The People’s Republic of China has taken substantial steps to reform its financial system, especially the banking sector, since 1995. The speed of banking reform has accelerated after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001. This study examines the impact of recent banking reforms and of WTO accession on the cost efficiency of the Chinese banking sector. We use a non-parametric approach to investigate the efficiency trend and productivity growth of banks in China between 1998 and 2006. We also compare the efficiency and productivity growth of different banking ownership groups prior to and after joining the WTO. We find that, on average, domestic banks outperform their foreign counterparts over the sample period in terms of overall and allocative efficiency, but they fall behind in terms of overall technical efficiency. The comparison of efficiency indexes pre and post WTO accession reveals that the efficiency of domestic banks has declined post accession, while foreign banks have enjoyed an improvement rise in their cost efficiency post WTO accession in 2001.The findings of this study further suggest that the total factor productivity of Chinese banks has weakened over the period under study. However, a pre and post analysis of WTO accession results shows that total factor productivity has improved for both domestic and foreign banks after China joined the WTO, equally owing to efficiency improvement and technological progress

The People’s Republic of China has taken substantial steps to reform its financial system, especially the banking sector, since 1995. The speed of banking reform has accelerated after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001. This study examines the impact of recent banking reforms and of WTO accession on the cost efficiency of the Chinese banking sector. We use a non-parametric approach to investigate the efficiency trend and productivity growth of banks in China between 1998 and 2006. We also compare the efficiency and productivity growth of different banking ownership groups prior to and after joining the WTO. We find that, on average, domestic banks outperform their foreign counterparts over the sample period in terms of overall and allocative efficiency, but they fall behind in terms of overall technical efficiency. The comparison of efficiency indexes pre and post WTO accession reveals that the efficiency of domestic banks has declined post accession, while foreign banks have enjoyed an improvement rise in their cost efficiency post WTO accession in 2001.The findings of this study further suggest that the total factor productivity of Chinese banks has weakened over the period under study. However, a pre and post analysis of WTO accession results shows that total factor productivity has improved for both domestic and foreign banks after China joined the WTO, equally owing to efficiency improvement and technological progress

Spatial imbalance of technology, which refers to unevenness or disproportionality in a spatial distribution of technology, is of key importance in the harmonious and balanced development of the world economy. This study is an attempt to develop a comparable map-independent analysis that measures spatial distribution, deviation angle, shift distance, direction and velocity of the gravity center (location-related spatial imbalance analysis) from an international range. Analyzing respectively on the gravity centers of different attribute values of 44 countries or regions and studying on the effects of the gravity centers of GDP, FDI and population on the technology center of gravity, it comes to the following conclusions: (1) the imbalance of spatial distribution is existing and will lasts for a long time; (2) the spatial distributions of GDP, FDI, and population don’t coincide with that of technology in longitude and latitude only except that the latitude distribution of FDI coincide with latitude and longitude distribution of technology; (3) the distributions of gravity centers of technology and population approximately record a south-east extending; (4) the distributions of gravity centers of GDP and FDI take on a loop-line movement with a clockwise rotation; (5) the gravity centers of GDP, FDI, population are positively associated with the gravity center of technology in latitude rather than in longitude. (6)Besides, the average velocity of different gravity centers is approximately 300km per year except that the gravity center of GDP shifts at an average speed of a little more than 9km per year. Combining analyses of the spatial distribution, deviation angle, shift distance, direction and velocity with the calculation of the coordinates’ correlation coefficients of the gravity centers, the hypotheses are partially supported. This study provides insight into the possible relationships between spatial distribution of technology, harmonious economic development and population spatial shift, and generates some interesting avenues for future research.

Motivated by diverse anecdotal evidences from the Chinese markets and focusing on a technologically following firm, this paper analyzes how the managerial compensation structure affects the managerial innovative incentives, the vertical differential output competition, and the evolutions of the industry structure. To this end, multiple effects of quality improvements are identified. The managerial conservatism in taking risky product innovations, which is resulted from the obliteration of the cost-adjusting effect by trivial incentive weight, is aggravated by foregone conservatisms. This leads to the widening of the quality gaps between it and the leading firm, and the deterioration of its market performances. After fulfilling an innovation, however, the firm becomes complacent. Driven by these two tendencies, the percentage of the industries in which the following firms abandon their R&D activities forever is decreasing in their incentive weights and increasing in time. The extensions of the process innovation, the managerial innovative agressiveness, and the interactions between product innovation and process innovation are also examined, as well as the implications of the compensation structure of the leading firm and the spillovers.

This paper examines the relationship between private benefits and the discount of private equity offerings. Measuring private benefits in terms of both control rights and cash flow, we find that private benefits are primarily attributed to control right rather than ownership. By using a measure, the Banzhaf power index, that could better reflects the largest shareholder’s relative influence over the firm. We find that the largest shareholder’s control power decreases, even though her ownership increases after private placement. It indicates that the largest shareholder is willing to give up some control power in private placement. In addition, we find that motivation and the type of investors in private placements significantly influences price discount.

Based on the brief analysis of the theory, we analyze the governance effect of the dynamic allocation of control rights and contingent transfer mechanism through an experiment and show that the dynamic allocation of control rights and contingent transfer mechanism are benefit for limiting the manager’s private benefits and protecting the investors’ return. While, the more the control transfers, the less effort the manager spends in private benefits and the more in the firm’s value. We also show that given more perfect external information revealed and monitoring mechanism, the governance effect of the dynamic allocation of control rights and contingent transfer mechanism will be improved more notable.

Business groups organized by pyramids enable the ultimate shareholders to control a portfolio of firms with less cash requirement. Further, corporate pyramid induces an internal capital market and makes capital transfer more convenient within the pyramid. In China, the state and business groups control a large number of listed firms through pyramidal ownership structure. What role does the corporate pyramid play in firms’ investment decisions? What is its influence on firm performance? This paper investigates the capital investment and firm performance from the perspective of pyramidal ownership structure. We find that as the layers of corporate pyramid increases, the capital overinvestment declines. The negative relations between pyramid and overinvestment exist for both state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs), which indicate that increasing the layers within corporate pyramid reduces the likelihood of overinvestment of the listing firm and improving investment efficiency. Moreover, we show that the effects of increasing the layers of corporate pyramid on accounting performance are different for SOEs and NSOES. For SOEs, increasing the layers of pyramid results in less government interference on the listed firm and more flexibility in operate. Therefore, increasing pyramidal layers is positively related to accounting performance. While for NSOEs, pyramiding is to build an internal capital market for the ultimate shareholder’s capital investment. Although pyramid may reduce overinvestment of the listing firm, agency costs may offset the positive effect and induce a lower accounting performance.

Like other major countries in the world, Chinese listed firms have recently experienced a dramatic rise in executive compensation. However, the arguments that could explain the same phenomena in developed countries can not be extended to the case in China. First, most Chinese listed firms are controlled by the state, thus management cannot set their own compensations through captured boards as suggested by Bebchuk and Fried (2004). Second, very few listed firms in China granted stock options and/or common stocks as part of executive compensations prior to 2005. There is little possibility that executives increased their own compensations by offering stock-option plans implied by Bolton et al. (2006). Based on the facts that the legal investor protection has been improved in China, we argue theoretically and empirically in this paper that the rise in executive compensation of Chinese listed firms can be attributed to the enhancement of legal investor protection. Since the management has to give up part of their private benefit with the improvement of legal investor protection, some private benefits extracted by management before have to be paid in an explicit way in order to make management incentive compatible. This finding partially leads to the increasing trend in executive compensations. It therefore provides a new perspective to explain why executive compensations keep rising in this emerging market where legal investor protection has been improving.

Feedback is the trading strategy of irrational investors. Positive feedback traders' buying or selling behavior is decided by the stock price of the preceding period. On the presence of positive feedback trading, stock market returns show characteristics which are different from these assumed in the classical financial theory, and thus make the stock market fluctuate extraordinarily. This essay establishes a model with the participation of positive feedback trader and rational trader,. The irrational traders adopt feedback trading strategy. Based on the model, we used Monte Carlo simulation method to produce a time series. We computed the kurtosis, tail-index and the autocorrelation coefficient of the time series and compared with the relevant quantity of Shanghai stock market index time series. It turned out that our model can provide a powerful expression to the fat-tail and autocorrelation characteristics of stock market return.

The ignorance of market friction causes the invalid portfolio investment, and whether the arrangement of capital structure is reasonable will influence the income of funding cost, effective utilization of non-selfowned and funding risk level. Therefore, portfolio model under the assumption of complete market lacks of practically instructiveness. Capital structure factor and transaction cost do influence the portfolio decision in the capital market. On the basis of capital structure factor and transaction cost during the process of investment, this article improve the portfolio model that CVaR control proposed by Rockafeller and Uryasev, built a CVaR portfolio model with capital structure factor and transaction cost. Empirical studies indicates that the changes of capital structure factor and transaction cost lead to the movement of efficient frontier on CVaR portfolio model and the changes of upper and lower limit.