Joint Liability Lending and the Rise and Fall of China's Township and Village Enterprises

Using data from a recent survey of bank and enterprise managers and government officials in southern China, we present a new explanation for the rise and fall of collectively-owned township and village enterprises (TVEs) based on the willingness of banks to finance collective enterprise development. Until recently bank loans to TVEs exhibited the key features of joint liability lending, supported by the unique sanctioning ability of local leaders. Beginning in the mid 1990s, liquidation costs fell, firm performance deteriorated, real interest rates rose, and financial competition increased. These changes led to a dramatic change in the lending preferences of banks in favor of private firms. Empirical estimates of the determinants of bank lending preferences, the involvement of township leaders in lending, and the ability of firms to obtain loans support our explanation.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39846/3/wp462.pd

A Refinancing Model of Decentralization with Empirical Evidence from China

Decentralization can complement market liberalization by strengthening incentives of agents to exploit local information in response to market signals. In China, however, banks centralized lending authority following financial reforms in the mid-1990s. We offer a new theory of financial decentralization in which centralization provides a credible commitment not to refinance bad projects by reducing available information. Using data from Chinese rural financial institutions, we empirically assess the determinants of decentralization and the likelihood of collateral seizure, strongly confirming the predictions of the refinancing model. We conclude that the inability of financial systems to exploit local information in weak institutional environments may limit the efficiency of financial intermediation despite financial market liberalization.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39845/3/wp461.pd

Joint Liability Lending and the Rise and Fall of China's Township and Village Enterprises

Using data from a recent survey of bank and enterprise managers and government officials in southern China, we present a new explanation for the rise and fall of collectively-owned township and village enterprises (TVEs) based on the willingness of banks to finance collective enterprise development. Until recently bank loans to TVEs exhibited the key features of joint liability lending, supported by the unique sanctioning ability of local leaders. Beginning in the mid 1990s, liquidation costs fell, firm performance deteriorated, real interest rates rose, and financial competition increased. These changes led to a dramatic change in the lending preferences of banks in favor of private firms. Empirical estimates of the determinants of bank lending preferences, the involvement of township leaders in lending, and the ability of firms to obtain loans support our explanation.joint liability, banking, China, privatization, collective

A Refinancing Model of Decentralization with Empirical Evidence from China

Decentralization can complement market liberalization by strengthening incentives of agents to exploit local information in response to market signals. In China, however, banks centralized lending authority following financial reforms in the mid-1990s. We offer a new theory of financial decentralization in which centralization provides a credible commitment not to refinance bad projects by reducing available information. Using data from Chinese rural financial institutions, we empirically assess the determinants of decentralization and the likelihood of collateral seizure, strongly confirming the predictions of the refinancing model. We conclude that the inability of financial systems to exploit local information in weak institutional environments may limit the efficiency of financial intermediation despite financial market liberalization.banking, decentralization, refinancing, transition, China

Modeling and Predicting Popularity Dynamics via Reinforced Poisson Processes

An ability to predict the popularity dynamics of individual items within a complex evolving system has important implications in an array of areas. Here we propose a generative probabilistic framework using a reinforced Poisson process to model explicitly the process through which individual items gain their popularity. This model distinguishes itself from existing models via its capability of modeling the arrival process of popularity and its remarkable power at predicting the popularity of individual items. It possesses the flexibility of applying Bayesian treatment to further improve the predictive power using a conjugate prior. Extensive experiments on a longitudinal citation dataset demonstrate that this model consistently outperforms existing popularity prediction methods.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure; 3 table

Innovative behavior among service workers and the importance of leadership: Evidence from an emerging economy

This study focuses on how service firms can nurture innovative behavior of employees through the important role of leadership. Despite the growth in innovation research, scholars have been slow to move from an R&D (i.e., technical capital) focus to that focusing on employee innovative behavior. However, organizations’ innovation initiatives heavily depend on employee human capital and behavior at work as these are key inputs in the value creation process. We focus on a specific type of leadership, transformational leadership, and explore a nascent employee concept, job embeddedness, to enhance our understanding of the mechanisms and conditions by which leaders may encourage follower innovative behavior. We collected data from employees working in the hotel service sector in Ghana, and analyzed the data using structural equation modelling and Hayes’ PROCESS Macro. Our results revealed that leaders can promote innovative behavior among service workers only when the workers are embedded in the organization. Further, our results showed positive relationships between transformational leadership and organizational embeddedness, and organizational embeddedness and innovative behavior. However, we found no evidence to suggest that employees’ embeddedness in their community might alter the relationship between organizational embeddedness and innovative behavior. We conclude that to support innovation among employees, the behaviors of leaders are important especially in terms of encouraging employees to proactively embed themselves in their organizations, thereby contributing to the development of the hospitality industry and other service sectors in emerging economies

Volatility timing in CPF investment funds in Singapore: Do they outperform non-CPF funds?

The purpose of this study is to examine the volatility-timing performance of Singapore-based funds under the Central Provident Fund (CPF) Investment Scheme and non-CPF linked funds by taking into account the currency risk effect on internationally managed funds. In particular, we empirically assess whether the funds under the CPF Investment Scheme outperform non-CPF funds by examining the volatility-timing performance associated with these funds. The volatility-timing ability of CPF funds will provide the CPF board with a new method for risk classification. We employ the GARCH models and modified factor models to capture the response of funds to market abnormal conditional volatility including the weekday effect. The SMB and HML factors for non- US based funds are constructed from stock market data to exclude the contribution of the size effect and the BE/ME effect. The results show that volatility timing is one of the factors contributing to the excess return of funds. However, funds’ volatility-timing seems to be country-specific. Most of the Japanese equity funds and global equity funds under the CPF Investment Scheme are found to have the ability of volatility timing. This finding contrasts with the existing studies on Asian, ex-Japan funds and Greater China funds. Moreover, there is no evidence that funds under the CPF Investment Scheme show a better group performance of volatility timing