The emphasis on environmental sustainability outcomes (ESO) in emerging economies has increased recently, requiring in-depth research to manage the complex interplay between socioeconomic and sociopolitical factors. With a particular focus on China, this study describes this significant relationship using a good technique that comprises standardized questionnaires administered to a large sample of different organizational levels. This research examined several factors and their effects on ESO. First, the results show that the kind of economic system (EST) directly affects ESO; no direct relationship was discovered between ESO and the industrialization level (LI). Furthermore, it was demonstrated that government funding for eco-sustainability projects (GFESP) and community engagement and eco-education initiatives (CEEEI) had a direct impact on ESO. Secondly, the results demonstrated that implementing eco-policies and regulations (IEPR) had a full mediating effect between EST and ESO. Third, political instability (PI) and corruption level (CL), which are essentially the outcome of China's current political and environmental issues, diminish the correlation between EST and ESO. These findings demonstrate that China's environmental sustainability has to be improved using a multimodal approach. The public is encouraged to push legislators to bolster eco-laws and policies in order to emphasize environmental preservation. Initiatives to reduce corruption and maintain political stability may also bolster the beneficial effects of economic frameworks on ESO.

This study examines how emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) respond to cross-national diversity in environmental regulation. Prior research suggests that internationalization exposes EMNEs to diverse environmental standards and may facilitate regulatory learning, yet offers a limited understanding of the mechanisms through which such exposure translates into green innovation. Drawing on institutional theory, we argue that green innovation is particularly fostered when EMNEs operate across host countries whose environmental regulatory regimes are more stringent than those in the home country, and when such exposure varies across multiple host locations. We theorize that this form of environmental regulatory diversity creates learning pressures and legitimacy incentives that motivate EMNEs to upgrade their environmental capabilities through green innovation. Using panel data comprising 9,362 firm-year observations from 1,088 Chinese MNEs over the period 2008–2021, we find support for our arguments. We further show that these effects are contingent on organizational and institutional conditions, specifically top management teams’ technological expertise and the strength of intellectual property enforcement in home-country locations. These findings advance research on EMNE learning and sustainable innovation under complex global environmental governance.

This opinion paper analyzes China’s new mandatory climate disclosure standards, which were formally launched between December 2024 and December 2025. We argue that China has not simply adopted the investor-focused model of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) or the European Union’s comprehensive double materiality approach. Instead, it has crafted a distinct “third way”—a new model of sustainability governance marked by a deliberate blending of global convergence and national priorities. Through a close, provision-level comparison, we identify eight specific provisions where China’s standard goes beyond both IFRS S2 (Climate-related Disclosures, issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board) and ESRS E1 (Climate Change, issued under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards), revealing a consistent rationale that treats corporate disclosure as an instrument of national governance, reaching institutional completeness by simultaneously issuing assurance standards, and maintaining developmental sensitivity through mechanisms like the proportionality principle. While considerable implementation challenges persist, this paper concludes that China’s approach presents a useful and reproducible model for other developing nations, positioning China as an active contributor to the evolving global standards architecture.

China’s green-finance expansion shifts attention from how much firms disclose to whether transition claims remain credible when verification tightens. Using a 2007–2022 panel of Chinese A-share listed firms (crash-risk measures available through 2021), we measure transition credibility by decomposing firms’ transition signals into verifiable actions, narrative disclosure, and realized environmental outcomes, and we propose a transparent narrative–action gap measure (WordsMinusActions = WordsIndex − ActionIndex) to capture ‘words without deeds.’ Exploiting the staggered rollout of China’s Central Environmental Protection Inspections (CEPI) as a plausibly exogenous increase in verification and enforcement intensity, we find that firms with high pre-CEPI narrative–action gaps experience a sharp increase in stock price crash risk around inspections: NCSKEW rises by about 0.09 in the inspection year and 0.20 in the following year (≈0.24 SD), and DUVOL rises by about 0.04 and 0.10 (≈0.27 SD) relative to low-gap firms. Consistent with enforcement discipline, these high-gap firms subsequently reduce disclosure intensity and increase verifiable green actions, narrowing the narrative–action gap after CEPI. The evidence supports governance that rewards verifiable action and consistency over disclosure volume in markets.

货币政策传导效果具有显著状态依赖特征，其强度和路径随经济周期、金融条件与市场预期动态调整。本文结合叙事符号约束结构向量自回归(SVAR)与平滑迁移局部投影(ST-LP)，基于2006年3月至2025年12月的中国宏观经济月度数据识别外生货币政策冲击，考察不同周期阶段的非对称传导效应，并从利率、信用和预期渠道分析其机制。研究发现：第一，货币政策具有显著经济周期非对称效应，相比扩张期，扩张性货币政策在收缩期对产出和通胀的促进作用更强，但冲击初期存在时滞；第二，利率渠道在两种状态下均有效传导，收缩期宽松政策能推动信用扩张，但信用利差未同步收窄；第三，预期渠道主体分化，企业信心在收缩期明显改善并与产出修复呼应，消费者信心响应较弱。这为完善逆周期宏观调控提供新的经验证据。

Entry of arbitrageurs need not increase with larger mispricing. Arbitrageurs trade mispriced assets and close positions once mispricing is corrected, seeking to minimize carry cost (shadow value of trading capital). More deployed arbitrage capital shortens the wait, lowering carry costs but also payoffs. Discretionary entry is profitable only in a “Goldilocks” region, where deployed capital is neither too low nor too high: enough capital is deployed to accelerate correction, while profits remain. The region’s upper bound follows from the condition that every sequence of entrants has a last entrant who cannot rely on subsequent discretionary entry.

This study constructs a new mispricing factor for the Chinese equity market. We propose two-, three-, and four-factor models that incorporate this factor alongside the market, size, and value factors. Our models, especially the two-factor version, consistently outperform the Fama and French models and perform as well as other leading models in explaining Chinese anomalies. This study advances asset pricing literature specific to China and offers a promising new framework for analyzing mispricing in emerging markets.

The global financial system is currently navigating a profound transformation driven by digitalization and the rise of decentralized financial innovations. In response, central banks are increasingly exploring or implementing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) as a sovereign digital evolution of fiat money. This study investigates the dual nature of CBDCs, evaluating whether they represent a strategic opportunity to modernize the economy or a systemic threat to existing financial stability. Employing a qualitative methodology, the research analyzes official policy frameworks from the IMF and BIS alongside diverse real-world case studies, including China’s e-CNY, the Bahamas’ Sand Dollar, Nigeria’s eNaira, and the European Central Bank’s Digital Euro. The findings suggest that while CBDCs offer significant benefits—such as enhanced payment efficiency, reduced transaction costs, and improved financial inclusion—they also introduce critical risks. These include the potential disintermediation of commercial banks, heightened cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and concerns regarding individual data privacy and government surveillance. The study concludes that the successful integration of CBDCs is not merely a technical challenge but a social and strategic one. Adoption is heavily dependent on infrastructure, digital literacy, and public trust. Ultimately, the research highlights that there is no "one-size-fits-all" model; the future of money will be shaped by how effectively individual nations balance technological innovation with the preservation of financial architecture.

Firms frequently overstate digital transformation in public disclosures while committing less in observable investment, a phenomenon known as digital catering. We examine whether digital public financial infrastructure can discipline such symbolic behavior. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design on Chinese A-share listed firms over 2014--2024, we find that exposure to China's e-CNY pilot reduces digital catering by roughly 14% relative to the sample mean. The decline is driven almost entirely by reduced rhetorical digital transformation, while balance-sheet-based digital commitment rises only marginally: the e-CNY pilot is associated with substantially less digital talk, but not with a commensurate increase in digital walk in the short run. The effect operates through lower agency costs and reduced information asymmetry, and follows an amplification--substitution pattern---stronger among digital-sector and accounting-opaque firms, weaker where internal controls and institutional ownership are already strong. The evidence identifies financial-transaction verifiability as a novel source of discipline over corporate cheap talk: CBDC-related infrastructure constrains unsupported symbolic claims without immediately accelerating substantive digital investment.

Against the backdrop of systemic financial risk prevention and the pursuit of a virtuous cycle in the real economy, whether Local Government Financing Vehicles (LGFVs) shareholding alleviates maturity mismatch of corporate investment and financing activities is a question of critical importance, not only for the development of individual firms but also for high-quality macroeconomic growth. Using a sample of A-share listed firms in China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2009 to 2021, this paper theoretically analyzes and empirically tests the impact of LGFVs shareholding on corporate maturity mismatch. The empirical results indicate that LGFVs shareholding can significantly alleviate corporate maturity mismatch and the finding is still robust across a series of empirical checks. Mechanism analyses show that LGFVs shareholding improves firms’ long-term financing capacity through a resource provision channel and restrains overinvestment through a governance optimization channel, thereby collectively mitigating corporate maturity mismatch. Further analysis indicates that the mitigating effect of LGFVs shareholding is more pronounced in firms with concentrated LGFVs shareholding, firms controlled by non-state-owned capital and firms under higher economic policy uncertainty. Our findings provide valuable theoretical insights for policy design aimed at optimizing corporate financial behavior and curbing corporate financial risks.