大股东性质与企业绩效——国有股减持的一个经验证据

以我国上市公司为样本,研究了大股东所有权性质变更对公司绩效的影响。所选样本在样本区间的实证结果表明,从总体上看,企业由政府直接控制型公司转变为非政府直接控制型公司后,仅表现出显著的盈余管理,公司盈利能力没有发生变化。进一步分析发现,其中发生了高层管理人员更换(简称“高层更换”)的公司,短期盈利能力显著提高;面临激烈市场竞争的企业,盈利能力得到了根本改善。研究结果为国有股减持和股权多元化提供了经验证据,论证了引入市场导向的大股东、健全经营者任免机制和加强市场竞争对深化企业改革的意义。     

Modeling Earnings Dynamics

In this paper, we use indirect inference to estimate a joint model of earnings, employment, job changes, wage rates, and work hours over a career. We use the model to address a number of important questions in labor economics, including the source of the experience profile of wages, the response of job changes to outside wage offers, and the effects of seniority on job changes. We also study the dynamic response of wage rates, hours, and earnings to various shocks, and measure the relative contributions of the shocks to the variance of earnings in a given year and over a lifetime. We find that human capital accounts for most of the growth of earnings over a career, although job seniority and job mobility also play significant roles. Unemployment shocks have a large impact on earnings in the short run, as well as a substantial long‐term effect that operates through the wage rate. Shocks associated with job changes and unemployment make a large contribution to the variance of career earnings and operate mostly through the job‐specific error components of wages and hours.     

Wage Expectations for Higher Education Students in Spain

We assess students' ability to forecast future earnings by using data on expected wages self‐reported by college students with different graduation horizons. We find a significant gender gap, by which wage expectations are systematically lower for women than for men. However, women do not fully account for the gender gap in their future earnings. We also find that student performance, degree type, and graduation horizon play a relevant role in wage forecasts. In any case, students' expectations do not conform market wages but become more realistic as they approach graduation.     

Firm Size or Firm Age? The Effect on Wages Using Matched Employer–Employee Data

Abstract. This paper uses matched employer–employee data set for Sweden to study the relationship between firm age and wages, systematically addressing a variety of possible explanations for observing a firm age–wage effect. Results show considerable heterogeneity across years, along segments of the firm age distribution and across industries. For 1995, a positive relationship is found between firm age and wages. This relationship is robust to inclusion of variables that might affect results. Taking into account that larger firms are also older firms, results show that inclusion of firm age does not alter the positive effect of firm size on wages.     

Union Wage Setting,Employment and Investment: a Survey of Theory and Empirical Evidence

Abstract. This paper provides a survey of recent theoretical and empirical research on union wage setting, employment and investment. The basic models of union wage setting and employment are presented in a unified framework. The distinction between insiders and outsiders is introduced as an extension of the basic models. Empirical evidence on union preferences and on the performance of the various models is accessibly ordered. Finally, attention is paid to the effects of strategic behaviour between union and firm on wages, employment and investment.     

Firing Costs,Efficiency Wages and Unemployment

This paper uses a Shapiro–Stiglitz efficiency wage model to analyse the effects of firing costs on wages, employment, expected utility and profits. It considers that the probability of a non–shirker being fired depends on an exogenous shock which follows a two–state Markov process. It finds that higher severance payments give rise to lower wages, a lower unemployment rate, an increase in firms’ profits and a decrease in the utility of both workers and the unemployed. These conclusions derive from the finding that a greater probability of keeping one’s job, because of higher firing costs, raises the value of the job and reduces the worker’s incentives to behave opportunistically; this enables firms to reduce wages. Hence, if firms pay efficiency wages, a higher degree of labour market flexibility increases unemployment.     

中国证券市场审计任期与盈余质量关系的实证检验

安然事件以来,审计任期与盈余(经审计的)质量的关系成为了研究热点.本文运用中国证券市场1998-2004年上市公司的公开数据,同时从事务所任期与合伙人任期两大层面实证检验了审计任期与盈余质量之间的关系.实证结果显示:随着会计师事务所审计任期的增加,盈余质量显著地表现出先逐渐上升后逐渐下降的倒U型趋势,且拐点稳定在6-8年之间;而随着签字注册会计师审计任期的增加,盈余质量虽然总体逐渐上升,但此趋势尚不足够显著.     

Population Ageing and the Labour Market: Evidence from Italy

Individual data from eight waves of the European Community Household Panel are used to investigate the impact of cohort size on age‐earnings and employment profiles of Italian male workers. Evidence that over the life cycle cohort size depresses employment opportunities of men with low education and earnings and employment rates of men with intermediate and high qualifications born into large cohorts is found. These results are used to carry out a simple simulation where the average future wages of Italian male workers are projected for the next 4.5 decades. According to this simulation, the wages of Italian male workers will follow a hump‐shaped pattern in the next three decades, before slightly increasing again.     

Early Career Mobility and Earnings Profiles of German Apprentices: Theory and Empirical Evidence

We investigate how apprenticeship training affects the early career mobility and earnings profiles of young apprentices in Germany. The heterogeneous quality and nature (whether general or firm specific) of training across firms is expected to be reflected in the post‐apprenticeship mobility and earning patterns of young workers. In this paper, we argue that a simple model of training and labour turnover can explain such patterns. Specifically, assuming that job changes are associated with a loss of accumulated firm‐specific skills, the model predicts that although movers initially experience a productivity loss, their earnings grow at a faster rate than those of stayers. As job changes become more costly the longer a worker stays with the training firm, later movers experience a larger reduction in their earnings compared with direct movers. Estimated selectivity‐corrected earnings equations for movers and stayers, based on data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP), support the predictions of the model and highlight important differences in earnings profiles and mobility patterns by apprenticeship firm size.     

Beauty and the Labor Market: Accounting for the Additional Effects of Personality and Grooming

This paper examines the influence of three non‐cognitive personal traits — beauty, personality, and grooming — on the labor market earnings of young adults. It extends the analyses of Hamermesh and Biddle [1994 , American Economic Review 84(5): 1174–1194] and others who focus primarily on the effects of beauty on labor market earnings. We find that personality and grooming significantly affect wages, and their inclusion in a model of wage determination reduces somewhat the effects of beauty. We also find some evidence of employer discrimination based on these traits in the setting of wages.     

Product Positioning and Pricing Under Production Cost Considerations*

A framework in a competitive environment is proposed that incorporates production cost and economies of scale in the problem of positioning a product for a market segment. The model facilitates the existence of a Nash equilibrium in prices and product positions. As such, firms can simultaneously choose prices and product positions for the segment. This result improves the traditional theory on equilibria points in prices and product positions where firms choose their product positions first and then set their prices. A sensitivity analysis demonstrates the effects of changes in the unit savings derived from economies of scale or the cost of furnishing a product with its attributes by one firm on the product positions, prices, and profits of all competing firms. More important, the paper examines the effect on prices and profits of competing firms when one of the firms repositions its product closer to the segment's ideal point. It is shown that under certain conditions, the profit of a firm may actually decrease as it redesigns its product closer to the segment's ideal point. These conditions assist management to identify the product design beyond which enhancements of the product would lead to lower profits because of increasing production costs. It is also shown that the price of this firm increases. Past research supports the idea that positioning a brand closer to the ideal point, given fixed product positions of competing firms, would lead to greater buyer preferences and eventually higher profits. The price and profits of the competing firm may increase or decrease. Conditions are derived under which a movement towards the segment's ideal point by one firm would lead to higher profits by the competing firm.     

资产减值准备计提与会计盈余价值相关性——基于亏损上市公司的经验数据

采用多元回归分析法对新8项资产减值会计准则实施后,亏损上市公司计提减值准备的会计盈余价值相关性进行了研究;在考虑公司个体特点的基础上,运用堆栈回归法,采用随机效应影响的面板模型对不同年度的会计盈余价值相关性进行了分析。结果表明,从整体上看,亏损上市公司计提减值准备后增强了会计盈余价值相关性,计提的减值准备数据本身也具有增量价值相关性,同时,研究还发现盈利年度的会计信息对投资者的决策更有用,以及投资者不能有效识别微利公司的会计盈余质量,而对于巨亏公司与通过转回减值准备方式盈利的公司来说,其会计盈余数据的决策相关性显著低于对比公司,投资者能有效识别其会计盈余质量,这为2007年1月1日起实施的《企业会计准则第8号——资产减值》中规定的关于已计提的减值准备不可转回的会计准则变革提供了实证支持。     

A Great Place to Start: The Role of Military Service on Human Capital Formation

The earnings of African–American males have increased over the past 50 years, but differences remain in their economic progress relative to either white or Asian Americans. Labor market disadvantages in the past were the result of overt discrimination; however, the earnings gap experienced over the last four decades has been linked to human capital differences. It is hypothesized that military service provides a buffer for adverse labor market characteristics for young African–American males and this paper discusses the returns from military service as reflected in their post–service wages.     

The Male–Female Wage Gap and the Firm Effect: The Case of Young Italian Workers

Abstract. The idea that wages are determined by firm and individual characteristics suggests that there is a firm effect that influences wage differentials. This paper presents the results of an empirical analysis of gender wage differentials — based on INPS data for people between the ages of 20 and 25 employed in the private sector in 1996 — which takes into account the characteristics of workers and firms using a two‐level random‐effects model. Firm variables proved to be significant, and the proportion of females in the firm showed a negative effect on the wages of both men and women.     

Wage and Productivity Differentials in Japan: The Role of Labor Market Mechanisms

This paper aims at explaining two stylized facts of the Lost Decade in Japan: rising wage inequalities and increasing firm‐level productivity differentials. We build a model where firms can choose between efficiency wages with endogenous effort and competitive wages, and show that it can replicate those facts. Using Japanese microeconomic data, we find support for the existence of efficiency wages in one group of firms and competitive wages in the other group. Based on those results, a simulation shows that the share of firms using efficiency wages has declined, within sectors, during the Lost Decade, as predicted by the model.     

Profit Sharing and the Firm‐Size Wage Premium

This study analyzes the relationships among wages, firm size, and profit sharing schemes. We develop a simple theoretical model and explore the relationship empirically using high‐quality panel data. The theoretical model shows that the firm‐size wage premium decreases in the presence of profit sharing. The empirical results based on rich matched employee‐employer data for private sector wage earners in Finland show that the firm‐size wage premium is modest, and it becomes negligible when we account for profit sharing and covariates describing assortative matching and monopsony behavior. The analysis suggests that profit sharing schemes embody effects of firm‐specific unobservables that raise productivity, support rent sharing, and boost wages.     

Earnings per share is a poor indicator of performance

One of the greatest dangers in corporate financial planning is failing to separate investment decision making from financial policy, because poor quality investments can appear to be desirable as a result of the particular financing vehicle employed. Management's focus of attention should not be rates of growth and earnings per share or return on net worth. Rather, the most important measure of corporate performance is the rate of return on total capital employed. The paper identifies the dangers of employing an earnings per share criterion for evaluating corporate performance, and suggests an alternative: focusing on a company's free cash flow, net operating profits after taxes minus the amount of new capital investment required in order to generate future profits. The author presents an analytical framework employing his free cash flow concept which can be applied to pricing and financing acquisitions.     

Underemployment Benefit Effects on Employment and Income Distribution: What We Should Learn from the System of the Cassa Integrazione Guadagni

ABSTRACT: Two aspects distinguish the Cassa Integrazione Guadagni (CIG) from most other European under or unemployment public benefit schemes: an institutionally fixed replacement ratio and a rotation principle imposing a labour-sharing regime. Within a labour-sharing approach, the comparison between the CIG unitary subsidy proportioned to the corresponding wage rate and the European standard fixed in nominal terms, shows that, ceteris paribus, employment is lower and profits are higher in the former system. Moreover, given the indexation provided by CIG, aggregate supply is vertical in this system while it is positively sloped in the other. Consequently, employment, real profits and real wages are constant in the former case, while they are positively correlated to the good quality of the states of nature in the latter. If the tax-based financing of public benefits is not — as it is not in Italy — experience-rated, the CIG regime induces moral hazard behaviours harmful to the State: it leads firms and unions to agree on relatively high wages, thus raising the value of both working and non-working time. Without affecting the unions’average requests and the firms’profits, this attitude reduces employment and increases under or unemployment public subsidies.     

Does Rent‐sharing Profit Female and Male Workers? Evidence from Israeli Matched Employer–Employee Data

This paper analyses the impact of workplace characteristics on individual wages based on a unique cross‐section matched employer–employee data set for the Israeli private manufacturing sector in 1995. Specifically, we examine the effects of the interaction between profit‐sharing and wages on the gender wage gap. The empirical findings show that individual compensation is significantly and positively correlated with firms’ profits‐per‐employee, even when controlling for all of the following: group effects in the residuals, individual and firms’ characteristics, industry wage differentials and endogeneity of profits. Wage–profit elasticity is found to be 11 per cent and it does not significantly differ between genders. With respect to the overall gender wage gap (on average women earn 28 per cent less than men), the results show that within firms there is no gender discrimination and that 12 per cent of this gap can be explained by the wage–profits profile and by the fact that women are more likely to be employed in less profitable firms than men.     

Earnings‐related Severance Pay

Abstract. In an efficiency wage economy, lump‐sum severance pay from which shirkers can be excluded raises employment. However, severance payments are usually related to wages. It is shown that earnings‐related, mandated severance pay will have ambiguous employment effects if effort can be varied continuously. A substitution of the earnings‐related for the lump‐sum component reduces employment. Thus, the prevalent form of severance payments in OECD countries might have less advantageous employment effects than previously conjectured.