Doing more and doing better are two different entities: Different patterns of family control and environmental performance

Family firms bear two types of agency costs, including type I and type II agency problems, in corporate environmental practices: (1) Outside executives at family firms hesitate to engage in environmental strategies, which can lead to drops in profits; (2) Controlling families employ opportunistically environmental management to achieve their interests. We argue that a primary cause for the agency problems lies on ineffective internal corporate governance at family firms, which can cause loss of managerial (or power) balance between outside executives and family executives. Our findings show that family firms with ownership and strategic control (FSC), which family executives and outside executives monitor and constrain each other, can achieve the highest environmental performance. Moreover, external controls, including product market competition and provincial environmental regulations, substitute effective internal control of FSC. The environmental performance premium of FSC is more prevalent when the production market competition is lower. Family firms with ownership, operational, and strategic control (FOSC) can achieve higher environmental performance within a province with more stringent environmental regulations.     

Do goodwill impairments affect audit opinions? Evidence from China

There has been a steady growth of goodwill impairments in the Chinese stock market since the adoption of the impairment approach in accounting. The influence of goodwill impairments on a firm’s financial position and profitability give reason to doubt its current and future performance. We examine whether auditors, as a crucial external monitor, identify the information risks of goodwill impairments and express their concerns about financial reporting quality in their audit opinions. Using a sample of firms listed on China’s A-share market from 2007 to 2017, we test the association between goodwill impairments and the type of audit opinion received in the same financial period. Our findings are as follows. First, the probability of receiving a modified opinion increases with the amount of goodwill impairments. Second, the positive association between goodwill impairments and modified audit opinions is driven primarily by earnings management risks. Third, this positive association is more salient when auditors are industry experts and there is no auditor–client mismatch. Fourth, auditors are more sensitive to the amount of goodwill impairments than to their mere existence. Overall, we document that auditors perceive goodwill impairments as a signal of information risks and communicate their concerns to investors to avoid litigation.     

关于企业成本管理的探讨

成本管理是预算管理和绩效管理的前提,企业需要正确地将成本进行分类、计量和归集。恰当的成本管理制度可以帮助企业提升运营效率和业务绩效,同时企业的流程改善、突破和优化与成本管理密不可分。另外,管理者需要令客户对产品和服务满意,并且有效控制各项成本。企业成本管理不是单纯地降低成本,而是通过利用成本分析工具,有效地管理和规划资源,进而提高总体运营效率,保证企业总体绩效的持续改善。论文通过成本计算制度的制定方法和业务流程改善分析技术两方面对成本管控进行探讨。     

The structure of information release and the factor structure of returns

We model how firms releasing information on different dates causes the CAPM to fail, requiring an additional factor based on the information structure to price assets. We exemplify this mechanism’s empirical relevance using quarterly earnings announcements, which cluster across months along size and book-to-market. Seventy percent of the alpha reduction from including SMB and HML occurs in the four main earnings announcement months. The information structure factor accounts for all of SMB and HML’s seasonal alpha reduction and one third of their overall alpha reduction. Controlling for size and book-to-market, exposures to SMB and HML vary with firms’ earnings announcement month.     

Unfolding the impact of leadership and management on sustainability performance: Green and lean practices and guanxi as the dual mediators

This study aims to empirically evaluate the predictors that influence sustainability performance among manufacturing firms. Leadership and management, green and lean practices, and guanxi were examined to determine whether these predictors are directly and/or indirectly affecting sustainability performance; 160 valid responses were collected and partial-least-squares-structural-equation-modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The results showed that leadership and management positively influenced green and lean practices and green and lean practices positively influenced sustainability performance. Leadership and management also positively influenced guanxi. Interestingly, leadership and management and guanxi do not exert a significant direct influence on sustainability performance. The findings contributed to the development of the resource-based-view theory further by empirically exploring the significance of leadership and management coupled with green and lean practices as competencies and capability to drive sustainability performance. The testing of the dual mediators' effects further added value to this study.     

Risk aversion,prudence and temperance: An experiment in gain and loss

We characterize the individual's attitude towards risk, prudence and temperance in the gain and loss domains. We analyze the links between the three features of preferences for a given domain and between domains for each feature of preferences. Consequently, the reflection effect, the mixed risk aversion and the risk apportionment, are key concepts of our study. We also display some determinants for risk aversion, prudence and temperance in each domain. To do this, we conducted a lab experiment with students eliciting risk aversion, prudence and temperance in the two domains, and collected information about each subject's characteristics.     

Forecasting the UK economy with a medium-scale Bayesian VAR

We estimate a Bayesian VAR (BVAR) for the UK economy and assess its performance in forecasting GDP growth and CPI inflation in real time relative to forecasts from COMPASS, the Bank of England’s DSGE model, and other benchmarks. We find that the BVAR outperformed COMPASS when forecasting both GDP and its expenditure components. In contrast, their performances when forecasting CPI were similar. We also find that the BVAR density forecasts outperformed those of COMPASS, despite under-predicting inflation at most forecast horizons. Both models over-predicted GDP growth at all forecast horizons, but the issue was less pronounced in the BVAR. The BVAR’s point and density forecast performances are also comparable to those of a Bank of England in-house statistical suite for both GDP and CPI inflation, as well as to the official Inflation Report projections. Our results are broadly consistent with the findings of similar studies for other advanced economies.