ZHOU Mo;ZHANG Yujie;XIE Haibin;LEI Jiasu
Studies of International Finance,2021,No. 03
According to the traditional theory of capital occupation, capital occupation will lead enterprises to borrow money and improve their asset-liability ratio. However, the data from 2008 to 2016 show that the phenomenon of high capital occupation and low asset-liability ratio exists in listed central enterprises, which is inconsistent with the traditional capital occupation theory. What causes high capital occupation and low asset-liability ratio in listed central enterprises? In the literature review, the financing trade behavior of some central enterprises is included in the study. Enterprises that carry out financing trade finance in the name of trade. They use false trade behaviors to cover up capital flows among enterprises to realize inter-enterprise capital borrowing. Sufficient capital providers provide financing to capital demanders, thus obtaining huge profits. It is worth noting that enterprises engaged in financing trade will show large capital occupation scale, and may also affect the asset-liability ratio of enterprises in theory. Therefore, financing trade may be an important reason for high capital occupation and low asset-liability ratio of listed central enterprises. Using the China Stock Market & Accounting Research Database
, global statistical databases and financing trade data, this paper studies the internal logical relationship between financing trade and the mystery of high capital occupation and low asset-liability ratio of listed central enterprises after 2008. We obtain the following results through empirical studies. First, the financing trade will significantly increase the capital occupation of enterprises, but it will not cause a significant increase in asset-liability ratio through the micro-transmission channels of capital occupation. Second, enterprises that carry out financing trade will have a two-way self-locking effect. On the one hand, financing trade increases capital occupation; on the other hand, financing trade negatively regulates and even blocks the positive influence of capital occupation on enterprises’ external borrowing. This is related to the spontaneity and planning of capital occupation by enterprises engaged in financing trade, which is the main reason of high capital occupation and low asset-liability ratio of listed central enterprises. Compared with the existing research, this paper makes expansions in the following two aspects. First, the previous studies have not made empirical research on the relationship between financing trade and capital occupation and asset-liability ratio of central enterprises. However, this paper brings financing trade, a major enterprise behavior that can affect capital occupation and asset-liability ratio of central enterprises during the reporting period, into the research perspective and makes an empirical test. Second, by using the natural language processing method, combining with the financial data of listed central enterprises in China, the legal data of wenshu.court.gov.cn and macroeconomic data, this paper sorts out the financing trade enterprises and cases, and establishes links with the data of listed companies. The conclusion of this paper enriches the theory of capital occupation closely related to the asset-liability ratio of enterprises, verifies the two-way self-locking effect of financing trade on the micro-mechanism of capital occupation theory, and provides an important reference for the research in accounting, finance and other fields with asset-liability ratio as the main variable. At the same time, the analysis of financing trade and financial characteristics of enterprises in this paper can provide reference for the government to identify financing trade enterprises and prevent business risks.
LI Enji;LI Qun
R&D Management,2020,Vol 32,No. 06
Based on the data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2016, this paper used the tenure of officials to analyze the impact of promotion incentives on local government S&T expenditure. The results show that under the multi-dimensional performance appraisal, local officials strategically arrange government S&T expenditure during their term of office, and the relationship between their tenure and local government S&T expenditure is U-shaped, and the turning point occurs in the fifth to sixth year of their tenure. In addition, under the promotion incentive, the local government has significant complementary strategic interaction in S&T expenditure, and the response coefficient of government S&T expenditure in the first term of office is significantly higher than that in the second term of office, that is, when the promotion incentive is stronger, the competition of local government S&T expenditure is more intense. This shows that under the relative performance appraisal mode, the local government S&T expenditure response coefficient is significantly higher than that of the official second term. Local officials carry out yardstick competition around S&T innovation, increase government investment in S&T innovation, and improve the structure of government expenditure.
CAO Jian;ZHANG Meimei;XU Jiayang;ZHU Chenbo;ZHOU Gengui
Journal of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management,2020,Vol 34,No. 05
With the increasing demand for resources and growing consciousness on environment protection, more and more countries have attached importance to the resource recycling industry. The first step involves the collection and disposal of waste. However, in China, the formal recycling industry at present is still in its infancy. The market capacity of end-of-life products is relatively limited, and domestic consumers have a low awareness of formal recycling corporations. The government needs to subsidize the formal recyclers and design a reasonable and effective incentive mechanism to encourage them to improve their effort of collection and disposal as well as reflect their real ability. In this paper, we designed an incentive contract between the government and two recycling enterprises in a duopolistic market based on the incentive theory. Thus, we can get the realistic prerequisite of screening contracts and analyze the influence of competition degree and other factors on the government’s utility and recyclers’ benefits. Although much literature concentrates on the issue of coordinating strategy and profit distribution between government and enterprises, only little research investigates the incentive contracts used by the government and the enterprises for adverse selection and moral hazards under asymmetric information. In our model, the government acts as the principal, and the two competing duopolistic recyclers are agents. Taking the recycling capacity of recyclers as asymmetric information under the adverse selection, the degree of effort as hidden information under moral hazards, the government designs an incentive contract to identify the real type of the two recyclers and encourage them to improve recycling capacity. The analysis shows that the realistic prerequisite of a pooling contract or screening contract is related to the derivative of the government subsidy to the recycler’s capacity. The factors such as the cost of enterprises’ efforts, coefficient of absolute risk aversion, the standard deviation of exterior uncertainties, competition degree, and recycling market conditions, are also discussed in detail. We elaborated on the relationships among the expected utility of government, the expected profit of recyclers, and the recyclers’ recycling capacity under the two types of contracts based on a numerical analysis. The results indicate that the screening contract is more efficient in screening the type of recyclers and offers them higher revenue than the pooling contract does. The enterprise with higher ability is provided with more allowance and gains more benefits for both government and itself. Besides, the fiercer competition among the industry comes with fewer subsidies that the government gives to the two duopolistic enterprises. In summary, our research provides guidance for the development of the resource recycling industry in China. The conclusions and proposals provide a reference for the government on how to identify and inspire the recycling companies to enhance recycling ability.
ZHANG Ke;YANG Kaixun;FENG Jingchun;WANG Xiaohuan;LI Ming;XUE Song
Journal of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management,2020,Vol 34,No. 05
As one of the three major factors of project management, the construction schedule directly affects the project function and income. Therefore, schedule control is significantly crucial in program management and is the key to the realization of the program objectives. Among the main schedule control measures, economic incentives are the most acceptable measure to contractors. Furthermore, relevant research shows that the effective incentive mechanism can promote the control and optimization of the program schedule to a certain extent. The existing program schedule incentives generally employ linear incentive measures. The model can perform an incentive role in project optimization with low engineering complexity and small project. Especially in single projects or projects with a short project schedule, it is an applicable incentive measure for the project owner. However, because of the cyclical characteristics of the program income caused by a complex external environment, the threshold effect of the owner’s incentive will become a nonlinear increase of the cost caused by the accelerated progress of projects. Therefore, using the linear incentive method for program schedule control is the obvious disadvantage. To this end, it is necessary to construct a nonlinear incentive model that matches the characteristics of the program schedule. Firstly, according to the four components of the program schedule incentive, the paper discussed the characteristics of the linear incentive model of the program schedule from four aspects, namely, the income brought by schedule control, the cost of accelerating the program schedule, the incentive of the owner, and the effort level of the contractor. The discussion shows the shortcomings of the incentive model, that is, the incentive method does not match the income brought by schedule control and the cost of accelerating the program schedule, which may lead to insufficient incentive effect and contractor risk preference. Secondly, this paper analyzed the theoretical basis of the nonlinear incentive of the program schedule, established an analytical framework with the principal-agent theory, and demonstrated the nonlinear relationship between program schedule and incentives through interest convergence and entrenchment defensive hypothesis. Meanwhile, the two main nonlinear incentive models show the characteristics and shortcomings in detail. Furthermore, three goals were proposed for a reasonable program incentive model. According to this, this paper explained reasons that the existing marginal increase and marginal diminishing incentive models do not apply to actual engineering. Thirdly, this paper analyzed the nonlinear incentive mechanism and characteristics of the program schedule and concluded that there is an N-type nonlinear relationship between the amount of program schedule in advance and the number of incentives. That is to say, the incentive amount possesses the N-curve characteristic with the program schedule in advance, a marginal decrease after a marginal increase. Through the simulation of the N-curve form, a quantified model of incentive is obtained. In addition, this paper also deeply analyzed the two stages of the N-type nonlinear incentive model. Finally, the critical path method (CPM) was introduced to analyze the impact of the contract project schedule on the program schedule. Based on the above analysis, the nonlinear incentive model of the program schedule was constructed, and the program in the South-to-North Water Diversion Project was studied as an example to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The research results show that considering the impact of the external operating environment of the program and the expectation of the owner’s program schedule in advance, there is a nonlinear relationship between the project schedule and the incentive. In other words, the incentive amount is characterized by a marginal increase, followed by a marginal decrease with the program schedule in advance. The nonlinear incentive model constructed in this paper demonstrates unique advantages in the two stages of incentive effect and defensive effect. The model guarantees the sufficiency of incentive utility through the design of marginal increment mode. Also, the model introduces the highest incentive amount and marginal decline mode to control contractors’ risk preference. The model can help overcome the problem of insufficient incentive effect and uncontrolled contractor’s excessive pursuit of schedule targets in the linear incentive model. The case study shows the result that under the same amount of program schedule in advance, the amount of incentive for the nonlinear model is significantly reduced compared with the linear model. To a certain extent, the research results can provide a theoretical basis for the design of the incentive mechanism for the program schedule and the formulation of the incentive clause for the construction contract.
