In the Chinese context, the term “overseas” refers to countries and regions outside the sovereignty and jurisdiction of China. Overseas listing is an important strategy for firms to integrate into global capital markets and enhance their corporate investment efficiency. Using data from 600 Chinese companies listed exclusively overseas and 860 domestically listed firms for the period 2009–2023, this study analyzes the impact of overseas listing on corporate investment efficiency using empirical research methods, underlying mediating mechanisms, and the moderating role of economic policy uncertainty. The findings show that overseas listing improves Chinese firms’ investment efficiency. Compared to listing on the United States securities market (Nshares), listing on the Hong Kong securities market, (H-shares) has a pronounced effect on enhancing investment efficiency. Enhanced information disclosure quality improves the investment efficiency of Chinese enterprises listed overseas. Economic policyuncertainty can strengthen the positive impact of overseas listing on corporate investment efficiency. This study shows that overseas listing improves investment efficiency of firms in developing countries and offers new insights into advancing micro-level opening-up in these countries.

Purpose: High investment efficiency is a key dimension of high-quality enterprise development. As critical nodes embedded in supply chain networks, corporate investment behaviors are profoundly shaped by the structural characteristics of their supply chains. Concentrated supply chain configuration, as one of the core structural features, has not yet been systematically examined in terms of its impact on corporate investment efficiency and the underlying mechanisms, leaving an important research gap. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a sample of China’s A-share listed enterprises from 2007 to 2023, this study empirically examines the effect of concentrated supply chain configuration on corporate investment efficiency. Findings: First, concentrated supply chain configuration exerts a significant inhibitory effect on corporate investment efficiency, a conclusion that remains robust after a series of tests. Second, mechanism tests indicate that this influence operates primarily through three channels: exacerbating financing constraints, crowding out working capital, and deteriorating the information environment. Third, heterogeneity analysis shows that both supplier concentration and customer concentration inhibit investment efficiency, with the latter having a slightly stronger negative effect. The adverse impact is more pronounced in over-investing enterprises, non-state-owned enterprises, smaller firms, and those in growth or decline stages. Furthermore, regional factor market development, external market power, and internal control quality are found to effectively mitigate the negative effect of concentrated supply chain configuration on corporate investment efficiency. Originality: This study extends the research on determinants of corporate investment efficiency from a supply chain structure perspective, providing new theoretical insights and empirical evidence for understanding corporate investment behavior in China.

This paper examines the role of institutional investors in shaping pricing dynamics within China’s nascent infrastructure Real Estate Investment Trust market. Introduced in 2021, China’s REITs have rapidly gained policy and market attention as a tool for financing large-scale infrastructure projects through equity-based securitisation. Unlike mature REIT markets, China’s infrastructure REITs are characterised by a high concentration of institutional ownership dominated by state-owned financial institutions. Using panel data on first 9 REITs from May 2021 to April 2024, we find that institutional ownership significantly boosts the premium to net asset value. This effect operates primarily through two channels: reduced market liquidity and increased idiosyncratic return volatility, likely reflecting institutions’ trading activity and informational advantages. The findings highlight how institutional capital serves as a confidence signal in China’s emerging REITs ecosystem. The study contributes to the global REITs literature by offering insights from an emerging market context and provides policy recommendations to guide China’s REITs market development toward greater transparency, diversity, and long-term resilience.

We compile a Chinese counterpart to the TRACE dataset and provide the first trade-level analysis of China’s wholesale corporate bond market—the second largest in the world. In contrast to the dealer-dominated, core–periphery networks typical of over-the-counter markets in developed economies, China’s corporate bond market shows limited dealer intermediation. Designated dealers are reluctant to intermediate trades,and non-dealers supply the majority of liquidity, leading to wide price dispersion and low trading activity. This weak dealer participation is not driven by information asymmetry but stems from balance sheet constraints among smaller dealers and large state-owned banks’ privileged access to profitable lending opportunities.

Mutual funds create liquidity for investors by issuing demandable equity shares while holding illiquid securities. We study the implications of this liquidity creation by examining frequent trading suspensions in China, which temporarily eliminate market liquidity in affected stocks. These suspensions cause significant mispricing of mutual funds due to inaccurate valuations of their illiquid holdings. We find that investors actively acquire information about suspended stocks held by mutual funds, driving flows into underpriced funds. This information is subsequently incorporated into stock prices when trading resumes. Our findings suggest that mutual fund liquidity creation stimulates information acquisition about illiquid, information-sensitive assets.

Traditional decision tree models, which rely exclusively on numerical variables, often encounter difficulties in handling high-dimensional data and fail to effectively incorporate textual information. To address these limitations, we propose the Integrated Multivariate Segmentation Tree (IMST), a comprehensive framework designed to enhance credit evaluation for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by integrating financial data with textual sources. The methodology comprises three core stages: (1) transforming textual data into numerical matrices through matrix factorization; (2) selecting salient financial features using Lasso regression; and (3) constructing a multivariate segmentation tree based on the Gini index or Entropy, with weakest-link pruning applied to regulate model complexity. Experimental results derived from a dataset of 1,428 Chinese SMEs demonstrate that IMST achieves an accuracy of 88.9%, surpassing baseline decision trees (87.4%) as well as conventional models such as logistic regression and support vector machines (SVM). Furthermore, the proposed model exhibits superior interpretability and computational efficiency, featuring a more streamlined architecture and enhanced risk detection capabilities.

This study investigates the impact of RegTech adoption in the M&A regulatory review process on deal performance. Leveraging the staggered implementation of the SOEs Online Supervision System (SOSS) by China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) across its central and 31 provincial offices from 2018 to 2021, we find that SOSS directly enhances SASAC’s decision-making efficiency and improves its capacity to screen and approve higher-quality M&A deals. More importantly, SOE-led M&A transactions exhibit higher announcement returns as well as improved long-run stock and operating performance following the system’s implementation. The positive impact of SOSS is more pronounced for acquirers with stronger technological infrastructure, in transactions characterized by low transparency and weak governance, and in provinces with more stringent external scrutiny. Overall, by addressing regulator-firm information asymmetry and reinforcing managerial accountability, SOSS improves regulatory effectiveness in overseeing major investment activities among SOEs.

This paper examines why tax incentives fail to stimulate participation in China's third-pillar commercial pension insurance, emphasizing the role of rational inattention. Using household survey data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) spanning 2014-2022 and a difference-in-differences-in-differences (DDD) design, we find that pilot policy generated a statistically insignificant average effect on participation, with rational inattention - proxied by financial literacy - explaining much of its ineffectiveness. We develop a dynamic consumption-portfolio model featuring costly information acquisition, and then resolve limitations of standard models through a dynamic framework with distinct savings channels and policy-focused rational inattention. The models show that rational inattention distorts perceptions of tax benefits and wage growth, raising participation costs, while multiple savings channels dilute incentives. Only households with higher financial literacy substantially respond to the policy. Our results reveal how cognitive frictions undermine pension reform and offer implications for designing behaviorally-informed retirement schemes.

This paper investigates how the geographical distribution of shareholders in Chinese mutual fund management companies influences investment decisions. We show that mutual funds are more inclined to hold and overweight stocks from regions where their shareholders are located, thus capitalizing on a local information advantage. By examining changes in fund holdings in response to shifts in the shareholder base, we rule out the possibility that these effects are driven by fund managers’ local biases. Our findings reveal that stocks from the same region as the fund’s shareholders tend to outperform and significantly contribute to the fund’s overall performance.

Utilizing microevaluation data on the extent to which firms advance the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provided by Robeco, this paper examines the influence of corporate sustainability on stock price performance and its underlying economic mechanisms. The empirical results suggest that firms’ sustainability has a significant negative effect on excess returns, particularly the contribution of firms to the social dimension of sustainability. Firms’ SDG performance can alleviate financing constraints and reduce financial risk, but it does not significantly enhance financial performance, leading to market capital outflows from high SDG-performing firms, especially from individual investors. Furthermore, our results suggest that high SDG-performing firms are undervalued and do not increase the information content in their stock prices, which may be the main reason for the negative effect of SDG performance. We also conduct a series of heterogeneity tests, which show that firms from regions with high environmental regulatory intensity and less economic development, as well as heavily polluting firms and firms with poorer information environments, experience greater negative effects. These findings have implications for investors to properly understand corporate sustainability and for regulators to promote the development of a low-carbon economy.