團隊

2021中關村論壇於9月24至28日在中國北京舉辦。中關村論壇乃國家級平台，致力促進全球高科技創新交流合作。香港大學經管學院副院長林晨教授獲邀於 9月25日為金融科技平行論壇擔任主旨演講嘉賓，通過視頻就《科技信貸市場發展的一些思考》作重點分享。

研究團隊收集來自 61 個經濟體，合共超過6700間公司的數據，評估企業特質與股票收益表現，以及新冠疫情個案之間的關聯性。研究發現，儘管新冠疫情導致股票收益減少，但某些企業錄得的跌幅較為輕微，而這些企業具有以下特質：在 2020 年前公司的財務狀況較好（如擁有較多現金和未提取的信貸額、較少的總債務和短期債務，以及維持較高的利潤水準）、全球供應鏈和客戶地點受新冠疫情影響較小，積極推動企業社會責任的活動，以及較少地位穩固的高管人員。此外，家族企業（尤其是家族直接控股和僱傭職業經理人的家族企業）、大企業或政府控制的企業的股票回報表現較佳，而由對沖基金和其他資產管理公司大量投資的公司則表現遜色。在疫情期間，股票市場給予擁有較低管理層所有權的企業正面評價，卻給予擁有較高管理層所有權的企業負面評價。

The telegraph was introduced to China in the late 19th century, a time when China also saw the rise of modern banks. Based on this historical context, this paper documents the importance of information technology in banking development. We construct a data set on the distributions of telegraph stations and banks across 287 prefectures between 1881 and 1936. The results show that the telegraph significantly expanded banks’ branch networks in terms of both number and geographic scope. The effect of the telegraph remains robust when we instrument it using proximity to the early military telegraph trunk.

港大經管學院幾位學者最近發佈的研究發現，有些因素能有助投資者辨別SPAC能否取得成功。

香港大學經管學院副院長林晨昨天出席大公文匯傳媒集團主辦的「粵港澳大灣區系列財經沙龍」時，在會上提出，金融科技可以改善內地中小企融資困難的問題，例如最近港大與內地的最大金融機構合作，製作一個動態的信用模型，有助降低中小企的債務違約率。

We assess the impact of geographic diversification on a bank’s costs of interest-bearing liabilities. We employ a new identification strategy and discover that geographic expansion across U.S. states lowered funding costs. Consistent with expansion facilitating risk diversification, we find that (1) funding costs fall more when banks expand into states whose economies are less correlated with the banks’ state and (2) geographic diversification reduces the costs of uninsured, but not insured, deposits. Consistent with expansion intensifying agency frictions, which puts upward pressures on funding costs, we discover that geographic diversification reduces the costs of interest-bearing liabilities more in better-monitored and better-run banks.

Product price risk is a potentially important factor for firms’ liquidity management. A natural place to evaluate the impact of this risk on liquidity management is the electricity industry, because producing firms face substantial price volatility in wholesale markets. Empirically, higher volatility of electricity prices leads to an increase in cash holdings, and this effect is robust to instrumenting for price risk using weather volatility. Cash increases more with price risk in firms using inflexible production technologies and those that cannot easily hedge electricity prices, indicating that operating flexibility and hedging are substitutes for liquidity management.