We develop an information choice model where information costs are sticky and co-move with firm-level intrinsic uncertainty as opposed to temporal variations in uncertainty. Incorporating analysts' forecasts, we predict a negative relationship between information costs and information acquisition, as proxied by the predictability of analysts' forecast biases. Finally, the model shows a contrasting pattern between information acquisition and intrinsic and temporal uncertainty, where intrinsic uncertainty strengthens return predictability of analysts' biases through the information cost channel, while temporal uncertainty weakens it through the information benefit channel. We empirically confirm these opposing relationships that existing theories struggle to explain.

Site visits allow visitors to physically inspect productive resources and interact with onsite employees and executives face-to-face. We posit that, by allowing visitors to acquire investmentrelated information and monitor the management team, site visits offer disciplinary benefits for corporate investments. Using mandatory disclosures of site visits in China, we find that corporate investments become more responsive to growth opportunities as the intensity of site visits increases, consistent with the notion that site visits yield disciplinary benefits. We also find that the positive association between site visits and investment efficiency is more pronounced when visitors can glean more investment-related information and when they have stronger incentives and greater power to monitor managers. This positive association is also stronger among firms with more severe agency problems and higher asset tangibility. The overall evidence supports the notion that site visits serve as a unique venue for institutional investors and financial analysts to acquire valuable information and serve a monitoring function, which generates disciplinary benefits for corporate investments.

Using Chinese publicly listed firms from 2007 to 2020, this study empirically explores the impact of non-controlling shareholders’ network on the corporate excess goodwill. We find that the centrality of non-controlling shareholders’ network significantly decreases the excess goodwill from mergers and acquisitions, indicating that non-controlling shareholders’ network can restrain the goodwill bubbles. Moreover, the inhibitory effect of non-controlling shareholders’ network on excess goodwill stems from pressure-resistant institutional investors and individual investors. This effect is achieved through the information effect, resource effect, and governance effect. Furthermore, this inhibitory effect is more pronounced in firms located in less developed regions and legal environments, and firms with lower audit quality. In conclusion, non-controlling shareholders’ network plays a positive role in the restriction of excess goodwill in listed companies.

We examine the impact of bankruptcy court establishment (BCE) on corporate acquisition activities using hand-collected data of city-level BCE in China from 2008 to 2020. The results show that BCE promotes corporate acquisition activities largely due to mitigated information asymmetry and decreased deal inefficiency. Our results highlight the important role of judiciary reform in corporate acquisition decisions in emerging markets.

We find that investors react more favorably to corporate announcements of share repurchases, SEOs, earnings, dividend changes, and acquisitions if the announcement is made immediately prior to or on holidays. These announcements are associated with more positive reactions for favorable events and less negative reactions for unfavorable events. This effect is robust to controls for market conditions and a selection bias, is accompanied by subsequent reversals, and is present in several international markets. Our findings suggest that predictable individual mood changes can cause biases in market reactions to firm-specific news.

The study introduces 'earnings purity,' a concept based on the 'gold content' of target earnings, to evaluate its impact on merger and acquisition (M&A) premiums. Our findings reveal that targets with higher earnings purity command increased valuations and premiums. Further analysis of the information effects uncovers a U-shaped relationship between earnings purity and negotiation duration, suggesting that elevated premiums might not always be justified. The heterogeneity test indicates that the effect of a target firm's earnings purity on M&A premiums is more pronounced in cross-border and inter-industry M&As. However, it is less influential in cases with larger target firms and better external conditions. These results highlight the dual aspects of M&As, presenting them as both advantageous and potentially hazardous.

This paper investigates the effects of serial acquisitions on labor cost stickiness. We show that serial acquisitions can significantly increase the labor cost stickiness through increasing managerial optimism, agency costs and labor adjustment difficulty, and the labor cost stickiness further damages corporate value. The baseline findings are weaker in firms with better internal control and higher institutional ownership. Overall, this study contributes to the literature on serial acquisitions and cost stickiness, provides a new perspective for the value-destroying effect of serial acquisitions in a typical emerging market.

We investigate the impact of public climate concerns on corporate ESG performance and find a negative association between the two variables. Our mechanistic analysis suggests that public climate concern increases firm risk, which explains the negative effect of ESG performance. This negative effect is exacerbated by inefficient corporate investments and mitigated by increased local social trust. Furthermore, the negative relationship between climate attention and ESG performance is more pronounced for companies with weak CEO hometown identify, high resource acquisition costs, non-heavy polluting industries and in the colder northern regions of China. The findings highlight the need to address the challenging impact of climate attention on corporate sustainable performance by enhancing regional social trust and CEOs' sense of belonging.

As China’s shadow banking sector expands, the impact of listed companies’ involvement in financial stability and the real economy accumulates increasing attention. Despite being a crucial channel for non-financial firms to participate in shadow banking, the literature has given limited consideration to the acquisition of wealth management products (WMPs). Using data from Chinese listed firms between 2007 and 2020, we analyze how excessive equity financing affects companies’ WMP acquisitions. Our findings indicate that over-financing significantly boosts WMP purchases among these firms, particularly in cases of private ownership, raised environmental uncertainty, and strict financing constraints.

This study examines how short-sale constraints affect investors’ information acquisition and thereby shape stock price efficiency. By exploiting two settings that relax short-sale constraints in the US and China, respectively, we find that the removal of short-sale constraints increases investors’ information acquisition in both markets, but the effect is more prompt in China. Investors acquire value-relevant information, especially bad news, and improve their short-selling decisions in both markets. Lastly, information acquisition induced by the removal of short-sale constraints improves price efficiency. Our evidence shows that a reduction in trading frictions promotes information acquisition and improves price efficiency.