool to distinguish between the opportunistic and beneficial uses of earnings management. The empirical evidence suggests that firms where earnings management occurs to a larger (less) extent suffer less (more) agency costs. Moreover, a positive relation is documented between firm value and the extent of earnings management. Taken together, the results reveal that earnings management is, on average, not detrimental.     

Asymptotic analysis for optimal investment and consumption with transaction costs

We consider an agent who invests in a stock and a money market and consumes in order to maximize the utility of consumption over an infinite planning horizon in the presence of a proportional transaction cost . The utility function is of the form U(c) = c^1-p/(1-p) for p > 0, . We provide a heuristic and a rigorous derivation of the asymptotic expansion of the value function in powers of , and we also obtain asymptotic results on the boundary of the no-trade region.Received: July 2003, Mathematics Subject Classification (1991): 90A09, 60H30, 60G44JEL Classification: G13Work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants DMS-0103814 and DMS-0139911.     

Non-grant microfinance,incentives and efficiency

I show that charging interest on funds provided by donors or investors to microfinance institutions (MFIs) can increase efficiency, the total number of loans and borrower welfare, compared to grant or concessionary funding. In a setting in which MFIs supply costly non-contractible effort, putting a price or raising the price of loanable funds strengthens the MFIs’ incentives to put effort in credit administration or monitoring, to extend more loans, and/or reduce overhead costs. This theoretical result is robust to several variations of the benchmark model allowing for an endogenous lending rate, motivated MFIs and endogenous overhead costs.     

交易成本与西部经济的发展

实施西部开发是解决中国区域经济发展不平衡问题的一项重大举措,但目前东西部的差距在进一步增大,西部经济发展面临着诸多障碍,交易成本高昂是其中一项重要原因,降低交易成本是促进西部经济快速发展的重要路径。     

生态资源环境公共产权的经济学分析

在产权制度的界定和规范引导下,生态资源经济才能实现环境友好型、可持续为主题的科学发展。历史上“公有地的悲剧”的启示不单是对产权问题的反思,而是通过设立一套巧妙的制度,以达到“量体裁衣”之功效。生态资源环境公共产权的产生是源于其稀缺性及非排他性的特质。但随着计量这种产权成本与收益的难度不断加深,环境资源体系的经济价值就越来越大。必须考虑在有效利用的前提下,重新界定产权来保证市场与主体效率目标的实现。作为现代产权制度体系的最重要的组成部分——资源类产权,它有别于企业产权制度,且它涉及利益主体的范围之广。涵盖的意义也极其深远。本文对生态资源环境这一较为特殊公共物品的产权问题用产权经济学的思维框架进行研究,从政府、企业、市场、制度四个层级,相应提出构建此类公共产权的四层规制模式,以求破解在生态环境规制过程中出现的产权失灵现象及界定不清的困局。     

基于作业成本法的北京市公交车运营成本测算研究

北京公交的运营成本过高是北京市公交发展中的一个比较突出的问题,而且目前北京公交缺乏科学、精确的运营成本测算方法与体系。为解决相关问题,应该结合国内外相关研究与调研资料对北京市公交运营成本的构成体系进行确定与分析,并运用作业成本法对北京市公交运营成本展开测算研究。     

Ultimate Government Control Structures and Firm Value: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

We show that 70% of Chinese listed companies are ultimately controlled by government agencies, thereby indicating that state ownership remains widespread in China's stock markets. Three questions are considered that are related to government control structures and their impact on firm value: (1) how do government agencies maintain their control of listed companies; (2) what are the impacts of different government control structures on firm value; and (3) are these impacts different in local government and central government-controlled firms? We find that the Chinese government controls listed companies directly or indirectly through solely state-owned enterprises (SSOEs). Taking into account the trade-off between political and agency costs, we show that firm value increases when some control rights are decentralized from the government to state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Moreover, decentralization improves significantly the performance of local government- controlled, but not central government-controlled firms.     

Market maker competition and price efficiency: Evidence from China

We test the relationship between market maker competition and stock price efficiency. Using the number of market makers as a proxy for competition, the results show a strong positive correlation between competition and stock price efficiency. Moreover, price efficiency is higher when competing market makers have higher research ability. We suggest that market maker competition increases price efficiency through two channels: 1) Competition decreases transaction costs, and 2) Uninformed market makers learn from orders submitted by informed market makers through competition. The latter happens only in the group of market makers with higher experiences. The results imply that the price efficiency can be improved by enhancing the competition of market makers with high research ability and experiences.     

Wall of cash: The investment-cash flow sensitivity when capital becomes abundant

In the mid 2000s the oil and gas industry was hit by what might be best described as a ‘wall of cash’ as oil prices successively reached new record levels and access to external financing improved greatly. In this article we investigate what this sudden abundance of liquidity implied for the investment-cash flow relationship, the interpretation of which continues to generate controversy in the literature. For financially constrained firms we find that the investment-cash flow sensitivity decreases in the abundance period (2005–2008), suggesting that the financing constraints became less binding in this period. For financially unconstrained firms the investment-cash flow sensitivity instead increases over time, suggesting that this relationship is driven by agency problems related to free cash flow. Our paper is the first in the investment-cash flow literature to bring evidence from a natural experiment in which there was an unexpected, exogenous, substantial, and persistent decrease in the cost of external financing.