Corporate misconduct poses significant risks to financial markets, undermining investor confidence and economic stability. This study investigates the influence of World Heritage culture, with its social, historical, and symbolic values, on reducing corporate misconduct. Using firm-level data from China, with its rich cultural heritage and ancient civilization, we find a significant negative association between the number of World Heritage sites near a company and corporate misconduct. This suggests that a richer World Heritage culture fosters an informal institutional environment that mitigates corporate misconduct. This effect is robust across 100 km, 200 km, and 300 km thresholds and remains significant when using a binary misconduct indicator. The results also show that World Heritage culture enhances corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social capital, which in turn reduces corporate misconduct. Additionally, the impact of World Heritage culture is more pronounced in firms located in high social trust areas, those with high institutional investor supervision, and those farther from regulatory authorities. These findings advance academic knowledge and offer practical implications for policymakers and investors.

We examine global integration in the market for asset management, as indicated by the correlation of mutual fund flows across domiciles. We observe no leading role for the US relative to flows in other domiciles. We do observe a strong global factor in MF flows, and global integration is linked to a market’s business environment, safety from conflict, and political stability. In regional analysis, Europe represents an integrated market for asset management, led by Luxembourg, where asset managers face common flow risks across domiciles. The Asia-Pacific region displays no coherent patterns of correlations across domiciles.

By combining (i) the economic theory of rational expectation bubbles, (ii) behavioral finance on imitation and herding of investors and traders and (iii) the mathematical and statistical physics of bifurcations and phase transitions, the logperiodic power law (LPPL) model has been developed as a flexible tool to detect bubbles. The LPPL model considers the faster-than-exponential (power law with finite-time singularity) increase in asset prices decorated by accelerating oscillations as the main diagnostic of bubbles. It embodies a positive feedback loop of higher return anticipations competing with negative feedback spirals of crash expectations. We use the LPPL model in one of its incarnations to analyze two bubbles and subsequent market crashes in two important indexes in the Chinese stock markets between May 2005 and July 2009. Both the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite index (US ticker symbol SSEC) and Shenzhen Stock Exchange Component index (SZSC) exhibited such behavior in two distinct time periods: 1) from mid-2005, bursting in October 2007 and 2) from November 2008, bursting in the beginning of August 2009. We successfully predicted time windows for both crashes in advance [24, 1] with the same methods used to successfully predict the peak in mid-2006 of the US housing bubble [37] and the peak in July 2008 of the global oil bubble [26]. The more recent bubble in the Chinese indexes was detected and its end or change of regime was predicted independently by two groups with similar results, showing that the model has been well-documented and can be replicated by industrial practitioners. Here we present more detailed analysis of the individual Chinese index predictions and of the methods used to make and test them. We complement the detection of log-periodic behavior with Lomb spectral analysis of detrended residuals and (H, q)-derivative of logarithmic indexes for both bubbles. We perform unit-root tests on the residuals from the log-periodic power law model to confirm the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck property of bounded residuals, in agreement with the consistent model of ‘explosive’ financial bubbles [16].

In the last decade hundreds of companies from emerging markets have listed and issued their shares on American and European stock markets. Brazil, Russia, India, and China have been the main origins of issuers, and stock exchanges in the US, UK, and Luxembourg the main destinations involved in the process. These four home and three host markets are the empirical focus of our paper. We present an economic geography perspective on foreign listing, grounded in the geography of finance and the world city network approaches, emphasising the sub-national origins of foreign listed firms, the role of intermediaries, and competition for foreign listings. Our analysis, based on comprehensive up-to-date datasets on foreign listings and foreign equity issues, shows that issuers listing their shares abroad are predominantly large firms, coming from relatively high-growth, internationally oriented sectors, and headquartered overwhelmingly in the leading economic centres of their home countries. Key intermediaries in the foreign listing process are the global investment banks, operating out of the very same centres where the cross-listing firms and the host stock exchanges are located. Competition between host stock markets is affected significantly by the direct and indirect costs of foreign listing, including disclosure and corporate governance requirements. Both host markets and intermediaries exhibit a significant degree of specialisation in terms of the size, sector, and geographical origin of the issuers they serve. The market for foreign listing differs significantly between the BRIC countries, with the Chinese market offering the greatest potential, but facing considerable uncertainty.

Following the economic theory of venture capital financing, a corporate governance framework would be economically efficient for VC investments if it can help to reduce the agency costs resulted from information and incentive problems. As a highly successful model in global VC industry, the standard VC investment contracts in the Silicon Valley practice largely embody such framework. By analyzing the currently effective laws and regulations of China that are relevant to the investments by foreign venture capitalists, this paper paints a practical picture of how can foreign VC investors do business in China. It is shown that, the recent (starting from 2005) outflow of a set of new legal norms can be seen as a dividing point for the VC investing practice in China – the previously prevalent mode “offshore structuring, offshore listing” is challenged, and both the investment and exit are gradually pulled onshore. This being said, the current Chinese laws and institutions still cannot fully entertain the contracting and governance model prevalent in the Silicon Valley VC investment practices, and in this light, this paper goes on to discuss, in particular, various strategies that may be availed by foreign VC firms to tap and/or subvert the Chinese laws and regulations when financing Chinese new ventures. Finally, under the theme of globalization and crossborder corporate governance convergence, this paper provides a general comment on the currently applicable Chinese legal framework, and stresses the importance of converging towards efficient legal rules through contracts in the global competitive village.

MBO在激励内部人积极性、降低代理成本、改善企业经营状况等方面起到了积极的作用，因而获得了广泛的应用。MBO有利于加快中国国有企业改革步伐、完善激励机。但MBO对中国经济界来说还是一个新生事物，中国企业制度、企业义务、所有权结构、市场成熟度和人的主观意识形态等方面与MBO的发源地美国相比有较大的差别。因此，MBO在中国近年来的实施过程中遇到了许多难以回避的矛盾。对于舶来品，应正确面对，积极探索，不能因噎废食，害怕问题而将有价值的东西拒之门外。

以企业理论的视角，要素市场化，特别是企业家才能这一生产要素的市场化是中国国企改革成功的前提条件。而改革程序的公正又是改革本身公平与公正的前提。在未实现企业家才能的市场化，也即经理人市场尚未建立之前，就大范围地推行国企MBO，不符合企业理论与要素市场化优先观点下的国企改革次序。

银行并购是银行业变革在组织机构上的体现，这种变革的发生会对并购银行本身、相关国家及国际银行业产生深远影响。中国经过20多年的改革，银行业发生了巨变。随着经济增长回升和经济效益改善，银行业的竞争力明显提高，已初步具备了现代商业银行特征。然而，一些诸如竞争性不强、规模不经济；稳健性不够、盈利能力不强等深层次问题依然突出。通过分析，银行并购可以提升中国银行业的竞争力，解决规模不经济问题，培育大型企业集团等，是一种较为理想的改革中国银行业的途径。 It is bank’s M&A that embodies the change of banking on the organization.While inevitably exert a far-reaching effect on the banks themselves in the M&A, it will influence the relevant country and international banking. In China, the banking structure has been improved since 1978. But from the data in the paper, we can conclude that Chinese banking market structure is oligopoly and Chinese banking is inefficient. It is just the Bank’s M&A that can promote the competitive power of Chinese banking, improve the reasonable allocation of financial resources, and ensure the stability of financial system. Bank’s M&A is a comparatively ideal way to reform Chinese banking.

MBO是美国80年代兼并浪潮中涌现出来的一种通过融资来完成并购的方式。融资并购又称杠杆收购（Leveraged Buyout，简称LBO），它是通过公司的大量举债，增加财务杠杆向某一公司股东购买股票，完成购并活动。“经理层融资收购”是杠杆收购的一种。当运用杠杆收购的主体是目标公司的经理层时，就称之为MBO。 在中国，由于国有和绝大多数集体企业长期以来存在“所有者缺位现象”，产权不明晰，而且企业的经营管理层（也就是公司实际的控制者）的管理才能一直不能得到应有的有效回报，激励严重不足。因此，MBO作为降低代理成本的有效工具，对于中国企业的发展有着特别重要的意义。

本文主要研究国有企业MBO在现实经济环境中的可行性。基本结论是：在企业国有的背景下，MBO的实施会出现实施前提与实施目标同一的悖论。本文通过对MBO方案主体的行为限制、行为可能等进行分析，推导出国有条件下， MBO后经营者行为并不一定会符合标准企业理论的规定条件，从而产生悖论。而该悖论存在表明，在目前状态，国有企业的MBO不宜过分提倡。国有企业的民营化应主要放在引进外部投资人身上。