The heterogeneous relationship between board social ties and corporate environmental responsibility in an emerging economy

Firms in emerging economies are faced with multiple, incompatible institutional forces in their environmental activities. Which of these forces will be dominant and instantiated within an organization is partly determined by the social relationships that a firm maintains with external actors. This paper investigates the relationship between board social ties and the level of environmental responsibility undertaken by firms in China, an emerging economy, by categorizing board social ties into three types in terms of the three isomorphic forces in the institutional field (coercive, normative and mimetic). Drawing on institutional and agency theories, using a sample of listed firms in environmentally sensitive industries, and a generalized least squares regression method, the results provide empirical evidence that ties that are linked to coercive and normative forces (i.e., political organizations and universities) are related to a higher level of environmental responsibility; however, those that are linked to mimetic forces (i.e., industrial peers) have a negative association with environmental responsibility, which is mitigated by CEO power. These findings suggest that the heterogeneous effects of board social ties on environmental responsibilities experienced by firms in a context of environmentalism are at an early stage.     

Excess perks in SOEs: evidence from China

In investigating the relationship between economic directors (EDs) and excess perks in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China, we find a U-shaped relationship between the share of EDs on boards and excess perks, especially in SOEs controlled by local governments and with greater managerial power—as well as in regions with poor legal systems. The share of EDs on boards may have three benefits with respect to reducing the use of excess perks in SOEs: (1) replacing excess perks with monetary wages more aligned with the value of managers; (2) reducing the increase in excessive perks caused by the availability of free cash flow; and (3) reducing the use of excess employees to drive excess perks.     

Low price equilibrium in multi-unit auctions: the GSM spectrum auction in Germany

The second–generation (GSM) spectrum auction in Germany is probably the most clear cut example of a low price outcome in a simultaneous ascending-bid multi-unit auction. The present paper gives an account of the events, describes the auction rules and market conditions, and provides a game theoretic explanation of low price equilibrium in simultaneous, ascending-bid multi-unit auctions. In particular, it is shown that in the unique equilibrium that survives iterated elimination of dominated strategies, the efficient allocation is reached at minimum bids.     

Self‐help in housing and chengzhongcun in China's urbanization

This article focuses on the housing issues of rural migrants arising from urbanization, with particular reference to chengzhongcun, a topic with considerable impact on policymaking. An attempt is made to understand the underlying rationale of self‐help in housing and the important role of chengzhongcun in sheltering rural migrants in the context of China's rural‐urban dichotomy. As demonstrated in this study, chengzhongcun accommodate, with little in the way of government resources and assistance, millions of rural migrants because of their social accessibility and affordability. While not denying their social problems, we argue that chengzhongcun in fact act as an innovative and positive agent to promote urbanization in present day China by housing massive numbers of rural migrants and assimilating them into cities. Current government policies towards chengzhongcun have generated a wide range of interest conflicts and confrontations. The consequences of such conflicts show that the government policies were problematic and unworkable, as they violated basic market principles as well as citizen rights. Policy strategy towards the redevelopment of chengzhongcun must acknowledge their credibility in the Chinese road to urbanization and requires more thoughtful and prudent consideration of migrants' demands for affordable housing.     

Intraday Lead-Lag Relationships Between the Futures-, Options and Stock Market

In rational, efficiently functioning and complete markets, returns on derivative and underlying securities should be perfectly contemporaneously correlated. Due to market imperfections, one of these markets may reflect information faster. The use of high-frequency data and the choice for a small unit time interval to measure these lead-lag relations comes at the cost of some or many missing observations, causing traditional estimators to either under- or overestimate covariances and correlations. We use a new estimator to estimate lead-lag relationships between the cash AEX index, options and futures. We find that futures returns lead both options and cash index returns by approximately 10 minutes. The relationship between options and the cash market is not completely unidirectional.     

State-owned enterprises going public The case of China

Public listing is a key reform measure for large state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) in China. We find evidence that public listing lowers state ownership significantly, lessens firms’ reliance on debt finance, and allows firms to increase capital expenditure, at least temporarily. We also find that ownership structure affects post‐listing performance. However, we find no statistical evidence of a positive effect of public listing on firms’ profitability. We suggest alternative interpretations of the last finding.     

Multinationals and Training: Some Evidence from Irish Manufacturing Industries

This paper sets out to analyse the effect of plant and sectoral level characteristics on the provision of training to employees using plant level data for Irish manufacturing. There is no clear evidence that foreign owned plants are more likely to provide training. By contrast, we find that they spend less than domestic plants on training, ceteris paribus. There is also no evidence that plants that receive training grants are more likely to provide training. This may be likely to reflect the targeting of training grants on plants that are otherwise unlikely to provide much training. We do, however, find that training activity in the sector, either by other foreign or domestic plants, has a positive effect on plant level training activity, at least for domestic owned plants.     

关于旅游管理专业双语教学的实践与思考

以桂林旅游高等专科学校旅游管理专业专业课程《旅游企业人力资源管理》实施双语教学的实践为个案，分析了该专业实施双语教学所面临的困难，提出了加强双语教学实践的对策和建议。     

略论法治政府的价值理念

法治政府作为一种理论主张和政府模式是从近代开始的，法治政府是法治国家对政府的要求，是指政府时刻受到法律约束和支配的法制建设状态，其基本特征和价值取向是有限政府、服务政府、透明政府、诚信政府、统一政府和责任政府。