Capital Structure as an Optimal Contract Between Employees and Investors

The ex ante optimal contract between investors and employees is derived endogenously and is interpreted in terms of debt, equity, and employees' compensation. Although public equity financing is feasible in this model through verified accounting income, debt is needed to force value-enhancing restructuring before the income realizes. The optimal debt level, however, is lower than that which maximizes the value of the firm when there is nonmonetary restructuring-related cost to employees. The paper explains how stock prices react to exchange offers, how earnings can be diluted by a decrease in leverage, and why employees' claims are generally senior to those of investors. New testable implications about leverage and compensation levels are derived.     

庙岛群岛南部三个岛屿乡镇海岸带生态系统服务价值

庙岛群岛南部3个岛屿乡镇南长山、北长山和黑山的海岸带生态系统由3个子生态系统构成：人工林生态系统、农田生态系统和近海生态系统。3个岛屿乡镇海岸带人工林的总面积为1520.27hm^2,农田生态系统服务价值和服务单价依次为南长山〉黑山〉北长山。近海面积依次为南长山、北长山和黑山;近海生态系统的服务价值南长山最高,北长山次之,黑山最低。三岛屿乡镇海岸带生态系统服务价值依次为南长山、北长山、黑山。     

聚焦城市公共空间建设的新城市形态建设——国际城市建设管理发展新趋势

近年来以城市公共空间建设为核心的新城市形态建设正成为发达国家提升城市竞争力的重要方式,它强调利用城市公共空间的集约和积聚效应提升土地资源利用、整合区域功能,创造城市活力满足产业和社会发展需求。分析了新城市形态建设的发展趋势,并通过实际案例考察新城市形态的建设特点,在此基础上结合城市建设管理现状归纳聚焦城市公共空间促进新城市形态建设的几点认识。     

A Strategic Implementation of the Shapley Value for the Nested Cost‐Sharing Problem

When agents have different needs for a public facility but serving a given agent allows serving all agents with smaller needs than his without any extra cost, how should the agents divide the cost of the facility among themselves? We provide a strategic implementation of the Shapley value for this class of cost‐sharing problems. We introduce a three‐stage extensive form game that respects individual rationality and show that there is one and only one subgame‐perfect equilibrium outcome of the game. Moreover, it is the allocation assigned by the Shapley value.     

THE ABSENCE OF THE BOOK‐TO‐MARKET EFFECT IN THE TAIWAN STOCK MARKET: A DECOMPOSITION APPROACH

This paper examines the absence of the book‐to‐market equity (BM) effect in the Taiwan stock market, applying the BM decomposition proposed by Daniel and Titman (2006 ). First, we do not observe a significantly negative correlation between future stock return and intangible return on research‐and‐development‐intensive firms in Taiwan, which is inconsistent with the US evidence documented by Daniel and Titman. Second, undervaluation of research‐and‐development‐intensive firms possibly leads to the absence of the BM effect. Those firms, most of which have low BM, perform well not only in the past, but also in the future, thereby obscuring the BM effect.     

Conditional Earnings Conservatism and Corporate Refocusing Activities

We extend standard models of conditional earnings conservatism and adaptation value to the context of the corporate refocusing activities of UK listed companies. This analysis is interesting because refocusing activities are: (1) commonly anticipated by significant negative returns in the financial year(s) before the refocusing event; (2) typically associated with large material charges; and (3) likely to be part of a strategic plan with the internal decision preceding the formal public announcement. We complement Burgstahler and Dichev [1997] by showing how their nonlinear relation between share prices and earnings changes around refocusing events as adaptation options are exercised. Because refocusing events also involve large realized losses and major changes to firms’ strategic plans, we expect to see systematic changes in the timing relations between stock returns and reported earnings. To capture this, we show how the coefficients of Basu's [1997] model of conditional conservatism change around refocusing events.     

抑制代理成本提升公司价值了吗？——来自沪、深两市非金融类A股上市公司的经验证据

以沪、深两市非金融类A股上市公司2005～2009年的混合数据为研究对象，运用双变量回归（bivariate regression）、复回归（multiple regression）及协方差回归（ANACOVA）等计量方法，实证考察权益代理成本与公司价值间的关联性。研究结果表明，当权益代理成本降低时，我国上市公司的市场价值（托宾Q值）和财务业绩（ROA）均得到显著提高；且在引入内外部监督机制、管理层激励机制及股权结构特征三重约束后，二者的反向关联性仍维持稳定。此结论为代理成本理论增添了新的经验证据，即提升上市公司自身价值，保障投资者权益的有效途径之一就是降低代理成本。     

TYING,COMPATIBILITY AND PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE*

According to the hypothesis of planned obsolescence, a durable goods monopolist without commitment power has an excessive incentive to introduce new products that make old units obsolete, and this reduces its overall profitability. In this paper, I reconsider the above hypothesis by examining the role of competition in a monopolist's upgrade decision. I find that, when a system add‐on is competitively supplied, a monopolist chooses to tie the add‐on to a new system that is only backward compatible, even if a commitment of not introducing the new system is available and socially optimal. Tying facilitates a price squeeze.     

DO POLITICS CAUSE REGIME SHIFTS IN MONETARY POLICY?

Whether or not politics cause changes in monetary policy is controversial in the literature. This article re‐examines the link between politics and regime shifts in monetary policy using two alternative approaches. First, empirical results show that both the presidential and Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) chairmanship regimes do not influence monetary policy under the assumption that the Fed closely follows an interest rate rule. On the other hand, evidence also suggests that changes in political regimes are able to account for the deviations from the optimal Taylor rule. (JEL E52, E58, D78)