We evaluate the impact of digital finance on the ESG performance of manufacturing enterprises and whether digital and traditional finance play a complementary or substitute role in promoting the ESG performance. First, we find that developing digital finance can alleviate financing constraints and promote technological innovation, thereby increasing enterprises' investment in environmental, social, and governance, providing sufficient technical support, and improving their ESG performance. Furthermore, digital finance and traditional finance have a direct impact on the ESG performance and further enhance their influence through complementary effects. Therefore, this paper may provide a valuable reference for finance to support manufacturing enterprises' development effectively.

This paper investigates whether Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance influences the stock idiosyncratic risk and extreme risk. We find that the ESG performance of listed companies significantly reduces the stock idiosyncratic risk and extreme risk. Furthermore, we identify that this mitigating effect is shaped by the nature of enterprise ownership and the firm life cycle. Through additional mechanistic analysis, we confirm that ESG performance affects the stock price volatility risk of listed companies by reducing levels of corporate earnings management and bolstering corporate reputation, thereby alleviating both idiosyncratic risk and extreme risk in stock prices.

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.

Firstly, the article elaborates on the concepts of metaverse and industrial metaverse, pointing out that the metaverse has driven changes and optimizations in multiple dimensions such as urban form, social organization form, and industrial production form; Secondly, the metaverse has empowered urban governance in Guangzhou, improving the efficiency of urban management, enhancing the city's emergency management capabilities, improving the quality of interaction between people and the city, and promoting the construction of a smart city; Once again, the focus was on the practices and good results achieved by Guangzhou in utilizing blockchain technology, digital twin technology, generative artificial intelligence technology, unmanned aerial vehicles+AI and other technologies in urban governance and serving the public; Finally, it is clarified that metaverse related technologies will promote the integration of carbon based civilization and silicon-based civilization in urban and social governance. Humans can use silicon-based civilization technology to expand their living space and improve their quality of life, while silicon-based civilization can also draw inspiration from the culture and emotions of carbon based life, achieving more comprehensive development.

This paper investigates whether increased female representation on corporate boards affects firms’ bond financing costs. Exploiting the 2017 Big Three’s campaigns as a plausibly exogenous shock, we document that firms experiencing larger increases in female board representation, induced by the campaigns, experience significant reductions in bond yield spreads and improvements in credit ratings. We identify reduced leverage and enhanced workplace environment as key mechanisms, and show that the effects are stronger among firms with greater tail risk and information asymmetry. An alternative identification strategy based on California’s SB 826 regulatory mandate yields consistent results. Our findings suggest that board gender diversity enhances governance in ways valued by credit markets.

This study examines how classified boards affect workplace safety, an important dimension of employee welfare. Using comprehensive establishment-level injury data from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and a novel classified board database, we document that firms with classified boards experience 12-13% lower workplace injury rates. To establish causality, we employ instrumental variable and difference-in-differences approaches exploiting staggered board declassifications. The safety benefits of classified boards operate through increased safety expenditures, reduced employee workloads, and enhanced external monitoring through analyst coverage. These effects are strongest in financially constrained firms and those with weaker monitoring mechanisms. Our findings support the bonding hypothesis that anti-takeover provisions facilitate long-term value creation by protecting stakeholder relationships and provide novel evidence that classified boards benefit rank-and-file employees, not just executives and major customers. The results reveal an important mechanism through which governance structures impact employee welfare and challenge the conventional view that classified boards primarily serve managerial entrenchment.

Using “the Measures for the Administration of Bank Wealth Management (henceforth BWM) Funds Sales” as an exogenous shock in fund distribution channels in Chinese BWM industry, we investigate the impact of non-affiliated distribution on fund performance. We find that the adoption of non-affiliated distribution brokers has a positive effect on BWM fund performance. We further find that the effect is more pronounced when the non-affiliated distribution broker has more market power and when the fund issuer has better governance. We interpret our findings to indicate that non-affiliated distribution brokers alleviate the agency problems of fund managers by introducing both ex-ante and ex-post monitoring, highlighting the role of non-affiliated distribution brokers as an external governance mechanism in wealth management industry.

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.

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.

The relationship between corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance and its value has garnered increasing attention in recent times. However, the utilization of ESG scores by rating agencies, a critical intermediary in the linkage between ESG performance and value, presents challenges to ESG research and investment as a result of inherent subjectivity, hysteresis, and discrepant coverage. Fortunately, news can provide an objective, timely, and socially relevant perspective to augment prevailing rating frameworks and alleviate their shortcomings. This study endeavors to scrutinize the influence of ESG-related news on the Chinese stock market, to showcase its efficacy in supplementing the appraisal of ESG performance. The study's findings demonstrate that (1) the stock market is significantly impacted by ESGrelated news; (2) ESG-related news with different attributes (sentiments and sources) have notably diverse effects on the stock market; and (3) the heterogeneity among enterprises (industries and ownership structures) affects their ability to withstand ESGrelated news shocks. This study contributes novel insights to the comprehensive and objective assessment of corporate ESG performance and the management of its media image by providing a vantage point on ESG-related news.