本文对2006 年1 月《上市公司股权激励管理办法(试行)》出台后，实施股权 激励方案的42 家上市公司的股权激励效果及其微观机制进行了实证分析。在采用倾向得分匹 配分析法(PSM)和Bootstrap 法克服样本选择偏误和小样本偏误后，我们发现：(1)整体而言， 股权激励能够有效提升经营绩效；(2)最终控制权会显著影响激励效果，民营控股公司的股权 激励能够显著降低代理成本，提高公司的投资支出，进而提升公司绩效，而在国有控股公司 中效果并不明显；(3)不同激励方式会产生不同的效果，相对于以股票为基础的激励方式，以 期权为基础的激励方式能显著降低代理成本，效果更佳；(4)所有权结构也会影响股权激励的 效果，在股权较为分散的公司中，股权激励能显著降低经理人与股东之间的代理成本，激励 的效果较好。

在“第二类代理问题”占据主导和隐性激励大量存在的中国市场，上市公司高管看起来显著较低的薪酬和持股比例亦可能导致较为严重的过度激励。有鉴于此，本文首先基于边际递减效应构建理论模型分析高管激励与企业业绩之间的作用逻辑，而后选择2001-2006年中国上市公司的经验证据，具体讨论高管薪酬和股权激励对企业业绩的影响。有别于先前多数有关高管激励的研究文献，本文不仅清晰展现了高管薪酬和股权激励存在的滞后效应；而且进一步在理论分析和实证研究中发现并证实高管薪酬和股权激励存在显著的边际递减效应和过度激励，即高管薪酬激励和股权激励与企业业绩之间在表现为线性正相关关系的同时呈现出左低右高的倒“U”形关系，薪酬和持股比例过低不利于激发高管努力工作改善企业业绩，但薪酬和持股比例过高亦可能导致高管过度激励，同样会对企业业绩造成损害。

面对中小企业融资困境，国内普通将建立第三方担保制度作为解决问题的主要措施，本文从一个简单的模型出发，仔细研究了第三方担保制度对借款人融资条件的影响。研究结果表明：一个完整的担保制度设计应包括：担保费率、风险分担、担保资本数量（或放大倍数）、担保机构类型和再担保安排等多个方面。担保制度只有在较严格的条件下才能促进融资，需满足较高的项目期望收益率、较低的损失分担比例和代偿率、足够高的担保费率和放大倍数。在担保机制设计中，利用集中担保（分散化）、反担保、资产清算价值、关联交易等有助于改进融资条件，但更重要的是担保机构的比较监督优势。因此建立专业型、同业协会型和产业关联型的担保机构最为有效。考虑到担保改善融资条件以及担保监督资本的稀缺性，改善中小企业融资难的关键在于发展具有监督技术优势的信贷机构，而不是过度依赖于建立众多的第三方担保机构，特别是政府支持的担保制度。对担保业的具体监管政策也不宜作出硬性规定。

在控制了其他可能的影响因素，本文通过考察导致股改前后我国上市公司绩效变化的因素，实证检验了股权分置改革对于完善我国上市公司治理结构的作用，从而在一定程度上对股改的政策效果进行了评估。本文的研究表明，股改显著地提高了上市公司的业绩，从而在一定程度上实现了股改的完善公司治理结构的目的；股改预期实现的公司治理完善功能是通过使非流通股和流通股股东形成共同的公司治理利益基础，提升大股东治理的正向作用，以及使机构投资者发挥更加积极的监督制衡作用，并为公司控制权市场的接管威胁实施创造条件得以实现的。股改对于非国有控股公司治理结构的完善更加有效，尽管无论对于国有还是非国有控股上市公司，股改都显著地改善了其绩效。这一结果的出现一定程度上与国有控股公司委托代理链条过长和所有者缺位的问题即使在股改完成后短期内并不会发生显著改变有关。因而，国有控股企业的公司治理结构完善仍然存在巨大的改进空间。

Many studies report that government-owned banks under-perform the private banks but no studies examine the reasons of this stylized fact empirically in emerging countries during 1993~2007. This study fulfills this gap. For simplicity, the under-performance of government banks is referred to as the GOB effect. Two matching theories, Nearest-Neighbor Matching (Nearest) and Mahalanobis Metric Matching (Mahala), are adopted to seek matched banks sharing similar characteristic variables located in the same countries. We propose three hypotheses, strong policy role hypothesis, weak policy role hypothesis and no policy role hypothesis, which classifies government-owned banks as having strong, weak and no policy roles, to explain the above phenomenon. Regarding to why GOB effects are commonly observed in emerging countries, this study find that government-owned banks, after being mandated to merge with a distressed or non-distressed bank, suffer adverse performance, supporting strong and weak policy role hypothesis. On the contrary, this study also finds government-owned banks undertaking no policy role perform equally as private-owned banks on average, supporting no policy role hypothesis. Next, by supporting the above three hypotheses, we suggest that political considerations indeed depress government bank performance and the GOB effect in emerging countries are coming from the policy roles influence.

Using a sample of Chinese family firms from 2000 to 2007, we investigate whether the political connection of the family firms will help them to reduce the frictions they face in external financing in a relationship-based economy. We find that political connectedness of family firms could reduce their investment-cash flow sensitivity. More interestingly, this political connectedness effect exists only in financially constrained family firms. However, from governance dimension, we cannot find any significant variation of the political connection effect on the sensitivity of investment to cash flow. We argue that these evidences are consistent with the firm’s underinvestment arising from the asymmetric information problems, and are inconsistent with the firm’s overinvestment arising from the free-cash-flow problems.

This paper provides comprehensive description of the practice of corporate executive perquisites (perks) in China, a leading emerging economy. We find that expenses and cash payment related to corporate executive perquisites far exceed the monetary payment to top executives, consistent with the notion that perquisites are used more extensively in emerging markets to motivate and reward corporate executives. In addition to common factors known to influence the level of executive perks, we find a significantly positive link between bank ownership of company shares and executive perquisites. Further analyses suggest that higher level of executive perquisites hurt company operating efficiency and may result from the conflict of interests that banks face as both lenders and shareholders in the emerging markets: banks may choose to side with corporate executives and play less effective monitoring if they are concerned with the security of their loans.

This study conducts a firm-level analysis of the impact that the gender diversity of boards of directors has on corporate philanthropic responses to disasters. We predict a negative relationship between diversity and philanthropic contribution; as the relationship is stronger in listed firms with a better-developed institutional environment. Data were collected on the philanthropic responses of listed Chinese firms to the 5.12 Wenchuan earthquake in 2008. These data support the hypothesized negative relationship and show that it is stronger in higher level vs. lower level marketization environments; the relationship is weaker in listed firms with average gender diversity that have political connections. We also find evidence that agency cost theory explains corporate philanthropic disaster response much better than strategic philanthropic theory since women on boards of directors do not facilitate corporate donation process but rather evaluate the benefits of corporate responses to disasters. These benefits depend on the level of marketization and separation from the government, especially for listed firms with average gender diversity in China. These constructive results provide the first examination of the moderating role of institutional environment on the relationship between gender diversity and corporate philanthropic behaviors. We discuss the implications of this work for further research on diversity considering the interaction with the corporate context.

This paper attempts to address two questions: First, what is the relationship between a firm’s provision of incentives for its CEO and the CEO’s decision autonomy? Second, how does the CEO’s decision autonomy affect firm performance? Results from a simple principal‐agent model suggest that the relationship between CEO’s decision autonomy and incentive provision may vary across different decisions. We conduct our empirical analysis using World Bank Investment Climate Survey data from China. Our results show that: (i) firm’s use incentive compensation is negatively associated with CEO’s investment decision autonomy but positively associated with labor decision autonomy; and (ii) after controlling for the use of incentive compensation, CEO’s investment decision autonomy dampens, while labor decision autonomy boosts the firm’s performance. We conjecture that different level of agency costs associated with investment decision and labor decision might explain the above distinction.

Applying the principle of the bonding theory, this study examined the relationship between corporate governance practice and performance of Chinese firms that are listed in the major international stock exchanges, including NASDAQ, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore and London AIM markets, and further investigated whether the Chinese firms that adopted the corporate governance mechanisms of the stock exchanges where they are listed would outperform those of firms listed locally in the Chinese stock exchange that operates in a weak enforcement mechanism environment. Hypotheses are tested using cross sectional data. The empirical tests show a mixed result. The cross-listings in New York and NASDAQ (dual-listing is excluded) exhibit bonding premium, while those noncross- listed Chinese firms demonstrated better firm performance that those listed in London, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Further, the study shed some lights on the relative importance of various corporate governance mechanisms in enhancing the firm performance in the context of the dominance of state-owned-enterprises in the market. The results reveal that different market has different corporate governance mechanisms under its different macro-environments. For the overall Chinese listings, the second largest shareholder of a firm could play a role as an effective corporate governance mechanism in increasing the firm’s performance. A negative relationship between the size of the board and the corporate governance was found. For those cross-listed Chinese firms, by adopting the stringent financial disclosure and the famous auditing firms could increase the firm performance, but not good enough comparing to these non-cross-listed Chinese firms. Meanwhile, controlling shareholder has negative effect on firm performance for the cross-listed Chinese firms. The study suggests that merely borrowing corporate governance mechanism does not guarantee the improvement of corporate governance (further to its firm performance), rather, firm’s own background and country effects also matter.