This paper examines the impact of air pollution on media slant of public listed firms in China. Using air quality and media data at the city level, we find that lower air quality generally leads to lower media slant. When the air quality changes from lightly polluted to heavily polluted, the number of negative sentences increases by about 2%. Our subsample analysis shows that the effect of air pollution on media slant is similar for large and small firms but is stronger for non-SOE firms. Furthermore, the effect of air pollution on media slant is stronger for firms of non-heavily polluted industry than for firms in heavily polluted industries. These results suggest that air pollution affects media slant.

Skewness preference, the tendency to overweight the probability of extreme tail events, can affect managerial decision making. We find that Chinese listed firms managed by CEOs who experienced a largely unpredictable rare event, namely the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, during their earlier executive careers have lower stock price crash risk measured by negative skewness. This effect especially matters for CEOs whose experienced events are more salient. Furthermore, professional epidemic experience induces CEOs to deter stock price crashes through altering financial reporting strategies. Overall, entrepreneurs’ skewness preference can reduce the negative skewness of stock returns.

本文结合中国家庭追踪调查 2012 年和 2014 年的数据，利用 Probit 模型实证分析了代际职业流动对家庭股市参与的影响。结果表明向上的代际职业流动能正向显著促进家庭股市参与。这一结论在考虑内生性、替换因变量、剔除极端值之后依然显著成立。进一步机制检验分析发现，代际职业流动会通过认知能力来影响股市参与。本文从代际职业流动视角切入，分析了影响股市参与的因素，丰富了相关理论研究，对于如何提高代际职业流动性，推进家庭参与股市也给出了建议。

VIX Exchange-traded Products (ETPs) provide tracking on the return of a constant-maturity VIX futures index, instead of the uninvestable VIX spot index. In this paper, we develop a comprehensive framework to analyze the behaviors and fundamental drivers of the tracking performance of regular and leveraged VIX ETPs. In this framework, naïve investors in VIX ETPs expect to achieve the ETP’s leverage ratio multiplied by the VIX return during their holding period, but the actual ETP return can deviate dramatically from this naïve expected return due to four components of return deviation. The index substitution deviation is shown to be the primary driver of the bull (inverse) VIX ETPs’ return erosion (enhancement), which can be explained by the negative roll-yield as a result of the contango term structure of VIX futures. For leveraged VIX ETPs over multiple holding days, the compounding deviation due to the “constant-leverage trap” can be sizable. In addition, the NAV deviation due to expense ratio and fund management issues is negative, and the inefficiency deviation doesn’t accumulate over long holding periods due to the creation/redemption feature. Our return deviation framework can be generalized to other ETPs tracking indices that are either uninvestable or unrealistic to replicate.

本文应用一种新的套保方法,将套期保值由统计竞技恢复回衍生品定价的金融问题,简化了套保比率的估计,并避免了拼接期货合约等问题。针对黄金、股指、外汇和原油等四大类期货市场的实证研究,我们发现:如果将期货的定价与风险管理割裂开来,忽视期货合约的衍生品本性,各种复杂的套保估计方法,套保效率都不如简单套保;如果将定价理论融入套保实践,通过预测持有成本计算套保比率,套保效果将比简单套保更出色。此外,套保合约的选择方面,简单套保倾向于选择交割日较近的合约,而考虑定价约束的套保新方法,合约的选择不受到期日的影响。因此,套保比率的研究重心应该从期货与现货价格的统计关系转到持有成本的预测上来。

政府对发展战略的选择会相应地决定一个国家的银行业结构。如果一个发展中国家推行重工业优先发展的赶超战略，并建立起以资本密集型产业为主的产业结构，则政府的理性选择是建立由大银行主导的垄断型银行业结构，通过发挥大银行在动员大规模资金上的优势，让资金需求规模巨大的资本密集型大企业能够以尽可能低的交易成本获取足够多的金融资源。但是，在大银行为主的银行业结构下，中小企业会陷入严重的融资约束，这是政府为推行赶超战略而扭曲银行业结构的必然结果和代价。本文指出，发展中国家适合以中小银行为主、大银行为辅的银行业结构，但要建立起这样的银行业结构，发展中国家首先要摒弃赶超战略，转而推行比较优势战略，发展符合本国比较优势的劳动密集型产业，并在这一过程中积累资本，让资本密集型大企业拥有自生能力，这是成功消除金融抑制（包括大银行垄断、利率管制、政府干预银行贷款等）的必要条件。

基于上交所国债数据，沿袭Bliss（1997）的研究方法，并加以改进和扩展，本文考察了五种静态利率期限结构模型在样本内拟合和样本外预测上的表现，与Bliss（1997）的结果不同，我们发现三次平滑样条方法更适合用来估计中国上交所国债的利率期限结构。在此基础上，通过对各模型的拟合误差和预测误差的分析，我们发现，利率期限结构并不是决定国债定价的唯一系统性因素，上交所国债的定价还需考虑国债的其他特征因素，投资者在交易国债时会将息票金额的大小和债券价格的溢价程度考虑到定价中来,这一点与Bliss（1997）的结论相同。作为本文结论的一个应用以及对Bliss（1997）方法的扩展，我们发现息票金额低的投资组合和溢价因子高的投资组合分别高于息票金额高的投资组合和溢价因子低的投资组合，本文的结论对国债投资有一定的指导意义。

基于新经济地理学和投资学的交叉视角，大量研究发现风险投资机构倾向于投资其所在地附近的企业。French and Poterba(1991)发现，美国投资者更愿意将资金投资于本国资本市场，而忽略了国外的投资机会，因而将其称为本国偏好之谜Covaland Moskowitz(1999)最早将本国偏好转移到本地偏好（local bias）发现风险投资更乐意投资本地企业或者在距离上离自己办公地址更近的企业；Ivkovic and Weisbenner（2005）、Cumming and Dai（2009）、Brown etal(2011)、Hochberg and Rauh（2013）、李志萍和罗国锋等（2014）等也得出了同样的结论。 国外学者的研究主要围绕独立风险投资的本地偏好成因和经济后果展开国内学者注意到风险投资类型的重要影响作用尤其是本地风险投资机构的本地偏好成因及其经济后果研究，但在我国制度环境下，相比于从本地异地视角，从政府风险投资视角研究本地偏好能够更加深入地揭示本地偏好的成因。现有文献更多地利用信息不对称和心理学理论对本地偏好进行解释，但这并不足以解释政府风险投资机构的本地偏好。因此，本文试图从政府干预风险投资市场的动机出发，依托政府职能理论和官员激励理论解释政府风险投资机构的本 地偏好，以丰富对本地偏好成因的文献解读。 研究结果发现：相较于独立风险投资机构而言，政府风险投资机构的本地偏好程度更高；而且政府绝对控股的风险投资机构本地偏好更强；在市场化进程较高的地区，政府干预程度更低，政府风险投资的本地偏好程度会减弱。本文的创新之处在于：（1）从政府干预风险投资市场的动机出发，利用政府职能理论和官员激励理论对政府风险投资机构的本地偏好成因进行解释并加以实证检验，（2）揭示了政府控股程度对本地偏好的影响。

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the effects of Computer-based Trad-ing (CBT) on Treasury bond expected returns. We document a strong relationship between bond expected returns and the overall intensity at which CBT takes place in the Treasury market. Investing in bonds with the largest beta to the aggregate CBT intensity and shorting those with the smallest generates large and significant returns. Those returns are not due to compensation for facing conventional sources of risk or to transaction costs. Our results are consistent with capital-flow based explanations implied by asset pricing models with institutional investors.

We propose a model of bank monitoring and borrower financial misreporting. Using the staggered liberalization of the banking sector in China as a natural experiment, we find that, consistent with the model’s prediction, entry by more efficient foreign banks reduces corporate misreporting fraud. Fraud reduction is greatest among borrowers of foreign banks, but fraud also drops among borrowers of domestic banks, suggesting a spillover effect. As predicted by the model, fraud reduction is greatest for borrowers with higher levels of fixed assets or lower levels of working capital. Our evidence suggests that improved bank monitoring reduces financial misreporting.