How Issue Size, Risk, and Complexity are Influencing External Financing Costs: German IPOs Analyzed from an Economies of Scale Perspective

This paper is focused on the cost of raising capital in Germany. A cross-sectional analysis of flotation cost data for 117 IPOs over the years 1993–1998 is presented. We find average flotation costs to be 7.77 percent of gross proceeds, while underwriting fees average 5.01 percent. Our results extend the literature in two important directions. First, contrary to the conventional economies of scale view we find marginal spreads to be rather constant in gross proceeds and to be higher for more risky and more complex offerings. Fixed costs amount to 5 to 9 percent of underwriting fees. Second, by applying a principal component analysis we find issue size, an issuer risk factor, and an offering method complexity factor to have an economicaly meaningful impact on underwriting fees.     

Pricing of Mutual Fund Services in Retirement Plans: Evidence from Open-End Equity Funds

Management fees of mutual funds are more costly to investors than is often realized. Moreover, research indicates that in many cases, the fees are not related to performance, contrary to what might be expected from an efficient market. This study uses sample data to illustrate the consequences of inefficiency to an individual investor. It then turns to an empirical examination of the determinants of the ratio of management fees to total assets (MER), investigating market concentration, fund performance, and non-performance characteristics as explanatory variables. All of these classes of variables contributed to the variation of MERs . JEL Classification G23     

审计费用的决定因素——来自我国B股上市公司的数据分析

审计费用的决定因素一直是国外会计审计学界关注的热点问题之一。基于我国B股上市公司数据，以2001年～2003年我国B股的上市公司为样本，对境外审计师的审计收费展开研究可发现：2001年度审计费用的决定因素并不明显，且与事务所规模的关系不显性；在2002年和2003年，审计费用与总资产和事务所规模成显性相关。究其原因，主要是声誉机制、信息披露制度和我国审计市场竞争激烈等因素所致。     

Top executive gender diversity and financial reporting quality

We examine whether gender diversity of chief executive and chief financial officers (CEOs and CFOs) is associated with financial reporting quality. The CEOs and CFOs of publicly traded companies are both required to certify the appropriateness of their financial statements and annual disclosures. We argue that gender diverse dyads (groups) of executives can bring different perspectives and professional skepticism to financial reporting. Using a sample of different CEO/CFO gender dyads during 2006–2019, we postulate and find evidence of higher accruals quality among firms led by gender-diverse dyads compared to accruals quality reported by firms led by all-male CEO/CFO pairs. Additional analyses reveal that the auditors of firms with gender-diverse executive dyads issue audit reports later, charge higher audit fees, and are more likely to be one of the Big 4 firms. These findings support the view that top executive gender diversity enhances financial reporting quality, which has important implications for corporate governance mechanisms.     

Carrot and stick: A role for benchmark-adjusted compensation in active fund management

Investors delegating their wealth to privately informed managers face not only an intrinsic asymmetric information problem but also a potential misalignment in risk preferences. In this setting, we show that by tying fees symmetrically to the appropriate benchmark investors can tilt a fund portfolio toward their optimal risk exposure and realize nearly all the value of managers’ information. They attain these benefits despite an inherent inefficiency in the choice of the benchmark, and at no extra cost of compensating managers for exposure to relative-performance risk. Under certain conditions, benchmark-adjusted performance fees are necessary to prevent passive alternatives from dominating active management. Our results shed light on a recent debate on the appropriate fee structure of active funds in contexts of high competition from passive funds.     

Price discrimination and efficient matching

This paper considers the problem of a monopoly matchmaker that uses a schedule of entrance fees to sort different types of agents on the two sides of a matching market into exclusive meeting places, where agents randomly form pairwise matches. We make the standard assumption that the match value function exhibits complementarities, so that matching types at equal percentiles maximizes total match value and is efficient. We provide necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for the revenue-maximizing sorting to be efficient. These conditions require the match value function, modified to incorporate the incentive cost of eliciting private type information, to exhibit complementarities in types.JEL Clalssification Numbers C7, D4We thank Jonathan Levin, Tracy Lewis, and the seminar audience at University of California at Los Angeles, University of British Columbia, Duke University, and 2003 Econometric Society North American Summer Meeting for comments and suggestions. We are also grateful for helpful suggestions from the referees and the Editor     

Knowledge spillover from other assurance services

We argue that services which are complimentary and closer aligned to the annual report audit provide greater insight about risk and are more likely to exhibit the existence of economies of scope (knowledge spillover) through a positive association with audit fees. Specifically, we consider the potential for knowledge spillover from the auditing of triennial Long-Term Plans (LTP) to the annual report audit for a large sample of New Zealand municipals over the period 2005–2013. We find the LTP audit fees are positively related to municipal annual report audit fees and other fees (audit of for-profit subsidiaries, non-audit services) are not. This suggests that knowledge spillovers are dependent on the nature of the additional services. We also find evidence of higher fees for private sector auditors for both the annual report and the LTP audit. The LTP (forecast) audit fee is associated with municipal size, complexity, and political competition.     

香港与内地商业银行收费之比较

通过对香港银行业和内地商业银行的收费进行比较,找出内地商业银行收费（主要是中间业务收费）中存在的问题,并提出相应的解决办法。     

农村金融体系的制度创新

我国现有农村金融体系的制度性缺陷已成为制约解决“三农”问题的瓶颈,阻碍了金融与经济的良性循环,已不适应农业和农村经济发展的需要。以制度经济学为理论依据,可以发现制度变迁的路径依赖、制度变迁的成本和公共选择的结果影响着我国农村金融体系的制度变迁,所以说制度创新是发展农村金融体系的根本途径。     

我国独立审计收费现状的博弈思考

审计收费在独立审计中占有重要地位,它是联系审计服务供求双方的桥梁。首先全面介绍了我国独立审计收费普遍较低的现状;然后深入分析了会计师事务所之间、事务所与被审计单位之间在审计收费方面的博弈行为;并在此基础上提出了相应的解决办法,以期规范我国的独立审计收费,促进注册会计师行业的健康快速发展。