We explore whether Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) can provide incremental information to peers. Using Chinese stock market data, we find that positive peers' MD&A tone encourages firms to hold more cash, particularly for industries with fewer institutional investors' site visits. Moreover, this association is moderated by predation risk and decision-making environment. Specifically, this effect is more pronounced for firms which are market followers or financial constrained, and it is also stronger for firms operating under higher economic policy uncertainty or solely in domestic market. Overall, our findings enrich the information channels of peer effects in cash policy.

We explore the relationship between fintech, macroprudential policies, and commercial bank risk-taking. Based on system generalized method of moment modeling on a panel data of 114 commercial banks in China from 2013 to 2020, results show that there are functional differences in the impact of fintech on bank risk-taking. Payment and settlement technology (PST), capital raising technology (CRT) and investment management technology (IMT) are positively correlated with bank risk-taking. In contrast, market facility technology (MFT) negatively correlates with bank risk-taking. We also find that macroprudential policies weaken the promotion effect of CRT on bank risk-taking and strengthen the inhibition effect of MFT on bank risk-taking while having no significant moderating effect on PST and bank risk, IMT and bank risk. Further, the micro characteristics of banks (capital adequacy ratio, asset scale, liquidity level) affects the moderating strength of macroprudential policies. Various robustness tests confirm our conclusions.

This paper examines the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the future stock price crash risk using a sample of Chinese listed firms. We employ the divergence of CSR ratings for measuring the unmeasurable outcome uncertainty, and find that conditional on firms’ CSR performance, future stock price crash risk will arise with the CSR divergence. Further results show that the moderating effect is more pronounced for firms with weaker investor protection or higher agency costs. We conclude that firms with higher CSR divergence have more severe agency problem which is complementary to the literature where stakeholders’ theory dominates.

The existing literature studies the relationship between institutional investors and the risk of stock price crash from multiple dimensions. Based on the phenomenon that institutional investors hold the shares of several listed companies in the same industry, this paper takes the A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2008 to 2018 as the research samples to explore the relationship between institutional common ownership and stock price crash risk. The results show that: institutional common ownership significantly increases the risk of stock price crash. After a series of robustness tests, the conclusion remains unchanged. The impact mechanism test shows that institutional common ownership improves the stock price synchronization, investor sentiment and stock liquidity, and then aggravates the risk of stock price crash. Further tests show that the higher the product market competition, the more media coverage, and the weaker the protection of regional investors, the positive impact of institutional common ownership on the risk of stock price crash is more significant.

This paper investigates the intertemporal relation between expected aggregate stock market returns and conditional variance considering periodic trading breaks. We propose a modified version of Merton’s intertemporal asset pricing model that merges two different processes driving asset prices, (i) a continuous process modeling diffusive risk during the trading day and, (ii) a discontinuous process modeling overnight price changes of random magnitude. Relying on high-frequency data, we estimate distinct premia for diffusive trading volatility and volatility induced by overnight jumps. While diffusive trading volatility plays a minor role in explaining the expected market risk premium, overnight jumps carry a significant risk premium and establish a positive risk-return trade-off. Our study thereby contributes to the ongoing debate on the sign of the intertemporal risk-return relation.

This paper investigates the trading behavior of ambiguity-loving investors and the corresponding impacts on asset price. The ambiguity-loving attitude increases investors' willingness to participate in the risky asset market. Their rising participation gradually crowds out ambiguity-averse and sophisticated investors, extending their nonparticipation region. When the market supply is small, the discontinuous and non-unique properties of ambiguity-loving investors' demand mapping can cause flat ranges in the equilibrium price. When the market supply is moderate or large, an increase in the fraction of ambiguity-loving investors or ambiguity level reduces equity premium. We find the effect of ambiguity-loving attitudes remains with short-sales constraints except for ambiguity-loving investors' positions and the equity premium. Their positions shrink, and equity premium decreases when the market supply is small. Besides, the rising fraction of ambiguity-level investors and ambiguity level increases equity premium when ambiguity-loving investors with heterogenous opinions only sell the risky asset.

This study investigates the effect of institutional cross-ownership on stock price crash risk using a sample of Chinese listed companies during the period 2011–2021. We find that institutional cross-ownership can significantly reduce stock crash risk. After a series of robustness tests, the above findings still hold. In addition, we find that the relationship is more pronounced for non-state-owned listed companies and those in less-developed regions. The study finds that the quality of corporate disclosure and financing constraints have the mediating effect. This paper provides new empirical evidence on how to reduce stock crash risk in emerging financial markets.

This paper compares Chinese firms’ IPO performance both in the short- and the long-run on domestic and overseas markets and investigates what factors determine the IPO destinations of Chinese firms. We find China’s domestic IPO market performs well over both time horizons, while some listings in the overseas market perform well in the long run except for small- and mid-cap listings in the US. Analysis based on a capital asset pricing model reveals IPO premiums and short-term returns are less affected by three common risk factors, while longer term returns are mainly driven by market fundamentals. Investigation of the drivers for Chinese firms’ IPO destinations using the binary choice model shows that firm specifics, institutional setups, and market characteristics influence the choice of IPO destinations. The prospect of a high IPO premium and strong trading in IPO shares are substantial drivers for firms to list their shares onshore. On the other hand, indicators of market size and profitability appear to have the highest predictive power for the likelihood of overseas listings, followed by firm’s ownership structure, IPO offering size and IPO underwriting costs. Institutional setups have the least predictive power for overseas listings. These results are in general robust to domestic delisting and IPO suspension events.

In this study, we adjust the hierarchical risk parity (HRP) model by introducing hierarchical information on assets to help manage portfolio risk. The adjusted HRP model with hierarchical information considers both correlation and hierarchical information. Compared with other models, the HRP model with hierarchical information has better out-of-sample robustness for simulation data. Moreover, this model achieves better out-of-sample performance using Chinese industry indices data. The results reveal that the adjusted HRP model is an efficient tool to control out-of-sample portfolio risk.

This paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the volatility spillover and dependence structure among the major developed and emerging stock markets. The TVP-VAR connectedness decomposition approach and R-vine copula are implemented in this research. The results of the TVP-VAR connectedness decomposition approach reveal that the volatility spillover among the major developed and emerging stock markets has been significantly strengthened by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, although it has gradually faded over time. In addition, during the pandemic, the UK, German, French and Canadian stock markets are the spillover transmitters, while the Japanese, Chinese Hong Kong, Chinese and Indian stock markets are the receivers. It is also found that the US and Brazilian stock markets have undergone role shifts after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of the R-vine copula model indicate that during the pandemic, the Canadian, French, and Chinese Hong Kong stock markets are the most important financial centre in the American, European, and Asian stock markets, respectively. Furthermore, the effect of the extreme risk contagion has been strengthened by the pandemic, particularly the downside risk contagion.