The impact of political connections on Chinese listed firms : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Finance at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

This thesis investigates the impact of a new type of “princeling” political connection on Chinese listed companies. Three specific issues are examined through three interconnected essays: characteristics of “princeling” politically connected firms (PCFs) with respect to accounting numbers in financial statements and corporate governance; the expropriation on earnings by PCFs; and the impact of political connections on stock returns. Firstly, to examine the characteristics of PCFs, this thesis systematically examines the differences between PCFs and their matching firms with respect to financial statement accounts and corporate governance during the period from 1992 to 2011. This thesis finds that PCFs have significantly greater profitability and market valuation, but they have significantly lower net investments and net fixed assets compared to non-connected firms. Moreover, board directors are on average older and have higher educational levels in PCFs, relative to non-connected firms. Surprisingly, PCFs exhibits larger percentage of directors with academic backgrounds. Secondly, an investigation is made on the link between political connections and value expropriation. This thesis finds PCFs stockpile disproportionately larger retained earnings but pay lower cash dividends, compared to unconnected firms. This thesis further finds such behaviour in PCFs is not due to either investment or precautionary motives. These results immediately give rise to the question of what happens to the retained earnings. By examining the components of retained earnings, this thesis identifies a new form of tunnelling in the form of a discrepancy in the accounting for changes in retained earnings, newly defined as “grey usage”. Specifically, PCFs have higher average grey usages on retained earnings than matching firms, by CNY 4.68 million. The findings provide important information for investors that PCFs may potentially increase the risk of expropriation through grey usages. The final examination investigates the market response to the “princelings” political connection. This thesis compares the cumulative abnormal stock returns between PCFs and unconnected firms. Three benchmarks are applied: cumulative market adjusted abnormal returns (CMAARs); cumulative risk adjusted abnormal returns (CRAARs); and cumulative abnormal returns adjusted from the Fama-French three factors model (CFAARs). No matter which benchmark is used, firms connected to PCFs show higher cumulative abnormal stock returns than matching firms. Also, this study finds that PCFs outperform matching firms in the Conglomerates and Industrials sectors, but not in others. This result could be due to the predominance of firms in the Conglomerates and Industrial sectors in the connected firm samples

Effects of periodically modulated coupling on amplitude death in nonidentical oscillators

The effects of periodically modulated coupling on amplitude death in two coupled nonidentical oscillators are explored. The AD domain could be significantly influenced by tuning the modulation amplitude and the modulation frequency of the modulated coupling strength. There is an optimal value of modulation amplitude for the modulated coupling with which the largest AD domain is observed in the parameter space. The AD domain is enlarged with the decrease of the modulation frequency for a given small modulation amplitude, while is shrunk with decrease of the modulation frequency for a given large modulation amplitude. The mechanism of AD in the presence of periodic modulation in the coupling is investigated via the local condition Lyapunov exponent of the coupled system. The stability of AD state can be well characterized by conditional Lyapunov exponent. The coupled system experiencing from the oscillatory state to AD is clearly indicated by the observation that the conditional Lyapunov exponent transits from positive to negative. Our results are helpful to many potential applications for the research of neuroscience and dynamical control in engineering.Comment: 11 figures, 8 page

Greening Multi-Tenant Data Center Demand Response

Data centers have emerged as promising resources for demand response, particularly for emergency demand response (EDR), which saves the power grid from incurring blackouts during emergency situations. However, currently, data centers typically participate in EDR by turning on backup (diesel) generators, which is both expensive and environmentally unfriendly. In this paper, we focus on "greening" demand response in multi-tenant data centers, i.e., colocation data centers, by designing a pricing mechanism through which the data center operator can efficiently extract load reductions from tenants during emergency periods to fulfill energy reduction requirement for EDR. In particular, we propose a pricing mechanism for both mandatory and voluntary EDR programs, ColoEDR, that is based on parameterized supply function bidding and provides provably near-optimal efficiency guarantees, both when tenants are price-taking and when they are price-anticipating. In addition to analytic results, we extend the literature on supply function mechanism design, and evaluate ColoEDR using trace-based simulation studies. These validate the efficiency analysis and conclude that the pricing mechanism is both beneficial to the environment and to the data center operator (by decreasing the need for backup diesel generation), while also aiding tenants (by providing payments for load reductions).Comment: 34 pages, 6 figure

Path Coordination Planning and Control in Robotic Material Handling and Processing

This chapter presents a unified approach to coordination planning and control for robotic position and orientation trajectories in Cartesian space and its applications in robotic material handling and processing. The unified treatment of the end-effector positions and orientations is based on the robot pose ruled surface concept and used in trajectory interpolations. The focus of this chapter is on the determination and control of the instantaneous change laws of position and orientation, i.e., the generation and control of trajectories with good kinematics and dynamics performances along such trajectories. The coordination planning and control is implemented through controlling the motion laws of two end points of the orientation vector and calculating the coordinates of instantaneous corresponding points. The simulation and experiment in robotic surface profiling/finishing processes are presented to verify the feasibility of the proposed approach and demonstrate the capabilities of planning and control models. Keywords: Robot pose ruled surface, Unified approach, Trajectory planning and control, Off-line programming, Robotics polishin