Media coverage and investment efficiency

We examine the effect of media coverage on firm-level investment efficiency. We find that media coverage reduces under-investment but increases over-investment. The negative effect of media coverage on under-investment is more pronounced in firms affected by greater information asymmetry and poorer corporate governance. The positive effect of media coverage on over-investment is driven by media-induced CEO overconfidence. Additional results show that both investment- and non-investment-related news coverage decrease under-investment, while non-investment-related news coverage is more influential in increasing over-investment. In general, higher news optimism is associated with less under-investment but more over-investment. Moreover, media coverage affects investment efficiency through its information dissemination rather than information creation function. Collectively, our results suggest that firms’ media visibility promotes more over-investment than under-investment.     

Relative-to-rival corporate philanthropy,product market competitiveness,and stakeholders

Unlike most of the literature that examines the relationship between corporate philanthropy and financial performance, this study investigates the mechanisms through which corporate socially responsible behaviors produce financial outcomes. We propose that corporate philanthropy improves corporate competitiveness by eliciting positive responses from stakeholders, who assess a firm’s philanthropic contribution in relation to its rivals to determine what level of support they wish to provide to the firm. We predict that a firm’s philanthropy relative to its rivals has a positive effect on its product market competitiveness, and that this positive effect is moderated by three conditions that influence stakeholder response: stakeholder attention to philanthropy, its perceived legitimacy, and expectations of corporate giving. Our predictions are generally supported by our analyses. Overall, this paper shows that strategic philanthropy has a quantitative dimension, and firms obtain the market competitiveness associated with corporate philanthropy by integrating their rivals’ positions into their decision making.     

The development of the group accounts disclosure system in Japan

The Japanese disclosure system of consolidated statements was introduced in 1977 and extensively revised in 1997. The role of the bureaucracy has been significant in these developments and seems to be part of Japan's closed culture. However, other explanations could also be applied. In particular, although Japanese firms opposed such disclosures on the basis of preparation costs, the Japanese government had to modernize the disclosure system, including consolidation, in order to develop the securities market regardless of an individual company's interests.     

农民工城乡迁移个人机会成本的构成及定量分析

农民工城乡迁移的个人机会成本可归纳为经济性个人机会成本、社会性个人机会成本和政治性个人机会成本三大类，基于笔者主持的1012名城乡迁移农民工的问卷调查，文章分析了这三类个人机会成本各自的构成，并对它们进行了定量分析。     

对科学发展观指导下的高校思想政治教育工作的探讨

科学发展观是推进我国经济社会全面发展的指导思想,也是加强和改进大学生思想政治教育的指导方针。本文通过分析高校思想政治教育存在的普遍问题,提出了在科学发展观指导下的思想政治教育工作的新思路,新途径。     

Land Reform: Taking a Long(er) View

The paper proposes a broad argument that the end of state–led development from the 1970s coincided with (i) the final wave of major redistributive land reform, and its place within transitions to capitalism, that lasted from about 1910 to the 1970s, and (ii) the beginnings of contemporary 'globalization'. Self–styled 'new wave' agrarian reform in the age of neo–liberalism, centred on property rights, is unlikely to deliver much on its claims to both stimulate agricultural productivity and reduce rural poverty. The reasons are grounded in the basic relations and dynamics of capitalism, and how these are intensified and reshaped by and through globalization. Understanding these processes, with all their inevitable unevenness, requires (i) recognizing that the historical conditions of the 'classic' agrarian question no longer apply, and (ii) developing the means to investigate and understand better the changing realities facing different agrarian classes within a general tendency to the concentration of capital and fragmentation of labour, including how the latter may generate new agrarian questions of labour.     

Optimal investment with fixed financing costs

Models with a premium on external finance produce counterfactual predictions about liquidity management. We address this shortcoming by introducing a fixed cost of increasing external finance into an otherwise standard investment/financing problem. This additional financial friction is well-motivated by case studies and our analysis shows that it generates more realistic predictions about liquidity management: firms hold external finance and idle cash simultaneously, and may invest an additional dollar of cash flow in liquidity rather than repaying external funds or investing in productive capital. In addition to better fitting the stylized facts about the time-series and cross-sectional pattern of liquidity holding, these results may help shed light on the fragility of estimates of investment–cash flow sensitivities.     

改进后的PERT方法在进度风险分析中的应用

风险分析是进度控制中的重要内容。针对经典PERT网络的假设和计算过程,分析出它存在的三方面缺陷。并提出解决问题的三种具体措施,从概率论与数理统计的角度,对关键线路和关键工作进行了重新定义和确定的方法。     

Capital structure and the control of managerial incentives

We present a theory of capital structure based on the power of shareholders, bondholders and managers to control the incentive conflicts in large corporations. The manager–owner conflict produces a trade-off between inefficiency in the low state and rents in the high state, and the shareholder–bondholder conflict produces under-investment as in Myers [Journal of Financial Economics 19 (1997) 147]. Since managers and bondholders both prefer more efficient actions in the low state, the two conflicts are interdependent. With risk-less levels of debt, there are no shareholder–bondholder agency costs, but managerial control over the incentive-setting process produces excessive rents. With risky debt, shareholders focus more on returns in the high state so that shareholder–bondholder agency costs increase but managerial rents decrease. Efficient levels of debt holder protection facilitate a reduction in manager–owner agency costs that outweighs shareholder–bondholder agency costs, and are decreasing in firm performance. The results are consistent with the separate empirical results relating control to both compensation and leverage, and suggest how future studies can be integrated.     

A change in market responses to the environmental management ranking in Japan

This article investigates stock price reactions to the release of the environmental management ranking issued by Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei newspaper) from 1998 to 2005, by using a standard event study methodology. An examination of stock price movements of the top 100 manufacturing companies reveals that stock prices during the sample period did not respond significantly to the release of the ranking within a 3-day event window. However, market responses became significantly positive after 2003, while they were significantly negative in 1999 and 2000. The stock prices of upgraded companies in particular reacted negatively before 2000, but positively after 2002. These results indicate that market reactions were changed between 2001 and 2002, when the Japanese government showed its strong commitment to environmental policies by establishing the Ministry of the Environment and signing the Kyoto Protocol, following a number of legislations.