Contracting and Reporting Conservatism around a Change in Fiduciary Duties*

We exploit an influential 1991 Delaware court ruling to examine simultaneously two types of conservatism that play important roles in resolving creditor–owner agency conflicts: contracting conservatism and reporting conservatism. The ruling expanded managerial fiduciary duties in favor of creditors for Delaware-incorporated firms in the vicinity of insolvency. In those firms, following the ruling, debt contracts are less likely to include conservative adjustments to accounting numbers used for covenant compliance (i.e., contracting conservatism decreases), while public financial reporting becomes more conservative (i.e., reporting conservatism increases). The decrease in contracting conservatism is concentrated in firms that exhibit a greater increase in reporting conservatism, suggesting that reporting conservatism is more cost-effective in resolving agency conflicts. In addition, the substitution effect is more pronounced in firms facing greater business uncertainty and firms with greater board independence.     

Is bank staff interaction associated with customer saving behavior in banks?

Major changes are underway in the U.S. retail banking sector toward heavy investments in technology and fewer in personnel. Using the 2017 survey of household economics and decision‐making (SHED) (n = 11,359), we examine the relationship between saving behavior related to emergency, long‐term and periodic expenses and personal, technological, and hybrid bank account access methods. Binary logistic regression models were used to estimate the odds of reporting various saving behaviors in relation to various banking access methods. Findings suggest that the personal access method is positively associated with savings behavior for periodic expenses for the general population, and negatively associated with emergency savings in people with lower education attainment. Technology is associated with all types of saving behavior, while the hybrid access method is associated only with saving for periodic expenses. As investments in self‐service technology increase, the importance of access methods to savings behavior must be considered.     

Who benefits from partial tax coordination?

In this paper, we investigate whether partial tax coordination is beneficial to countries within and outside a tax union, in which countries are supposed to compete in taxes and infrastructure. Our results demonstrate that a subgroup of countries agreeing on a common tax rate can harm both member and nonmember states. This is in contrast to the classical findings that partial tax harmonisation is Pareto improving. When a minimum tax rate is imposed within a tax union, we demonstrate that it does not necessarily improve the welfare of the member countries. Moreover, both the high‐tax and low‐tax countries can be worse off. This conclusion is at odds with the classical result that a high‐tax country benefits from the imposition of a lower tax bound.     

Using a dual-frame design to improve phone surveys on political attitudes: developing a weighting strategy for limited external information in Hong Kong

Quality & Quantity - In recent years, rapid increases in mobile phone ownership and decreases in landline users have led to potential biases in landline phone survey estimations. Mobile-only...     

Abuse of Market Dominance Under China’s Anti-Monopoly Law: The Case of Tetra Pak

Review of Industrial Organization - In this paper, we analyze a recent antitrust case of abuse of dominance that was decided by a Chinese administrative enforcement agency under China’s...     

利用规划放线成果修测城市地形图

一种根据规划放线验线成果修测地形图的方法——内业修测法，它可以及时反映城市地形地物的变化，保持地形图的现势性，较之传统的修测方法省时、省力、经济。     

农村税费改革后乡镇财政面临的困难与对策

农村税费改革一方面促进了乡镇财政的规范化,另一方面也使乡镇财政面临更加严重的收支缺口和债务压力,并最终影响农村基层政权的正常运行.税费改革对乡镇财政带来的负面影响并非改革本身所致,而是由于相关的配套改革没有及时跟上造成的.解决乡镇财政困难的思路和对策是,调整中央与地方财力分配比例,理顺政府间分配关系;合理划分中央与地方的税收管理权限,逐步建立相对独立和完整的地方税体系;尽快建立规范的政府转移支付制度,加大对困难地区的转移支付;审慎解决乡镇债务问题,化解乡镇财政风险;努力构建乡镇公共政府和公共财政.     

Contagion or Inductance? Crisis 1997 Reconsidered

We provide the simple example of a refinancing game with incomplete information, where the lack of transparency is both necessary and sufficient for the propagation of local financial distress across disjoint financial networks. JEL Classification Number: F4.
And the truth shall make you free. John 8: 32     

《技术制图》新旧标准对照

以对照方法介绍了《技术制图》与《机械制图》中三个基础标准的适用范围、采标情况及基本内容。     

随机生产前沿方法的发展及其在中国的应用

本文对随机前沿生产函数模型的发展及其在中国生产率分析中的应用进行了评述。文章首先介绍随机前沿方法的基本原理、估计方法和在面板数据下对全要素生产率增长的分解,随后评述随机前沿生产函数模型的最新进展和在经验分析中的优势与作用,最后总结了在中国行业和地区经济增长研究中随机前沿方法的成果和不足,并探讨今后研究的发展方向。