We collect the geographical dataset of bank physical branch in China from 2008 to 2023, obtaining the 261,382 branches. Through careful data processing, we calculate the bank branch closure at city-level and merge it with regional entrepreneurship in China. With the panel dataset at city-industry-year level, we find that bank branch closure (BBC) significantly reduces neighbor entrepreneurship, which is proxied by the number of new firm entry. In mechanism analysis, we document that bank branch closure affects entrepreneurship through the financing channel and mobility channel. We also find that commercial bank branch closure plays a crucial role in affecting entrepreneurship. The reduction effect of BBC is more pronounced for those observations located in geographical intersections, coastal lines. Further, we explore the impact of BBC on the direction of entrepreneurship, showing that there is less new firm formation in manufacture industry after the BBC. In addition, we show that BBC may contribute to the entrepreneurship failure as well. Our findings may shed light on the policy makers, bank owners and those who want to form a new firm.

The literature has extensively explored the relationship between trade and envi-ronment, with most studies focusing on how trade affects the environment. However, our research takes a different approach by examining how air pollution affects firms’ exports. We use Chinese export and pollution data from 2000 to 2007 at the firm and county levels. By using fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations as a proxy for air pollution and employing thermal inversion as an instrumental variable, we ffnd that a 1% increase in PM2.5 leads to a 0.89% reduction in firms’ exports. We also observe this negative effect of air pollution on entry and exit (i.e., extensive margins). Our mechanism analysis identiffes two channels through which air pollution affects exports. First, air pollution decreases exports by reducing firm productivity. Second, air pollution induces stringent environmental regulations, which reduces exports as firms need to increase abatement costs or reduce production to meet the environment standards.

Developing countries are taking advantage of FinTech tools to provide more people with convenient access to financial market investment through digital wealth management. Using COVID-19 as an uncertainty shock, we examine whether and how digital wealth management affects the resilience of consumption to shocks based on a unique micro dataset provided by a leading Big Tech platform, Alipay in China. We find that digital wealth management mitigates the response of consumption to uncertainty shocks: residents who participate in digital wealth management, especially in risky asset investments, have a lower reduction in consumption. Importantly, digital wealth management helps improve financial inclusion, with a more pronounced mitigation effect among residents with lower-level wealth, living in less developed areas, and those with lower-level conventional finance accessibility. The mitigation effect works through the wealth channel: those who allocate a larger proportion of risky assets in their portfolio and obtain a higher realized return show more resilience of consumption to negative shocks. We also find that digital wealth management substitutes for conventional bank credit but serves as a complement to FinTech credit in smoothing consumption during uncertainty shocks. Digital wealth management provides a crucial way to improve financial inclusion and the resilience of consumption to shocks.

This paper investigates the price overreaction during the initial continuous trading period of the Chinese corn futures market. Using a dynamic modeling algorithm, we identify the overreaction behavior of intraday high-frequency (1 min and 3 min) prices during the first session of daytime trading. The results indicate that the overreaction hypothesis is confirmed for the daytime prices of the Chinese corn futures market. We also find a noticeable reduction in overreaction following the introduction of night trading and this decline appears to diminish over time. Furthermore, this paper conducts an overreaction trading strategy to assess traders’ returns, revealing a slight decline in average return after the introduction of night trading. This study provides valuable insights and recommendations for exchanges and regulators in monitoring overreaction and formulating effective policies to address it.

This study examines how localized carbon reduction policies affect corporate environmental productivity. Leveraging a quasi-experiment from China’s low-carbon pilot policy rollout across cities, we implement a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the causal impact of these interventions. Pilot policies significantly increased regulated polluting corporate environmental productivity by around 3 percentage points. The productivity gains persisted over time and were greater for financially constrained firms, firms facing less market competition and with lower capital intensity. Additional analysis reveals the pilots enhanced executive environmental awareness. Overall, our results demonstrate appropriately designed local regulations can improve environmental productivity.

Under the guidance of the dual-carbon target, the development of the carbon financial system is of great significance to compensate for the gap between green and low-carbon investment. Considering the current state of the development of carbon financial system, China has initially formed a carbon financial system, including participants, carbon financial products and macro and micro operation structures, but the system is still in the initial development stage. Given the current restrictions on the development of carbon finance, it can be seen that there are still problems such as unreasonable economic structure, insufficient market construction, single product category, low utilization rate and urgent construction of relevant judicial guarantee system. Therefore, the system should be improved at the economic level and the legal level. The economic level includes adjusting the layout of economic development structure, strengthening the construction of market infrastructure, encouraging the diversification of carbon financial products and strengthening publicity and education promotion strategies. The legal level includes improving the top-level design, formulating judicial interpretation to promote carbon financial trading, promoting commercial law amendment, and promoting the linkage mechanism between specialized environmental justice and carbon finance and other safeguard measures. Finally, improving the carbon finance system is required to promote and protect the orderly development of carbon finance. To promote the reform of the pattern of economic development, the concept of ecological and environmental protection in the financial sector needs to be implemented to form an overall pattern of pollution reduction, carbon reduction and synergistic efficiency improvement.

Using a unique dataset from China spanning 2005 to 2023, we investigate how superstitious beliefs influence mutual fund managers’ risk-taking behavior and how this influence evolves over their careers. We find a significant 6.82% reduction in risk-taking during managers’ zodiac years, traditionally considered unlucky in Chinese culture. This effect is particularly pronounced among less experienced managers, those without financial education backgrounds, and those with lower management skills. The impact also intensifies during periods of high market volatility. Our findings challenge the traditional dichotomy between retail and professional investors, showing that even professional fund managers can be influenced by irrational beliefs early in their careers. However, the diminishing effect of superstition with experience and expertise suggests a gradual transition towards more rational decision-making. Our results provide insights into the process by which financial professionals evolve from exhibiting behavior akin to retail investors to becoming the rational actors often assumed in financial theory.

This paper investigates how transparency in lawsuit information affects capital allocation and aggregate industrial production. Greater transparency enhances the availability of information about firms' fundamentals, which can influence resource distribution. We exploit regional variations in courts' compliance with mandated judicial document disclosures in China, implemented since 2014, as a natural experiment. For firms with initially high marginal revenue products of capital (MRPK), a 10-percentage-point increase in legal transparency results in a 4.4% increase in physical capital and a 7.9% reduction in MRPK, relative to firms with lower MRPK. Additionally, regions with higher transparency experience a rise in aggregate output. Further analysis differentiating firms by ownership type, public listing status, and industry-level contract intensity enhances the robustness of our findings.

We study when CEOs with legal expertise are valuable for firms. In general, lawyer CEOs are negatively associated with frequency and severity in employment civil rights, contract, labor, personal injury, and securities litigation. This effect is partly induced by the CEO’s man- agement of litigation risk and reduction in other risky policies. Lawyer CEOs are further associated with an increase in gatekeepers providing additional legal oversight and a decrease in innovative activities with high litigation risk. Lawyer CEOs are more valuable during periods of enhanced compliance requirements and regulatory pressure and in indus- tries with high litigation risk or better growth opportunities.

This paper explores the widespread perception of insurers as bad payers, often accused of unjustly rejecting legitimate claims. We explore the mechanisms leading to this negative image by examining the strategic “nitpicking” behaviour of insurers. Such behaviour involves an insurer’s effort to find evidence that can help it cut the indemnities of honest claims. Our findings reveal that this nitpicking behaviour only arises in markets with asymmetric information, where policyholders are unable to observe insurers’ nitpicking strategies. Conversely, in markets with symmetric information, insurers lose the incentive to engage in nitpicking. Moreover, our study highlights that nitpicky behaviour leads to a reduction in welfare and Pareto-inefficiency. This is because nitpicking is essentially an overpriced gam- ble that charges lower premiums from policyholders at a no-loss state, but cuts actual indemnities received by policyholders at a loss state.