This paper examines the interactional phenomenon where an institutional complainee initiates a complaint and becomes a co-complainant with their original complainant against a third party that is proposed to have caused grievances to both participants. Institutional complainees initiate their third-party complaints when their complainants repeatedly refuse to affiliate with their attempts to shift responsibility or their proposed solutions. This shift from being the complainee to being a co-complainant is regularly accomplished through practices in which the institutional complainee: 1) produces implicit counter-complaints; 2) partitions complainants and themselves as sharing similar identities; and 3) highlights and upgrades their own grievances. Once complainants affiliate with their complaints, institutional complainees attempt to end the complaint sequences. The interactions end with a sense of solidarity sustained between the participants, even though no satisfying solutions are offered to the original complainants. The findings suggest that institutional actors can make relevant their noninstitutional identities and go against what is expected of them as institutional actors to achieve the institutional task of directing blame away from their institutions. Recorded phone conversations between local residents and various institutional actors during COVID-19 lockdowns in China serve as data for this study.

Adverse selection remains a significant challenge in the insurance industry, often resulting in substantial financial losses for insurers. The primary hurdle in addressing the issue lies in accurately identifying and quantifying adverse selection. Traditional methods often fail to adequately account for the heterogeneity of insurance purchasers and the endogenous nature of their insurance decisions. This study introduces an innovative approach that integrates the Gaussian Mixture Model and the regression-based model from Dionne et al. (2001) to assess adverse selection, addressing the limitations of previous methods. Through comprehensive simulations, we demonstrate that our method yields unbiased estimates, outperforming existing approaches. Applied to China’s automobile insurance market, leveraging IoT devices to track telematics data, this method captures risk heterogeneity among the insured. The results offer robust evidence of adverse selection, in contrast to conventional methods that fail to detect this phenomenon due to their inability to capture the underlying relationship between customer risk and claim behavior. Our approach offers insurers a robust framework for identifying information asymmetries in the market, thereby enabling the development of more targeted policy interventions and risk management strategies.

While many studies document cross-stock predictability where returns of some stocks predict returns of other similar stocks, most evidence comes from US markets. Following Chen et al. (2019), we identify peer firms based on historical return similarity and construct a Peer Return Gap (PRG) measure, defined as the difference between a stock’s lagged return and its peers’ returns. Our empirical evidence from Chinese markets shows that past-return-linked peers strongly predict focal firm returns. A long-short portfolio sorted on PRG generates an equal-weighted monthly return of 1.26% (t = 3.81) and a Fama-French five-factor alpha of 1.10% (t = 2.86). These abnormal returns remain unexplained by several alternative factor models.

Copper resources are widely used in power networks and clean - energy tech like PV panels, wind turbines, and NEVs. Restricted by domestic resources, China's copper supply chain is vulnerable with risks. Based on six supply - chain stages, this paper builds an assessment system for China's copper supply - chain risks. By adopting an improved Benefit of Doubt (BOD) model, this paper has systematically evaluated the risks in the whole copper supply chain, revealing the trends and deep-rooted causes of these risks. The findings of this study reveal that: (1) The supply chain risk of China's copper resources presents a significant upward trend over the past 15 years; (2) The current supply chain risks in copper are mainly concentrated at the stages of import, production, and application; and the recycling risk has a great potential for reducing the copper supply chain risks in the future. Based on these findings, this paper proposes two policy recommendations: (1) Develop diversified channels for importing copper resources and optimize overseas investment patterns and; (2) Improve the domestic supply capacity of secondary copper resources and reduce the risks at the recycling stage.

This paper explores the impact of Confucian culture on the environmental management practices of firms, utilizing data from A-share listed companies in China from 2009 to 2022. The study reveals several significant findings: (1) Firms in regions with a stronger presence of Confucian culture are more likely to adopt environmentally responsible management practices; (2) Confucian culture enhances firms' environmental management through three channels: promoting innovation, easing financing constraints, and reducing managerial myopia, with particular emphasis on alleviating financing constraints; (3) Regional environmental regulations mitigate the positive influence of Confucian culture on firms' environmental management practices. This study contributes to the literature by elucidating the determinants of corporate environmental management and emphasizing the critical role of cultural factors, particularly in overcoming financial barriers, in corporate decision-making.

This paper constructs an evaluation index system for the high-quality development of the marine economy based on the five dimensions of the new development paradigm. It employs entropy method, kernel density analysis, and Dagum Gini coefficient method to analyze the high-quality development level of China's marine economy and its spatial-temporal evolution from 2013 to 2022. The findings reveal that: (1) The comprehensive index for the high-quality development of China's marine economy exhibits an overall fluctuating upward trend; (2) The high-quality development levels of the marine economy in the eastern and southern marine economic circles are both above the national average, while that in the northern marine economic circle is below the national average; (3) The focus of high-quality development in China's marine economy is shifting towards economically developed regions along the southeast coast, demonstrating a trend of "higher in the south and lower in the north." Moreover, the gap in high-quality development of the marine economy among the three major marine economic circles is gradually narrowing, and the high-quality development of regional marine economies tends to become more coordinated.

The disparities in green transition have led to the call for a ‘just transition’. However, the large differences in energy efficiency across different regions have been identified as a primary hazard to the just transition. This study examines whether transferring low-carbon technology can improve the efficiency of energy, enhancing the overall energy efficiency, and marketing a sustainable and equitable energy future. In this paper, we utilize the Undesirable-SE-SBM model to estimate the energy efficiency of China's 30 provinces during 2012 to 2022, and empirically tested the impact of low-carbon technology transfer on the convergence of total-factor energy efficiency by convergence analysis. The results showed that: (1) There is evidence of σ convergence and absolute β convergence in the eastern and western regions, but not in the central region. (2) Low-carbon technology transfer can accelerate the convergence of total factor energy efficiency. Lagging regions that adopt low-carbon technologies can catch up with the advanced regions' level of total-factor energy efficiency. (3) There is regional heterogeneity in the effect of low-carbon technology transfer on the accelerating convergence of total factor energy efficiency. The western region experiences the most significant acceleration, followed by the eastern and central regions.

Trust can be obtained by firm location (endowed trust) or behaviors (earned trust). We are interested in whether firms located in trusted regions are more likely to protect stakeholders’ benefits as a strategy to earn trust. Based on a sample of Chinese firms, we find a significant and positive correlation between regional endowed trust and local firms’ environmental and social commitment. We suggest that endowed trust has two effects: 1) shaping local firms’ legal cognition and thus decreasing misconducts; and 2) providing resources and thus mitigating financial constraints, both of which encourage firms to protect the environment and society. Moreover, the positive effect of high endowed trust is weakened when corporate governance or local legal environment is strong.

财经社交媒体深刻重塑信息传播格局的背景下，如何从投资者视角有效提取上市公司之间的关联关系，已成为识别市场动态和资金流向的关键。本文采用雪球网百万用户近8500万条社交媒体大数据，利用文本分析构建基于社交媒体的A股上市公司关联网络，研究关联股票间的动量溢出效应。研究结果表明：(1) 社交媒体关联股票加权收益率对目标股票收益具有显著为正的预测能力，且该结论在控制各类公司关联动量后仍然保持稳健，据此构建的等值加权多空策略可产生约36个基点的日平均收益。(2) 经济机制检验发现，关联股票加权收益率越高，目标股票的散户买入、主动性买入订单越多，并且在套利摩擦更高的股票中，动量溢出效应越强，支持了注意力溢出与有限套利驱动的错误定价的理论解释。(3) 进一步分析表明，投资者情绪越高、预测期限越短，动量溢出效应越强；该效应在考虑交易成本、采用不同关联测度方式以及纳入多源社交媒体平台后依然显著。本文揭示了互联网时代下基于社交媒体的公司关联的独特价值，可为监管层实时研判公众认知和防范金融市场风险传导提供更高频、前瞻且准确的依据，对二级市场投资决策亦具有重要参考意义

The discussion on the innovative effects of intellectual property pledge financing is a mainstream trend. In this context, this study has improved the existing research from several aspects, such as broadening the dimensions of innovation, adding dynamic analysis, refining multidimensional mediation mechanisms, and employing unique samples. Ultimately, we come to the following conclusions: (1) Intellectual property pledge financing suppresses enterprise innovation, especially innovation quality, but this pattern will be broken by raising the threshold of innovation conditions. The reason is that strict innovation conditions can lead to a poor innovation foundation for enterprises, which are rarely affected by the fluctuation of funds obtained from intellectual property pledge financing. (2) Intellectual property pledge financing has a non-linear effect on firm innovation, characterized by an increase followed by a decrease, suggesting that intellectual property pledge financing in current China can only provide a temporary stimulus for firm innovation. (3) The relationship between intellectual property pledge financing and enterprise innovation is strongly moderated by the ownership, type, and size of the enterprise, with the inhibitory effect of intellectual property pledge financing on enterprise innovation occurring mainly in state-owned enterprises, high-tech enterprises, and small enterprises, while its positive effects are more pronounced in private enterprises, non-high-tech enterprises, and medium-sized enterprises. (4) Financing constraints, internal incentives, external supervision, and signaling mechanisms are indeed key pathways through which intellectual property pledge financing affects firm innovation, especially when we analyse these mechanisms using dynamic models.