Enterprise innovation is a hot topic in current academic research. Taking the demonstration city of social credit system construction implemented in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper investigates whether the construction of social credit system can improve enterprise innovation. The study finds that the construction of social credit system effectively enhances enterprise innovation. Mechanism test shows that the construction of social credit system escalates the scale and duration of enterprise loans, thereby fostering enterprise innovation. These findings present insights that the pivotal role of informal institutions, such as the social credit system, in facilitating the upgrading of industrial structures and augmenting the quality of economic development.

Why do firms appoint expired independent directors? How do expired independent directors affect corporate governance and thus impact investment decisions? By taking advantage of the sharp increase in expired independent directors’ re-employment in China caused by exogenous regulatory shocks, Rule No. 18 and Regulation 11, this paper adopts a PSM-DID design to test the impact of expired independent directors on CSR performance. We find that firms experience a significant decrease in CSR performance after re-hiring expired independent directors and the effect is stronger for CSR components mostly related to internal governance. The results of robustness tests show that the main results are robust to alternative measures of CSR performance, an extended sample period, alternative control groups, year-by-year PSM method, and a staggered DID model regarding Rule No. 18 as a staggered quasi-natural experiment. We address the endogeneity concern that chance drives our DID results by using exogenous regulatory shock, an instrumental variable (the index of regional guanxi culture), and placebo tests. We also find that the negative relation between the re-employment of expired independent directors and CSR performance is more significant for independent directors who have more relations with CEOs and raise less objection to managers’ decisions, and for firms that rely more on expired independent directors’ monitoring roles (e.g., a lower proportion of independent directors, CEO duality, high growth opportunities, and above-median FCF). The mediating-effect test shows that the re-employment of expired independent directors increases CEOs’ myopia and thus reduces CSR performance. In addition, we exclude the alternative explanation that the negative relation is caused by the protective effect brought by expired independent directors’ political backgrounds. Our study shows that managers may build reciprocal relationships with expired independent directors in the Chinese guanxi culture and gain personal interest.

股票发行注册制改革是证券市场走向成熟、完善与市场化的重要举措。近年来，实体企业金融化趋势日益明显。本文基于创业板与主板上市企业数据，构建倾向得分匹配-双重差分（PSM-DID）与RDD-DID模型，研究注册制改革对企业金融化水平的影响，并从多个角度剖析其作用机制。两种模型的估计结果均表明，注册制改革显著提升了企业的金融化程度。此外，研究结论经过一系列稳健性检验得到验证。机制分析表明，注册制改革通过降低上市门槛、缓解融资约束以及增强市场竞争，推动企业金融化水平提升；与此同时，其信息披露机制在一定程度上抑制了企业金融化。进一步的异质性分析发现，改革的促进效应在非国有企业、成长性较低企业以及企业社会责任履行较弱的企业中更加显著。本文丰富了关于注册制改革的政策影响文献，为理解研究注册制改革如何影响企业金融化提供了新视角，并对抑制实体企业过度金融化、深化注册制改革并进一步完善资本市场具有重要启示。

碳交易体系（ETS）通过市场机制以缓解碳排放问题，但是同时也会给相关企业增加额外的成本。自2005年欧盟ETS运行以来，各国ETS的推行对企业全球资源配置的影响亟待深入探讨。本文以BVD-Zephyr全球企业并购数据库在2002-2019年间超过18万个并购事件作为样本，采用双重差分（DID）的方法，分别从跨境并购数量和跨境并购财务表现两个方面检验了东道国ETS实施对企业跨境并购的影响及其渠道。实证结果显示，ETS实施导致东道国的跨境并购交易规模显著减少，表明企业在进行跨境并购时会采取规避行为，从而可能造成潜在的碳泄漏。此外，ETS的实施会降低通过跨境并购进入东道国企业的财务绩效。进一步分析发现，ETS推行的影响存在显著的行业差异，其中碳密集型行业往往承担更高的成本，从而受到更大的冲击；而ETS实施所带来的风险则可能是影响企业决策和财务绩效的重要原因。本研究为气候变化的实际经济影响提供了新的证据，为那些已经引入ETS、或者计划引入更严格气候政策的国家提供了决策参考。

为深化利率市场化改革， 提高利率传导效率， 推动降低实体经济融资成本， 2019 年 8 月中国人民银行开始推行贷款市场报价利率（ Loan Prime Rate， 简称 LPR） 改革。 本文基于 LPR 改革这一准自然实验， 采用连续 DID 等方法探究 LPR 改革对实体经济融资的影响及其机制。 结果表明：第一， LPR 改革显著降低企业的融资成本；第二， LPR 改革提升了信贷配置效率， 高成长性企业贷款可得性显著上升；第三， LPR 改革对不同类型企业的融资成本产生异质性影响， 低风险企业、战略新兴产业企业和非国有企业的融资成本下降相对显著；第四， 微观机制结果验证了， LPR 改革不仅通过传统的竞争性机制推动降低实体经济融资成本， 还会通过利率传导机制与贷款定价机制畅通利率传导过程， 提升中小银行贷款定价能力， 降低实体经济融资成本。

As a vital documentation for assessments, rewards and punishments in terms of political promotions, the intellectual property pilot city policy (IPPC), an strategic incentive measure to enhance innovation capacities at the city and firm level, may play a prominent role in innovation fostering in China. Yet patent bubbles that focus more on quantity over quality have been thrown into doubt, as local cadres and firms shall pay more attention to the easier observable low-quality innovation performance amid the pressure of political task. this paper conducts an investigation that drew upon listed firm data from 270 prefecture-level cities and employs a PSM-DID design to evaluate the IPPC policy effectiveness on innovation quality and innovation quantity. The results are obvious: The policy have boosted the number of innovations, but has a limited effect on improving the quality of innovation. We further apply a hierarchical liner modeling approach to deal with the stratified cityand firm-level data and to verify the mechanism through which policy distortions may affect corporate innovation. There also gives evidence that the IPPC policy comes into effect mainly through financial subsidies, institutional supply and the intensity of IPR protection at the local scale. This report concludes by proposing further policy implementations for the future optimization of China’s innovation strategies.

Utilizing a unique P2P dataset, this study employs the PSM-DID method to explore the learning effect brought about by default events on investors. The findings reveal that investors who experience their first default event demonstrate an improved ability to select a higher-quality project the next time. Notably, this positive effect is more pronounced when facing substantial defaults, as opposed to cases where overdue principal and interest are eventually settled. Investors' initial confidence in defaulted projects contributes to a greater enhancement of their investment skills. Furthermore, the beneficial impacts of defaulted events diminish as investors’ investment experience accumulates.

By establishing a labor-retirement model within China’s unique intergenerational support culture and one-child policy, this study provides evidence of the one-child policy’s early effect on individuals’ retirement decisions. This finding highlights a contradiction between the retirement intentions of the 1960s and 1970s generations, who are most affected by the one-child policy, and the delayed retirement policy of Chinese government. Utilizing data from the CHARLS 2011-2018 and employing OLS, IV, and fuzzy cohort DID estimation methods, we observe that only-child parents tend to retire at an earlier age compared to non-only-child parents. This early effect of the one-child policy on retirement decisions can be attributed to intergenerational support for children’s marriage and career, as well as the educational attainments of children, as confirmed by both theoretical and empirical analysis.

Taking the Stock Connect scheme as an exogenous shock based on data of China’s Ashare non-financial listed companies from 2009 to 2021, we identify the causal effect of stock market liberalization on green innovation. The baseline result based on a staggered difference-indifferences (DID) model suggests that stock market liberalization promotes corporate green innovation and this effect is similar to the green benefits of China’s mandatory environmental regulations. The results are robust to various checks, including the parallel trend tests, placebo tests, and the heterogenous time-varying treatment test based on Bacon decomposition and the DIDM approach. The enhanced continuity of corporate financing, improved corporate green governance and increased firm external technological collaboration are three plausible channels that allow stock market liberalization to promote corporate green innovation. Moreover, the effect is more significant for clean firms, non-SOEs, and firms in a good institutional environment. Further analysis suggests that the green innovation-enhancing effects of stock market liberalization are more likely to be high-quality innovation. Our paper provides new insights into understanding the green benefits of stock market liberalization and achieving sustainable economic development in developing countries.

This paper empirically evaluates the impact of a Government-Initiated Non-Profit Ecommerce Platform (GNEP) on specialty agricultural sales, focusing specifically on Pu’er tea in China. Using a difference-in-differences methodology and a comprehensive panel dataset that covers over 90% of local tea farmers, we uncover a marked substitution effect. The implementation of GNEP leads to an average decline of 11.22% in offline household sales, while online sales see an uptick of 16.88%. Further analysis confirms a universal channel shift from offline to online sales, irrespective of both production levels and tea quality. Contrary to expectations, the overall tea sales volume remains largely stable post-launch. Additionally, premium-quality teas experience a 2.42% price boost online, while regular teas show a 0.40% decrease compared to offline prices. Mechanism analyses further indicate that the increase in online sales is driven primarily by the intensive margin instead of the extensive margin. Although the platform does not significantly expand the number of farmers engaging in online sales, it succeeds in offering a cost-effective avenue for diversifying product offerings and achieving higher prices for premium-quality products. Our study illuminates the transformative role of e-commerce platforms in rural economic development and provides essential insights for policymakers and practitioners.