Providing reliable information to clients: The case of environmental remediation

This article provides an overview and discusses the implications for the recognition, measurement, presentation, and disclosure requirements for environmental remediation liabilities. The overview and discussion is based upon the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' Statement of Position (SOP) 96-1 “Environmental Remediation Liabilities.” The article concludes with a discussion of the CPAs reporting responsibility and related issues with respect to this major contemporary issue. A primary goal of CPA firms is to provide quality service to clients, In the realm of financial reporting, quality service means providing clients with reliable information. An increasing number of small and large businesses are exposed to high costs and large potential liability for cleanup of environmentally hazardous material. Certified public accountants who provide compilation, review, or audit services with respect to a non-public entity's financial statements need to be aware of the disclosure and reporting implications of companies confronted with disposal and cleanup of hazardous material.     

基于宏观经济政策视角的我国企业负债融资研究

本文主要研究宏观经济政策作为政府调控宏观经济的手段,对微观企业融资行为所产生的显著影响。鉴于我国金融机构对国有和非国有企业存在的信贷歧视,本文剔除了产权性质的影响,把国有上市企业作为研究对象,以2003-2013年的数据为样本。首先研究宏观经济政策对国有企业负债融资行为的影响,证明了财政政策的扩张和货币政策的紧缩都能促进国有企业负债融资的增加。然后进一步研究宏观经济政策的外部因素和股权结构的内部因素对负债融资与企业业绩之间关系的影响,研究结果表明扩张性财政政策下,负债融资与国有企业绩效正相关;紧缩性货币政策下,负债融资与国有企业绩效负相关;股权结构分散程度的增加,有利于促进负债融资对国有企业绩效的正效应。     

Determinants of Risk Perceptions of a Hazardous Waste Site

A before-stimulus-after quasi-experimental design is used to assess the factors relating to risk perceptions of a hazardous waste site. First, a pretest obtains measures of attitudes and beliefs about hazardous waste and waste sites. Second, a detailed hypothetical "Superfund" scenario, including a complex cleanup plan, is introduced. Finally, indices of health risk estimates, trust, knowledge, and other pertinent beliefs are obtained. Levels of concern, both before and after cleanup, are the dependent variables. Independent variables include risk management options, health risk estimates, trust, and five sociodemographic characteristics. Concern is extremely high prior to cleanup and moderately high after cleanup. Concern is a clear function of health risk estimates. Toxic chemicals from waste sites are viewed as a major cause of multiple health problems, especially cancers. Accurate health risk estimates moderate fears and are linked to levels of education. Education, however, does not explain concern. Trust is a major factor explaining concern and health risk estimates. The implications of these findings for risk communication is discussed.     

小微企业的正规化与非正规选择——基于双重信贷市场的视角

考虑双重信贷市场的融资可得性及正规化成本与优势,小微企业该如何进行正规化与非正规化选择,是摆在理论界与实务界面前重要的决策问题。文章以道德风险框架下的连续投资模型为基础,从企业融资角度出发,构建了基于企业初始资产的小微企业正规化与非正规化选择模型。通过引入正规化成本与双重信贷市场的不同信贷机制,比较分析了不同初始资产水平下,小微企业选择正规化与非正规化的效用。研究结果表明:存在一个初始资产阀值,在阀值之上,小微企业应该选择正规化;在阀值之下则应该选择非正规化。此外,通过进一步拓展模型,探讨了正规金融部门的组织质量、企业提供抵押的可能性和新型金融机构为小微企业提供金融服务对该选择的影响。     

中小企业财务结构与债务融资——基于浙江的实证研究

本文以浙江省中小企业为研究对象,主要讨论三方面内容:(1)全面分析中小企业财务结构与融资特征,并与大企业作比较,得出部分中小企业在偿债能力、营运能力和盈利能力等方面均不逊色于大企业;(2)从微观角度,对中小企业主要债务融资作实证分析,识别影响中小企业债务融资的显著因素。同时根据回归结果证实中小企业主要债务融资的成本比较优势依次为:银行贷款、商业信用和非正规融资;(3)利用Kruskal-Wallis非参数检验方法判定行业因素对中小企业债务融资具有显著差异,而宏观经济周期变化对其影响却不显著。本文结论的另一重要性在于,填补主流文献仅从金融机构或政府金融体制建设等方面寻求破解中小企业融资难的答案,从企业自身经营和财务管理角度解释中小企业融资难的原因。     

Incentives Policies to Site Hazardous Waste Facilities

This paper addresses the use of mitigation and compensation as incentives policies to stimulate agreement between parties interested in siting a hazardous waste facility and potential host communities. We develop a model of facility siting that distinguishes five key factors which influence the acceptability of a proposed facility when considered in relation to status quo conditions. This model then is used to examine the effectiveness of different incentives policies with regard to (a) mitigating the perceived risks and (b) compensating the adverse impacts of a hazardous waste facility.     

Social Equity and Environmental Risk1

Social equity has become an important concern of the environmental movement over the past decade. The equity issue is analyzed here for practically all of the inactive hazardous waste disposal sites on the National Priorities List (NPL) regulated under the Comprehensive Response Compensation and Liability Act and its 1986 Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (CERCLA/ SARA). Two dimensions of equity are emphasized, namely, site location relative to the location of minority populations and the distribution of cleanup plans or Records of Decision (ROD) across communities with NPL sites that have different socioeconomic characteristics. With respect to site location, the percentage of Blacks and Hispanics aggregated at the Census Place or MCD level in communities with NPL sites was greater than is typical nationwide (largely attributable to the concentration of minority populations in a few large urban areas with NPL sites). In contrast, the percentage of the population below the poverty line in communities with NPL sites largely matched that of the nation as a whole. With respect to site cleanup, communities with relatively higher percentages of racial minority populations have fewer cleanup plans (Records of Decision signed) than other communities with NPL sites. Whether a ROD exists is influenced by when the site was designated for the NPL: sites designated earlier (prior to the SARA amendments of 1986) are more likely to have RODs, and also less likely to have high proportions of racial minority populations than sites designated later. This implies that initially the designation process may have resulted in NPL sites being located disproportionately in minority areas, but this pattern seems to be reversing itself in more recently designated sites. As with any statistical analysis, these findings are findings of association and not causality. Thus, racial and ethnic disproportionalities with respect to inactive hazardous waste site location seem to be concentrated in a relatively few areas. Disproportionalities with respect to cleanup do exist, but appear to be more a function of the nature of the process of designation of NPL sites in the early 1980s rather than a result of actions connected with cleanup plans per se. Further investigations are needed at alternative geographic scales to discern the sensitivity of patterns of inequity to distance from the sites.     

LIABILITY AS A CATALYST FOR PRODUCT STEWARDSHIP

Product stewardship is the set of practices related to reducing risks from chemical and process hazards in a company's supply chain. This paper develops an economic framework for evaluating supply chain liability as a driver for adopting product stewardship. Companies that outsource production may face residual liability for damages from use of their products, when liabilities are large enough to exceed supply chain partners' assets. The resulting potential liabilities can be mitigated through product stewardship. This paper shows that extended supply chain liabilities provide incentives for investing in reducing environmental hazards throughout the supply chain.     

Risks of Hazardous Waste Sites versus Asteroid and Comet Impacts: Accounting for the Discrepancies in U.S. Resource Allocation

Approximately $6 billion is spent annually in the United States on the cleanup of sites regulated under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, or Superfund). The current health risks posed by such sites are thought to be quite small; the expenditures are justified primarily as protecting hypothetical future residents of these sites. Approximately 0.05% of this amount, or $3 million, is spent annually by the U.S. government on the detection of asteroids or comets that could strike the earth. Such damaging impacts do occur from time to time--most recently in 1908 in an unpopulated region of Siberia--but no person is confirmed ever to have died as a result. Anticipated impacts over the course of 1 million years would yield deaths that, when annualized, total approximately 4,000 per year. The risk reduction goal for CERCLA is 15 orders of magnitude greater than that for asteroid/comet detection. A modest increase in resources devoted to asteroid detection would greatly increase the chances of early detection of a threatening object, allowing an effective defense to be attempted. This article argues that the much lower risk-to-resources ratio for CERCLA cleanups than for asteroid and comet detection can be explained by four primary factors: (1) the regard for future generations, since CERCLA benefits mainly the unborn; (2) concrete fears, since toxics are much more feared than asteroids or comets; (3) the source of the threat, since toxic contamination is caused by human beings, unlike impacts from space objects; and (4) the greater political constituencies for hazardous waste cleanup than for space object detection.     

Estimating Risk Assessment Exposure Point Concentrations when the Data Are Not Normal or Lognormal

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends the use of the one-sided 95% upper confidence limit of the arithmetic mean based on either a normal or lognormal distribution for the contaminant (or exposure point) concentration term in the Superfund risk assessment process. When the data are not normal or lognormal this recommended approach may overestimate the exposure point concentration (EPC) and may lead to unecessary cleanup at a hazardous waste site. The EPA concentration term only seems to perform like alternative EPC methods when the data are well fit by a lognormal distribution. Several alternative methods for calculating the EPC are investigated and compared using soil data collected from three hazardous waste sites in Montana, Utah, and Colorado. For data sets that are well fit by a lognormal distribution, values for the Chebychev inequality or the EPA concentration term may be appropriate EPCs. For data sets where the soil concentration data are well fit by gamma distributions, Wong's method may be used for calculating EPCs. The studentized bootstrap-t and Hall's bootstrap-t transformation are recommended for EPC calculation when all distribution fits are poor. If a data set is well fit by a distribution, parametric bootstrap may provide a suitable EPC.     

非标准审计意见对上市公司投资行为的影响

文章利用沪深两市A股非金融类上市公司2007—2015年数据,检验了非标准无保留审计意见(以下简称“非标意见”)对公司投资规模和投资效率的影响。结果发现,就投资规模而言,非标意见会导致公司投资规模显著降低;就投资效率而言,非标意见可以抑制公司的过度投资行为从而提高投资效率,但其也会加剧投资不足从而降低投资效率。因此,非标意见对投资过度和投资不足的影响是不同的。进一步研究表明,非标意见对投资的影响与公司产权性质、所在地区金融环境、融资约束有关。并且,非标意见对投资的影响具有长期性;此外,不同类型的非标意见对投资的影响是有差异的。其中,无法表示意见对投资的影响最为明显。     

基于贝叶斯方法的中国商业银行同业借贷网络中系统风险研究

本文针对银行双边风险敞口不可得的现实情况，利用贝叶斯方法，基于185家商业银行在2013年至2017年的资产负债表数据，在不同的网络结构设定下构建吉布斯抽样器，根据大量银行间同业资产及同业负债分布矩阵的样本，考察了每个商业银行在负面冲击后违约的概率及其分布。研究结果表明，银行同业借贷网络的结构能够显著影响银行的系统风险和违约概率。当网络连接概率处于中等水平时，冲击影响的范围最广；在完全网络结构下，风险分担的作用大于风险传染。总之，银行同业借贷既可以分担风险，也成为了风险传染的渠道，这种功能的转换取决于以下几类因素的相互作用：冲击的性质，例如冲击的规模，受冲击银行的数量以及冲击涉及的银行类型；清算时资产的贬值程度；银行自身资产负债表的特征。如果仅考虑银行同业借贷渠道，样本期内最稳健的银行系统是在2017年，而2014年的银行系统最脆弱。     

Investorenreaktionen auf die Fair Value-Bilanzierung von Verbindlichkeiten nach IFRS – eine experimentelle Untersuchung

The fair value-option in IAS 39 allows fair value measurement for liabilities. It is often criticized that a change in a company’s own credit risk affects the value of its liabilities. Therefore it is doubtful whether the fair value-option is in fact useful for investors’ decision making process. Due to a lack of empirical studies concerning the understandability and the decision usefulness of the fair value-option, this paper contains the results of an experimental investigation. We find that investors are misled by fair values for liabilities, though under some circumstances they learn to interpret the financial data correctly. We compare fair value measurement of liabilities with an accounting treatment based on German GAAP.     

基于实物期权的基础设施投资担保负担测度及其风险管理研究

从项目筹资模式、基础设施投资担保现状及其运营模式视角出发,研究我国基础设施投资担保负担测度及其风险管理的问题。利用或有负债思想,分析了下限式担保、上下限式担保、比例上下限式担保三类担保的期权特性及其影响因素;运用实物期权方法,在不同担保方式下构建了担保负担评估模型,并对相应的项目投资担保负担进行了评估,结果显示,投资收益担保是担保负担最直接、最主要的来源,也是政府方的或有负债,基于此,在融资谈判中,政府方可以通过调整项目投资担保水平和项目投资担保方式来控制担保负担和锁定担保风险。     

Overcoming the liability of foreignness without strong firm capabilities — the value of market-based resources

The concept of “liability of foreignness” — the costs of doing business abroad — has been known and discussed since the mid-1970s. At the core of these discussions is the role that firm capabilities play in overcoming or limiting these costs. This raises the question of how firms with inappropriate, limited or constrained capabilities relative to their host environment overcome the liability of foreignness. This paper focuses on the subsidiaries of “emerging multinationals” and how they manage the demands of a technologically and economically highly developed host country. A host location with sophisticated markets and well-developed institutional infrastructure may be a highly challenging environment for firms that have grown their organizational capabilities in less developed contexts. This paper explores that situation and considers how resources available on the market — for example through supplier inputs — assist subsidiaries to benefit from their presence in a munificent location. Despite the acknowledged limitations of a transaction-based approach, this paper presents evidence that purchasing knowledge provides an accessible strategy for overcoming some liabilities of foreignness.     

The Cost of Compensating Asbestos Victims Under the Occupational Disease Compensation Act of 1983

The potentially huge financial liability due to asbestos product suits and the resulting filings for reorganization in bankruptcy by Manville, UNR Industries, Inc., and Amatex, has become a major public policy concern. In response to the problem several bills have been introduced in the Congress to provide compensation for asbestos (and other occupational disease) victims. This paper estimates the cost of compensating asbestos victims under the provisions of the "Occupational Disease Compensation Act of 1983," introduced by Congressman George Miller. Utilizing fatality projections from studies by Enterline, Selikoff, and Walker, and assumptions regarding likely claims filing and success rates, duration and degree of disability, and medical expenses, first year costs for this legislation are estimated to range from a low of $131 million to a high of $ billion. Present value cost estimates at a 2% real discount rate range from $3 billion to $56 billion. The paper also estimates the impact of possible modifications to the compensation provisions of the legislation. Reducing medical payments by the amount received from medicare would lower costs by 3-4%. Providing survivors with a 3-year lump sum benefit rather than a 5-year lump sum payment would save 20-25% as would offsetting the 5-year lump sum by expected social security old age and disability benefits. Combining all of these changes would reduce costs by almost 50%.     

Stigma as a multispatial-scale process: Revisiting the worst US Superfund sites

Areas immediately adjacent to 16 of the first US national priority (NPL) hazardous waste sites that also had pre-superfund emergency actions were examined to measure local stigma. Four decades after their NPL designation, I found marked variation in these areas’ social, public health and environmental attributes. About one-third of these small areas fit the stereotype of stressed areas with environmental injustice challenges. Yet, another one-third of these sites have better measurable outcomes than a combination of their host states and counties. For example, they have elevated levels of broadband access and their local jurisdictions are classified as safe and attractive to families. I conclude that long-term stigma around a Superfund site was limited by US EPA actions, as well as by progressive state and local governments, and community groups, in other words, contributions from parties at multiple geographical scales.     

基于双层粒子群算法的上下游企业决策动态博弈

在寡占市场结构下,企业决策的相互影响效应更为显著。此时,企业融资决策与产量决策不仅仅影响自身利润,而且会影响到其竞争对手和供应商,即企业决策的策略性效应。本文建立一个考虑产品替代性与市场环境波动内外因素的上下游企业决策动态博弈模型,针对该决策的非线性二层规划特点,设计了双层粒子群算法,并利用计算机模拟技术对企业决策进行分析。研究发现,第一,产品替代性对下游企业具有“竞争效应”,对上游企业生产与利润的下降具有“放大效应”,与债务融资有限责任效应相比,产品替代性的“竞争效应”对下游企业的产量博弈和利润影响更大,另外,债务有限责任效应与债务破产效应左右了产品替代性对下游企业破产均衡临界点的影响。第二,市场环境波动对企业产量决策和融资决策的影响与Wanzenried^[1]一致,而在影响下游企业利润和上游企业利润方面并不一致。第三,针对负债融资和无负债融资两种情形,不论产品替代性较低还是较高,较高的市场波动程度都能促使负债企业考虑债务的战略性作用,且下游企业的负债融资存在“Prisoner’s Dilemma”现象,上游企业的垄断市场地位则加强了下游企业负债融资“放大效应”对其利润的影响。     

Practical Methods for Meeting Remediation Goals at Hazardous Waste Sites

Risk-based cleanup goals or preliminary remediation goals (PRGs) are established at hazardous waste sites when contaminant concentrations in air, soil, surface water, or groundwater exceed specified acceptable risk levels. When derived in accordance with the Environmental Protection Agency's risk assessment guidance, the PRG is intended to represent the average contaminant concentration within an exposure unit area that is left on the site following remediation. The PRG, however, frequently has been used inconsistently at Superfund sites with a number of remediation decisions using the PRG as a not-to-exceed concentration (NTEC). Such misapplications could result in overly conservative and unnecessarily costly remedial actions. The PRG should be applied in remedial actions in the same manner in which it was generated. Statistical methods, such as Bower's Confidence Response Goal, and mathematical methods such as "iterative removal of hot spots," are available to assist in the development of NTECs that ensure the average postremediation contaminant concentration is at or below the PRG. These NTECs can provide the risk manager with a more practical cleanup goal. In addition, an acute PRG can be developed to ensure that contaminant concentrations left on-site following remediation are not so high as to pose an acute or short-term health risk if excessive exposure to small areas of the site should occur. A case study demonstrates cost savings of five to ten times associated with the more scientifically sound use of the PRG as a postremediation site average, and development of a separate NTEC and acute PRG based on the methods referenced in this article.     

国际金融危机对我国GDP影响到底多大?

本文利用区分加工出口的非竞争型投入产出模型,从受到金融危机影响最为直接的出口、投资角度出发,测算了国际金融危机对我国GDP到底产生了多大的影响。测算结果显示:金融危机对我国经济的负面影响是逐步加剧的;重点行业影响较为集中;由于我国宏观调控政策的及时准确,刺激经济计划的有效实施在很大程度上抵消了金融危机的影响。