Volume 11, Issue 1

We examine a legal contest in which only one litigant hires a delegate who expends his effort on behalf of the litigant. The delegation contract between the litigant and the delegate is either observable or unobservable. Comparing the equilibrium outcomes of the two legal contests, we derive the effect of the observability of the contract. We find that the favorite litigant and his delegate prefer the observable contract to the unobservable one. If the litigant is the underdog, however, there is conflict of interest between the litigant and his delegate as the litigant prefers the observable contract to the unobservable one while his delegate prefers the unobservable contract. We also show that the legal contest with the observable contract incurs more total expenditure than the legal contest with the unobservable contract if the litigant hiring the delegate is the favorite, and vice versa.

Our study illuminates the impact of international trade on environmental quality in lower-middle-income countries by using CO 2 emission as the proxy for environmental degradation. Using the Pooled Mean Group estimation along with validity tests, the results show that in the long run, CO 2 emission is affected by merchandise export, merchandise import, FDI, GDP per capita, and renewable energy consumption. The impact of trade on CO 2 emission is mixed because our findings show that merchandise export and import have opposite effects. In addition, our results reveal that Environmental Kuznets Curve exists in the long run with N-sharped. The increase in GDP per capita leads to the raise of CO 2 emission at first, but later comes the decrease and then increase. The paper has relevant implications for law makers.

Article 18, paragraph 1, of Law of the People’s Republic of China on Enterprise Bankruptcy gives the bankruptcy trustee the right to rescind the performance of executory contract. It also stipulates the time limit and legal effect, but it does not further set standards and restrict the rescission of specific contracts. The purpose of This Paper is to explore and establish norms for the exercise of bankruptcy trustee’s rescission rights under different situations to meet the practical needs. Based on the research results of domestic and foreign scholars, this paper puts forward the standard of “Special Interest Protection for Specific Creditors” to balance the interest conflicts between individual creditors, debtors and other creditors. Finally, this paper argues that it is necessary to set certain standards and make appropriate restrictions on the exercise of the bankruptcy trustee’s right to rescission the contract and improve the system.

This study investigates the impact of auditor specialization and listing status on earnings management in Vietnamese commercial banks. Discretionary loan loss provisions (LLP) is used as a proxy for earnings management. Based on a sample of 21 banks in the period 2008–2017, the findings show that: First, auditor specialization does not have a significant impact on constraining earnings management in the banks. Second, listed banks engage more in earnings management. In addition, listed banks report more income-increasing LLP, while non-listed banks report more income-decreasing LLP. The results are consistent with a number of prior studies that find no evidence of specialist auditors curtailing earnings management, and listed firms participating more in managing income. The results have important implications for government authorities in improving the legal framework over the preparation of banks’ financial statements, including revision of the accounting standards and alignment of the accounting standards with other banking regulations.

abstract The paper considers the problem of allocating resources to economic goods and military goods (protecting property rights) in a contest model under an anarchic system which can be defined by the absence of a common superior authority to each state. I characterize the equilibrium and discuss its stability and robustness. The main finding is that if economic goods of the two states are complementary with Cobb-Douglas utility characteristics, the essential factor that affects a state’s resource allocation is its own maximum military level of production out of its resource endowment. In this sense, there is a unique stable equilibrium. This equilibrium is robust with the sequence of the states’ decisions insofar as the second mover’s observability is imperfect even slightly.