中国上市公司大股东对投资影响的实证研究

本文以2001-2003年非金融性A股公司为样本,实证研究了大股东对公司投资的影响,并检验了这种影响的原因和作用过程。研究结果发现:(1)上市公司的投资与现金流显著正相关;(2)第一大股东持股比例与投资-现金流敏感度之间呈显著的负相关关系;(3)当第一大股东是国家时,负相关系数更大,当第一大股东是境内社会法人时,负相关关系不显著; (4)实证表明“过度投资”是中国上市公司投资的典型表现,这不仅符合“自由现金流假说”的推断,而且可以用“信息不对称理论”中“融资约束”相反的“融资便利”来加以解释。     

Can Overconfidence be Debiased by Low‐Probability/High‐Consequence Events?

During the first half of 2008, China suffered three natural disasters: a heavy snow storm, an outbreak of hand‐foot‐mouth disease, and a severe earthquake. The aim of the present study is to explore how low‐probability/high‐consequence events influence overconfidence. In Study 1, opportunity samples were obtained by recruiting residents in three different types of disaster‐hit areas to answer a peer‐comparison probability judgment questionnaire about 1 month after the corresponding disaster occurred. The performance of 539 participants in disaster‐hit areas was compared with that of 142 residents in a nondisaster area. The findings indicate that residents in disaster‐hit areas were less overconfident than those in the nondisaster area on both positive and negative events. In Study 2, we surveyed a total of 336 quake‐victims 4 and 11 months after the earthquake to examine whether the impact of disasters on overconfidence would decay with time. The resulting data indicate that the disaster victims became more overconfident as time elapsed. The overall findings suggest that low‐probability/high‐consequence events could make people less overconfident and more rational and seem to serve as a function of debiasing.     

Integrating Risk and Resilience Approaches to Catastrophe Management in Engineering Systems

Recent natural and man‐made catastrophes, such as the Fukushima nuclear power plant, flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Haiti earthquake, and the mortgage derivatives crisis, have renewed interest in the concept of resilience, especially as it relates to complex systems vulnerable to multiple or cascading failures. Although the meaning of resilience is contested in different contexts, in general resilience is understood to mean the capacity to adapt to changing conditions without catastrophic loss of form or function. In the context of engineering systems, this has sometimes been interpreted as the probability that system conditions might exceed an irrevocable tipping point. However, we argue that this approach improperly conflates resilience and risk perspectives by expressing resilience exclusively in risk terms. In contrast, we describe resilience as an emergent property of what an engineering system does, rather than a static property the system has. Therefore, resilience cannot be measured at the systems scale solely from examination of component parts. Instead, resilience is better understood as the outcome of a recursive process that includes: sensing, anticipation, learning, and adaptation. In this approach, resilience analysis can be understood as differentiable from, but complementary to, risk analysis, with important implications for the adaptive management of complex, coupled engineering systems. Management of the 2011 flooding in the Mississippi River Basin is discussed as an example of the successes and challenges of resilience‐based management of complex natural systems that have been extensively altered by engineered structures.     

Shareholders' Wealth‐Maximizing Operating Decisions and Risk Management Practices in a Mixed Contracts Economy

This paper establishes a critically important positive role for operations management practices and financial hedging. We show that operations management decisions and financial hedging are intertwined, and we advance a framework that can identify their combined effects on investors' wealth. We show that: (a) firms (publicly traded corporations) will optimally hold adequate riskless working capital (e.g., cash) to minimize the cost of obtaining non‐financial inputs, and the magnitude of this cash holding depends on operating details, and (b) operations management and financial hedging can lower firms' cash requirements, and boost productivity, defined as the wealth created in the firm per dollar of invested capital. Productivity‐enhancing practices—by “freeing up” some of the firm's cash—can maximize the investors' wealth. We show that these results obtain because firms' contracts with many of the providers of non‐financial inputs are not traded, and because investors can invest not just in public corporations but also in businesses “outside the markets” (e.g., proprietorships, partnerships, and private equity).     

Housing the deprived and underprivileged: India's experience

Despite the country's achievements in different fields over the last quarter century, India has yet to tackle one of its basic needs—that of housing for its teeming millions. Developing countries in their understandable eagerness to raise production in industry, are paying a scant attention to the housing of the deprived and underprivileged segment of the population. Recognition of housing as an infrastructure in the total economic development for a welfare state has yet to come. This paper concludes, through a systematic examination of the problem, that planners and policy makers should give priority and evolve a set of desirable and feasible standards for housing the needy rather than widening the imbalances in one of the basic needs of a man. It is advocated that the crisis in housing the deprived and underprivileged can and should be averted.     

Sensitivity and Uncertainty Studies of the CRAC2 Computer Code

We have studied the sensitivity of health impacts from nuclear reactor accidents, as predicted by the CRAC2 computer code, to the following sources of uncertainty: (1) the model for plume rise, (2) the model for wet deposition, (3) the meteorological bin-sampling procedure for selecting weather sequences with rain, (4) the dose conversion factors for inhalation as affected by uncertainties in the particle size of the carrier aerosol and the clearance rates of radionuclides from the respiratory tract, (5) the weathering half-time for external ground-surface exposure, and (6) the transfer coefficients for terrestrial foodchain pathways. Predicted health impacts usually showed little sensitivity to use of an alternative plume-rise model or a modified rain-bin structure in bin-sampling. Health impacts often were quite sensitive to use of an alternative wet-deposition model in single-trial runs with rain during plume passage, but were less sensitive to the model in bin-sampling runs. Uncertainties in the inhalation dose conversion factors had important effects on early injuries in single-trial runs. Latent cancer fatalities were moderately sensitive to uncertainties in the weathering half-time for ground-surface exposure, but showed little sensitivity to the transfer coefficients for terrestrial foodchain pathways. Sensitivities of CRAC2 predictions to uncertainties in the models and parameters also depended on the magnitude of the source term, and some of the effects on early health effects were comparable to those that were due only to selection of different sets of weather sequences in bin-sampling.     

Research and planning inputs to metropolitan development system

The paper emphasizes the need of developing countries like India for organizing information, research and perspective planning requirements of the Metropolitan Development System (MDS) in an integrated manner. This MDS is viewed as consisting of special agencies that are concerned with development in the various sectors, linked into a system by an appropriate organization of the information, research and planning inputs. The paper lists specific items of input required for well-informed decision making. The role of a data bank as the key element in the integrated system is stressed. It is advocated that the information, research and perspective planning inputs should be provided by the Metropolitan Development Authorities (MDA) which are being formed to coordinate metropolitan development.     

Dedicated Transportation Subnetworks: Design,Analysis, and Insights

A dedicated subnetwork (DSN) refers to a subset of lanes, with associated loads, in a shipper's transportation network, for which resources—trucks, drivers, and other equipment—are exclusively assigned to accomplish shipping requirements. The resources assigned to a DSN are not shared with the rest of the shipper's network. Thus, a DSN is an autonomously operated subnetwork and, hence, can be subcontracted. We address a novel problem of extracting a DSN for outsourcing to one or more subcontractors, with the objective of maximizing the shipper's savings. In their pure form, the defining conditions of a DSN are often too restrictive to enable the extraction of a sizable subnetwork. We consider two notions—deadheading and lane‐sharing—that aid in improving the size of the DSN. We show that all the optimization problems involved are both strongly NP‐hard and APX‐hard, and demonstrate several polynomially solvable special cases arising from topological properties of the network and parametric relationships. Next, we develop a network‐flow‐based heuristic that provides near‐optimal solutions to practical instances in reasonable time. Finally, using a test bed based on data obtained from a national 3PL company, we demonstrate the substantial monetary impact of subcontracting a DSN and offer useful managerial insights.     

Regional Risk Assessment for Point Source Pollution Based on a Water Quality Model of the Taipu River,China

Point source pollution is one of the main threats to regional environmental health. Based on a water quality model, a methodology to assess the regional risk of point source pollution is proposed. The assessment procedure includes five parts: (1) identifying risk source units and estimating source emissions using Monte Carlo algorithms; (2) observing hydrological and water quality data of the assessed area, and evaluating the selected water quality model; (3) screening out the assessment endpoints and analyzing receptor vulnerability with the Choquet fuzzy integral algorithm; (4) using the water quality model introduced in the second step to predict pollutant concentrations for various source emission scenarios and analyzing hazards of risk sources; and finally, (5) using the source hazard values and receptor vulnerability scores to estimate overall regional risk. The proposed method, based on the Water Quality Analysis Simulation Program (WASP), was applied in the region of the Taipu River, which is in the Taihu Basin, China. Results of source hazard and receptor vulnerability analysis allowed us to describe aquatic ecological, human health, and socioeconomic risks individually, and also integrated risks in the Taipu region, from a series of risk curves. Risk contributions of sources to receptors were ranked, and the spatial distribution of risk levels was presented. By changing the input conditions, we were able to estimate risks for a range of scenarios. Thus, the proposed procedure may also be used by decisionmakers for long‐term dynamic risk prediction.     

金融危机下行为金融学研究的历史使命:一个综述

金融危机是一个宏观概念,对金融危机的研究通常是从宏观角度展开,然而金融市场的宏观整体波动往往依托于微观主体的系统性行为偏差。为探讨宏观金融危机背后的微观行为机理,本文从行为金融学视角,将个人微观行为对金融市场系统性偏差和危机产生的作用机制进行系统的文献整理。基于金融危机的微观行为机理,以羊群行为为核心,从认知偏差、金融代理投资和社会互动因素三个角度,综述了导致羊群行为发生并致使资产泡沫的形成和破裂,最终发生金融危机的过程的微观诱因。最后,本文展望了行为金融学对应对金融危机和重构金融体系研究的历史使命以及学科自身的发展方向。