In this paper, we use a unique dataset of the List of Dishonest Judgment Debtors to explore the impact on the social credit environment of the increasing housing prices in China. We find that housing price has a negative impact on the local credit environment. Dominance analysis suggests that housing price contributes to the model R-squared (R2) by an overwhelming majority, suppressing any other economic or social factors in explaining the deteriorating credit environment. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the rule of law and moral standards mitigate the negative influence of high housing prices, while income inequality exacerbates the influence.

Individual institutions marginal contributions to the systemic risk contain predictive power for its potential future exposure and provide early warning signals to regulators and the public. We use higher-order co-skewness and co-kurtosis to construct systemic risk contribution measures, which allow us to identify and characterize the co-movement driving the asymmetry and tail behavior of the joint distribution of asset returns. We illustrate the usefulness of higher-order moment augmented approach by using 4868 stocks living in the Chinese market from June 2002 to March 2022. The empirical results show that these higher-order moment measures convey useful information for systemic risk contribution measurement and portfolio selection, complementary to the information extracted from a standard principal components analysis.

Our investigation reveals that the top 10 shareholders are the only credible contenders for dominant control rights in China's listed corporations. To measure the ultimate control of these entities, we adopt the Shapley-Shubik power index and calculate the principal shareholder's control at the top of the control pyramid. Our results demonstrate that approximately 70% of firms exhibit an ultimate control value of 1. Additionally, our analysis reveals a non-linear relationship between the ultimate control, the tunneling behavior of the ultimate controller, and the executives’excess perk consumption .Specifically, our findings suggest that this relationship is characterized by a phase transition.

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.

Identifying and addressing the factors influencing the within-firm pay gaps has become a pressing issue amidst the widening global income inequality. This study investigates the impact of corporate ESG ratings on employee income and pay gaps using data from Chinese-listed companies between 2017 and 2021. The results suggest that ESG ratings significantly increase employee income. Further research indicates that ESG ratings exacerbate the within-firm pay gaps and income inequality due to the varying bargaining power among employees. This effect is particularly pronounced in non-state-owned and large-scale companies. This is also true for all kinds of companies in traditional and highly competitive industries. However, reducing agency costs and improving information transparency can help vulnerable employees with weaker bargaining power in income distribution to narrow their pay gaps. The research findings offer important insights to promote fair income distribution within companies and address global income inequality.

With the elimination of absolute poverty and the improvement of the urbanization rate in China's rural areas, the phenomenon of “urbanization of poverty” has become increasingly prominent. Restricted by the influence of the household registration system, sources of livelihood, social capital, etc., the rural migrants are facing higher social exclusion and a stronger sense of relative deprivation, which makes the rural migrant population become the focus and difficulty of relative poverty governance. Based on the data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this paper discusses the impact of digital financial inclusion on the relative poverty of the rural migrant population. It is found that the development of digital financial inclusion can significantly reduce the incidence of relative poverty among the rural migrant population. Considering different model settings, relative poverty standards, dimensions of digital financial inclusion and the introduction of the number of banks in 1937 as an instrumental variable, the endogeneity test does not change the conclusion of this paper. Further results showed that digital financial inclusion has a greater relative poverty alleviation effect for traditionally disadvantaged groups such as those with low education levels and the older generation, which is in line with the original intention of the development of digital financial inclusion. Therefore, the paper emphasizes that the improvement of the inclusive financial system can restore power and enhance the financial capacity of the rural migrant population, drive the governance of urban relative poverty with the dual wheels of “financial empowerment and ability enhancement”, stimulate the endogenous motivation of common prosperity, and ultimately achieve “people-oriented urbanization” and common prosperity of the people.

With the increasing executive-employee pay disparity in recent years, research on executive compensation has grown exponentially. This paper reviews all articles on executive compensation published between 2000 and 2022 in the six accounting journals with the highest impact index in South Korea and China (five journals in China), and evaluates and analyzes the research in both countries. The analysis results are organized as follows: First, the research on executive compensation started earlier in South Korea than in China; second, the focus of the research on executive compensation differs between the two countries; then, the study on the determinants of executive compensation varies between the two countries; forth, the proxies for firm performance are mostly the same in the two countries; and finally, most of the studies in the two countries assert that executive compensation has a positive impact on firm performance. Based on the above research, this paper confirms that the agency theory, which has been widely validated in Western countries, is also valid in Asian countries. In addition, it provides an essential reference for future research on executive compensation in Asian countries.

This study examines the impact of strategic alliances on corporate green innovation. We find that strategic alliances significantly promote corporate green innovation. Mechanism tests indicate that strategic alliances promote green innovation through channels of attracting market attention, alleviating agency problems, and stimulating collaborative innovation. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the effects of strategic alliances are more pronounced for firms in areas with stringent environmental regulations and a favorable business environment, and firms facing intense product market competition. The findings provide new insights into the green transformation and upgrading of enterprises.

This paper examines the spillover effect of environmental regulations on firms’ green technological innovation, from the perspective of supply chain relationships. Analyzing data from Chinese listed companies, we find that the average environmental regulatory pressure faced by the client firms of a supplier firm enhances the green patent applications filed by the supplier firm, indicating that environmental regulatory pressure from clients spills over to suppliers. When the industries of suppliers are more competitive or the proportion of their sales from the largest client is higher, suppliers feel more pressured to engage in green innovation, resulting in more green patent applications. Thus, via their negotiation power, client firms can prompt supplier firms to innovate to meet their demand for green technologies. Finally, we show that this effect is particularly pronounced when supplier firms are located in highly marketized regions, receive low R&D government subsidies, or have high ESG ratings.

Based on institutions' general role and the specialty of motivated investors' relatively larger stake, we examine whether ownership by motivated investors is associated with the focal firm's ESG rating disagreement in China. Our results suggest that ownership by motivated investors can decrease the focal firm's ESG rating disagreement. That relationship is strengthened by a better internal or external information environment. What's more, ownership by motivated investors can increase the quality of ESG disclosure and the level of consensus ESG rating. ESG rating disagreement increases stock return volatility and price synchronicity, while motivated investors can mitigate those negative effects. Our results confirm that motivated investors have greater incentive and capability to discipline managers and influence corporate policies and actions even in an emerging market with weak investor protection and the popularity of exploration by ultimate controllers. That would shed valuable insights into the high-quality development of other emerging markets, especially those in south-east Asian.