From 2013 onwards, the Chinese central government has subjected the largest state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to ‘disciplinary inspections’ to weed out and punish graft and other corruption. While this policy has been somewhat successful in punishing corruption—over 160 top SOE officials have been indicted—we show that the principal economic impact of these inspections has been to significantly cut investment by targeted firms, leading to a major decline in profitability, innovation and Tobin’s Q. Expenditures on R&D, entertainment, and travel also decline dramatically. The most obvious explanation is that the fear induced in SOE managers, who have limited risk-promoting equity holdings or incentive compensation and few external employment options, deterred them from taking risky but value-enhancing investments post-audit.

This paper provides a first systematic analysis of urban vibrancy in human capital supply in explaining persistent geographic firm valuation dispersion in China. We find persistent, significant city-to-city differences in Tobin’s q, especially among large, mature, or high labor-intensive firms. To explain such geographic differences in firm valuations, we identify several factors of the endowed city competitive advantages in creating human capital that play important roles in explaining the persistent geographic firm valuation premia. Our evidence suggests that city geographic location and initial cumulated human capital supply have created long-lasting, and growing, shareholder wealth by attracting and retaining talents and human resources in local firms.

We decompose the difference between a firm’s market and book values into two components: intangible assets that can be created by competing firms through SG&A/R&D expenditures, and the residual denoted as franchise value (FV). The estimated parameters in the model for creating intangible assets by capitalizing R&D/SG&A expenditures vary significantly across industries. Consistent with FV being a measure of economic rents and quasi-rents, ceteris paribus, higher FV firms face fewer product market threats, have higher markups, and their investments are less sensitive to their total Tobin’s Q. In contrast, firms with higher capitalized intangible assets, face higher product market threats.

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.

风险投资企业绩效受政府背景影响视市场化进程的不同而产生变化。论文通过风险企业家政府背景、风险投资企业董事会政府背景强度及深度三个维度，刻画了风险投资企业政府背景，以2006年至2010年包括创业板在内的575家有风险投资持股的上市公司为研究样本，对政府背景、市场化进程与风险投资企业绩效的相关性进行了实证检验。结果显示：（1）无论是采用净资产收益率衡量企业现实业绩还是Tobin Q值衡量企业成长价值，高管政府背景都对风险投资企业绩效有正面影响；（2）市场化程度较高的地区，高管政府背景对风险投资企业绩效影响更显著。

本文以2005—2007年上市公司为样本，从事前和事后两个维度考察地方政府质量影响 企业投资和资本配置效率的机理。研究发现，高质量政府可更有效利用市场进行有效的资源 配置，帮助企业获取更有价值的投资项目，并帮助企业获取外源融资。本文分别用投资对 TobinQ和对现金流的敏感性度量投资效率与融资约束，结果显示，政府质量与投资和Q值敏 感度正相关，与投资和现金流敏感度负相关。相对国有企业，政府质量改善资本配置效率的 功能在民营企业中更显著，相对中央国有企，政府质量改善资本配置效率功能在地方国企中 更显著。事后业绩增长的考察表明，在较高的投资与Q敏感度和较低的投资与现金流敏感度 的地区，投资能显著促进企业增长。上述结论在一系列稳健性检验后仍成立。

We empirically evaluate 20 prominent contributions to a broad range of areas in the empirical corporate finance literature. We assemble the necessary data and then apply a single, simple econometric method, the connected-groups approach of Abowd, Karmarz, and Margolis (1999), to appraise the extent to which prevailing empirical specifications explain variation of the dependent variable, differ in composition of fit arising from various classes of independent variables, and exhibit resistance to omitted variable bias and other endogeneity problems. In particular, we identify and estimate the role of observed and unobserved firm- and manager-specific characteristics in determining primary features of corporate governance, financial policy, payout policy, investment policy, and performance. Observed firm characteristics do best in explaining market leverage and CEO pay level and worst for takeover defenses and outcomes. Observed manager characteristics have relatively high power to explain CEO contract design and low power for firm focus and investment policy. Estimated specifications without firm and manager fixed effects do poorly in explaining variation in CEO duality, corporate control variables, and capital expenditures, and best in explaining executive pay level, board size, market leverage, corporate cash holdings, and firm risk. Including manager and firm fixed effects, along with firm and manager observables, delivers the best fit for dividend payout, the propensity to adopt antitakeover defenses, firm risk, board size, and firm focus. In terms of source, unobserved manager attributes deliver a high proportion of explained variation in the dependent variable for executive wealth-performance sensitivity, board independence, board size, and sensitivity of expected executive compensation to firm risk. In contrast, unobserved firm attributes provide a high proportion of variation explained for dividend payout, antitakeover defenses, book and market leverage, and corporate cash holdings. In part, these results suggest where empiricists could look for better proxies for what current theory identifies as important and where theorists could focus in building new models that encompass economic forces not contained in existing models. Finally, we assess the relevance of omitted variables and endogeneity for conventional empirical designs in the various subfields. Including manager and firm fixed effects significantly alters inference on primary explanatory variables in 17 of the 20 representative subfield specifications.

We study how financial constraints affect the process of firm agglomeration and, in particular, the creation of conglomerates and firms with subsidiaries. We focus on the constraints related to the geographical segmentation of the debt market. We argue that conglomerates/firms with subsidiaries are born as the outcome of a process of agglomeration around less financially constrained firms. This has three major implications: a) conglomerates (firm with subsidiaries) should be less financially constrained than single-segment (no-subsidiary) firms, b) the headquarters – in general the seat of the aggregating company – should be the least financially constrained unit of the new entity and therefore firms with subsidiaries should be more likely to borrow at the headquarters level, c) if conglomerates (firms with subsidiaries) are less financially constrained than the average firm in the market, their Tobin’s Q should be lower than that of the single-segment (no-subsidiary) firms in the same industries – i.e., they should display a “conglomerate (firm with subsidiaries) discount”. We test these hypotheses employing a novel – and exogenous – geographical-based measure of financial constraints. We focus on the US corporations from 1997 to 2004. We show that firms headquartered in less financially constrained areas are more likely to be headquarters of conglomerates/firms with subsidiaries and that conglomerates/firms with subsidiaries are less financially constrained. At the moment of agglomeration (M&A) we document a significant negative relation between the difference in a degree of financial constraints between the bidder and the target and the probability of choosing the target as well as the value created in M&A. In the years following the acquisition Tobin’s Q of acquirers are decreasing relative to their peers which is consistent with the fact that access to lower cost of financing allows to implement projects with marginal Q lower than the average Q of existing projects. Next, we find that the less financially constrained is the headquarters compared to the subsidiaries, the higher is the percentage of the total financing that takes place at headquarters level. Finally, we document a strong positive correlation between the difference in financial constraints of the conglomerate (firm with subsidiaries) and the average degree of financial constraints of the single-segment (no-subsidiary) firms and the conglomerate (firm with subsidiaries) discount. Our findings suggest that conglomerates/firms with subsidiaries are less constrained because less constrained firms take over more constrained ones.

本文利用金融市场中短期融资券的推出作为影响公司融资约束的外部冲击研究公司融资约束变化对公司投资行为的影响。利用短期融资券作为自然实验，本文解决了研究融资约束对投资影响中融资约束分类标准问题以及Tobin Q的度量误差问题。基于中国上市公司2002-2007年的数据，本文发现短期融资券的推出缓解了公司融资约束，最终对公司投资产生了显著的正面影响。这种影响在统计意义上和经济意义上均是显著的。在使用多种其他方式度量公司投资机会和投资，本文的结论都是稳健的。本文的证据表明金融工具创新对公司融资约束和公司投资行为产生了重要影响，因此通过金融市场创新改变公司融资约束对实体经济具有重要意义。

本文从纵向和横向两个维度，用单指标（ROA 和Tobin q）和综合指标（采用主成分分 析法将11 个财务指标合成而得）两种比较方法，对2007 年以前完成A+H 双重上市的45 家非金融类公司在A 股上市后的业绩变化进行了实证研究。单指标和综合指标的纵向比较 发现，整体而言，双重上市后公司业绩并未得到提高。在为每一家双重上市公司按一定规则 选取了单纯A 股上市公司作为对照样本后，本文继续采取单指标和综合指标进行横向比较。 结果表明，双重上市第一年的ROA 明显低于对照组，但综合业绩情况好于对照组；而从Tobin q 来看，双重上市公司明显不如对照组。本文认为，在我国特殊的制度背景下，双重上市的 积极效应难以发挥，这导致双重上市难以提高公司业绩。