In this paper, using a set of zero yield curve data of China’s government bonds and credit bonds, along with China’s aggregate credit risk measures, and macroeconomic variables from 2006 to 2013, we document a puzzle of counter-credit-risk corporate yield spreads. We interpret this puzzle as a symptom of the immaturity of China’s credit bond market, which reveals a distorted pricing mechanism latent in the fundamental of this market. As by-products of our analysis, we also find interesting results about relations between corporate yield spreads and interest rates as well as risk premia and the stock index, and these results are somewhat attributed to this puzzle.

In this article, we analyse investment preferences of domestic and foreign institutional investors to the management quality of Chinese listed firms. We find that foreign institutional investors hold higher shareholding in firms with greater numbers of executive officers with MBA degrees, having served as vice president or higher prior to joining the firm and sitting on multiple boards. Foreign institutional investors in China also show preference over investee firms with larger board size. However, they pay no attention to whether directors are independent from the firm management and meet often. Domestic institutional investors show preference to all management quality indicators that are associated with foreign institutional ownership. In addition, domestic institutional investors invest more in firms where the executive officers are certified public accountants (CPA) and are longer tenured in their current position. Furthermore, domestic institutional investors pay more attention to corporate governance of investee firms than foreign institutional investors. Finally, we find that domestic institutional investors show a strong preference to firms that have been invested by at least one Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII), even after controlling for QFII’s preference for management quality. This indicates that the QFIIs’ international reputation has been used by domestic institutional investors as a positive signal for investment opportunities.

This paper surveys how and why the share spilt reform enhance the corporate governance using agency cost as proxy from the perspective of stockholders’ conflict and liquidity increase in the process of share spilt reform respectively. We find that share spilt reform brings significant governance improvement. Besides, we use some governance effect and liquidity theory proposed by Edmans et al. (2011) to testify by which means the share split reform enhance the corporate governance. What is more, we find that the corporations with great difficulty, which represented for severe shareholders’ conflict, in carrying forward the reform tend to have severe governance problems while it was this kind of corporation that benefited most from the reform and formed the main driving force of the realization of the goal of reform. It has some implication on China’s current reform; that is, only when toughest problems have been overcome will the goal of reform be achieved.

The deviation of control right and cash flow right is a common problem of corporate governance in East Asian companies.With Taiwan's listed companies as samples, this paper discusses whether the degree of deviation of control right and cash flow right will affect the company’s earnings distribution policy. The results reveal that, regardless of using stock right or the number of directors to measure the control right, companies of higher degree of deviation of control right and cash flow right have higher proportions of employee bonuses against the shareholder dividends, In this case, the company is more biased in the care of the employees at the expense of the minority shareholders. The company is especially likely to exploit the minority shareholders by controlling the board of directors and paying cash dividends to employees. As investors believe that the controlling shareholders of companies with high degree deviation of control right and cash flow right, and high proportion of employee bonuses are intended to exploit the minority shareholders, such companies have significantly lower declared earnings distribution remuneration compared with companies with low degree of deviation and low employee bonuses.

This study investigates the impact of ultimate government ownership or control on the cost of debt of Chinese listed corporations. We first examine the relative level of cost of debt of corporations under government control compared to corporations under individual or family control. We then explore circumstances under which government control is likely to reduce a corporation’s cost of financing. Our results suggest that the benefits of government control are conditional on firm-specific financial circumstances and internal- and external-corporate governance environment. We find that, on average, government controlled corporations have lower cost of debt but the effect is not homogeneous. Government controlled corporations have lower cost of debt when they are highly financially constrained and have higher risk of being expropriated by controlling shareholders and in provinces where the local government is less effective, but not otherwise.

This study examines relation between financial development and the cost of equity capital and finds the following main results: (1) stock market development in general reduces cost of equity, consistent with its role in liquidity provision, information asymmetry reduction, and risk diversification helping to reduce systemic risk; (2) banking development only weakly decreases the cost of equity, consistent with the pervasive state-ownership in large banks constraining their efficiency. Further analysis reveals that the relation between stock market development and cost of equity is more pronounced in large firms and in firms with lower growth potentials, suggesting that stock market development fails to support small and/or growth firms. Moreover, the relation is more pronounced in region with low accounting quality, weak law enforcement, or lower market integration, and in period prior to split share structure reform. The evidence suggests that stock market developments and other institutional arrangements substitute each other in reducing cost of equity. This study contributes to literatures on financial development and cost of equity, and also holds immediate policy implications.

This study examines the effects of acquirer characteristics, information asymmetry on method of payment of Chinese acquirers based on a sample of 1370 mergers and acquisitions that occur between 1998 -2008. Using both Buy and Hold Abnormal Returns (BHAR) and Calendar Time Abnormal Returns (CTAR) approaches, we find that Chinese acquirers experience pre-acquisition abnormal returns ranging from 14.29%-121% over the period 12-36 months prior to the acquisition relative to 3 different portfolio benchmarks. In the pre-bid period, acquisitions financed by shares outperform acquisitions financed by cash. However, in the post-acquisition period, we document no significant difference between cash- and equity-financed acquisitions. We document a number of factors that determine the method of payment by Chinese acquirers: acquirer market value, Tobin’s Q, state ownership and leverage have significant effects on the method of payment.

本文基于Jensen&Murphy(1990)论文的计量思想，采用2009年到2012年的上市公司样本数据观察高管薪酬与公司绩效之间的相关性，发现尽管上市公司高管薪酬与公司绩效之间是正相关的而且在统计上也是显著的，但是这种相关性显然是比较小的。本文认为目前中国上市公司高管的薪酬结构并不合理，尽管高管薪酬的决定因素与公司绩效相关，好的公司绩效对应较高的高管薪酬，但薪酬中来自于绩效的激励性部分太小因而很难起到激励的作用，而决定上市公司高管薪酬的主要因素是公司规模和所处行业。

In the developing Chinese capital market which dominated by individual investors and potentially suffer from more behavioral biases, we simultaneously examine the trading and monitoring role of mutual funds (as the largest institutional investor in China) in corporate acquisition activities where there are potentials for a wide disparity of interest between institutional investors and controlling shareholders. We find the level of holding by all mutual funds is not a superiors indicator of deal quality, there are some evidence that the collective holdings by the largest fund management companies positively relate to the deal quality and they potentially play the monitoring role in M&A event. Our paper contributes to the existing literature that “transient investors” can also gain from monitoring in the market where institutional investors has less dominant position.

We study the impact of directors with foreign experience on firms in emerging markets. To establish causality, we use a unique dataset from China and exploit that at different times, Chinese provinces introduced policies to attract highly talented emigrants. These policies led to an exogenous increase in the supply of Chinese individuals with foreign experience in the local labor market and ultimately increased the likelihood that firms in these provinces had directors with foreign experience in comparison to firms with a similarly high demand for these skills elsewhere. We document that hiring directors with foreign experience results in higher firm valuation, productivity, and profitability. Furthermore, corporate governance improves and firms are more likely to make international acquisitions, to export, and to raise funds internationally. These results indicate that the transfer of knowledge to emerging markets occurs not only through foreign investment, but also through labor flows and, in particular, return migration.