This paper examines how economic policy uncertainty (EPU) affects mergers and acquisitions (M&As) between companies with different levels of financing constraints. Existing literature overlooks the interactive effect of EPU and financing constraints on M&As, and empirical evidence regarding EPU's influence on financially constrained firms remains limited. China's unique ownership structure provides a valuable context for this analysis, as state-owned enterprises (SOEs) face fewer financing constraints than private firms. Using a 2007-2021 sample of Chinese listed state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private companies, we find that high EPU decreases the likelihood of private firms acquiring SOEs, while increases the likelihood of private firms being acquired by SOEs. These results suggest that under high EPU, financially constrained firms experience greater survival pressure, limiting their capacity to alleviate constraints by acquiring less-constrained targets. Conversely, less-constrained firms enhance their bargaining power and are more likely to acquire financially stressed counterparts. EPU facilitates control transfers from high-constraint to low-constraint firms, contributing to long-term market returns and improving financial market allocation efficiency. Our study contributes to the literature by shedding light on how EPU shapes divergent M&A behaviors based on firms’ financing constraints.

We examine how Chinese mutual funds react to superstitious beliefs about bad luck during one’s zodiac year, which occurs on a 12-year cycle around a person’s birth year. Funds decrease their holdings of zodiac stocks, non-state-owned enterprises in the zodiac years of their chairperson, and profit more from trading zodiac stocks than from trading other stocks. This pattern is more pronounced in firms with lower investor awareness and higher liquidity, and for fund managers with higher past ability, indicating that fund managers trade in anticipation of the negative market reaction towards zodiac stocks.

在中国式现代化和金融强国战略纵深推进的背景下，中国保险业正由以规模扩张为主导的发展模式，全面转向以质量提升、风险可控和价值创造为核心的高质量发展阶段。特别是2024年新一轮金融监管体制改革以及《加强监管防范风险推动保险业高质量发展的若干意见》（新“国十条”）出台后，保险业在服务国家战略、保障民生安全和防范系统性金融风险中的功能定位进一步强化。本文在国内国际双循环新发展格局下，系统界定保险业高质量发展的政治性、人民性与专业性内涵，构建“规模—结构—功能—效益”四维分析框架，基于“十四五”以来尤其是近两年行业最新数据与实践进展，分析我国保险业在服务实体经济、普惠保障、科技赋能和风险防控方面取得的阶段性成效，同时揭示产品同质化、服务信任不足、风险定价能力偏弱等突出问题。在此基础上，结合数字金融发展趋势与中国特色保险文化建设要求，从产品创新、服务升级、风险治理、监管优化和文化培育五个维度，提出推动我国保险业实现高质量、可持续发展的现实路径，为保险业由“保险大国”迈向“保险强国”提供具有现实针对性的政策建议。

在人口老龄化加剧与劳动力跨区域流动常态化的双重背景下，城镇职工养老保险基金的区域失衡问题日益凸显。本文以2011-2023年我国京津冀与长三角的7个省级行政区的面板数据为研究样本，聚焦劳动力流动对城镇职工养老保险基金抚养比（DR）的影响机制，通过构建双向固定效应模型、滞后变量模型及交互项模型，系统检验劳动力流动的直接效应、区域异质性及全国统筹政策的调节效应。研究发现：劳动力流动和全国统筹政策对DR均存在显著正向影响；区域异质性表现为长三角地区劳动力流动对DR的影响显著强于京津冀地区。文章结论为优化养老保险基金区域调剂机制、制定差异化劳动力流动与社保政策提供实证支撑。

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.

This study aims to examine the causal effect of carbon regulatory risk on corporate bond yield spreads in emerging markets through empirical analysis. Exploiting China's commitment to peak CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060 as an exogenous shock to an unexpected increase in carbon regulatory risk, we perform a difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) strategy. We find that exposure to carbon regulatory risk leads to an increase in bond yield spreads for carbon-intensive firms located in regions with stricter regulatory enforcement. This positive relationship is more pronounced for firms with financing constraints, belonging to more competitive industries, and located in regions with a high marketization process. We further identify that higher earnings uncertainty and increased investor attention serve as two mechanisms by which carbon regulatory risk influences the yield spreads of corporate bonds. Moreover, the spread decomposition reveals that the rise in bond yield spreads after an increase in carbon regulatory risk is primarily driven by the rise in default risk rather than the rise in liquidity risk. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of considering carbon regulatory risk exposure in financial markets, especially in developing economies like China.

This paper investigates the causal impact of pre-trade transparency on the market liquidity of an over-the-counter-style market by leveraging a natural experiment in China’s interbank corporate bond market. We find that turnover, market liquidity, and aggregate bond returns significantly declined when the regulators unexpectedly suspended real-time quote dissemination in March 2023. Consistent with our expectation, these effects were mainly focused on interbank bonds, not exchange bonds, and bonds with lower credit ratings and longer maturities. This study contributes novel evidence to the transparency literature and provides insights for policymakers in emerging markets weighing the trade-offs between data governance and market efficiency.

This study identifies a significant settlement effect in China’s equity options market, where price decline and pre-settlement return momentum exists on the settlement Friday (T+2) due to a temporal misalignment between option expiration (T) and the T+1 trading rule for the underlying asset. We attribute this phenomenon to three distinct behavioral channels: closing pressure from put option unwinding, momentum-generating predatory trading by futures-spot arbitrageurs exploiting liquidity fragility, and an announcement effect that attenuates the anomaly by adjusting spot speculators' expectations. Robust empirical analysis identifies predatory trading as the primary driver of the settlement effect.These findings offer critical insights for market microstructure theory and the design of physically-delivered derivatives.

随着中国企业并购活动在推动产业升级和资源优化中的规模不断扩大，并购的复杂性和合规要求随之提升，企业在并购过程中面临的合规与诉讼风险也逐渐增加。作为一种有效的风险管理工具，董事高管责任保险在有效缓解并购风险及增强决策科学性方面发挥着关键作用，这对企业的长期战略发展至关重要。基于此，本文选取2012-2022年沪深A股上市企业作为主并方完成的并购事件为样本，实证分析了投保董事高管责任保险对企业长期并购绩效的影响。研究结果表明，企业投保董事高管责任保险能够显著提升长期并购财务表现，在经过一系列稳健性检验后，这一结论依然成立。调节效应分析发现，良好的公司治理能够增强董事高管责任保险的正向作用，而当管理层过度自信时，投保董事高管责任保险可能放大激进决策的负面效应。机制分析进一步显示，董事高管责任保险通过提升信息透明度、优化公司治理以及缓解融资约束，改善了并购整合效果。异质性分析表明，董事高管责任保险在国有企业、关联并购和高风险并购中的作用更加显著。

本文利用2006至2015年期间A股IPO申购资金冻结政策，研究周期性流动性紧缩对货币市场和债券市场的影响。我们发现，IPO申购资金冻结显著推高主要货币市场利率：银行间隔夜回购利率、交易所隔夜回购利率和隔夜Shibor平均分别上升12.4、38.3和11.6个基点，且利率上升幅度与IPO资金冻结规模呈显著正相关关系。IPO资金冻结同时造成货币市场交易量和交易结构出现显著变化。此外，IPO资金冻结还推高部分债券市场利率，引发企业、金融机构甚至政府为应对流动性紧张而改变债券发行计划，各类信用债乃至国债在IPO资金冻结期间的日均发行量普遍下降20%至30%。最后，我们发现虽然央行会在IPO资金冻结期间通过逆回购向金融市场注入流动性，然而并不足以抵消IPO资金冻结造成的冲击。本文揭示了流动性冲击的跨市场溢出效应，强调了金融政策跨市场协调在防范系统性金融风险方面的重要性。