Firm survival, as a key indicator of regional economic resilience, has gained increasing attention in the context of global economic uncertainty and the deep adjustments in industrial structures. In the Pearl River Delta (PRD), a core region of China’s Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, the characteristics of firm life cycles are crucial for understanding spatial development inequalities and institutional effects in emerging economies. This study focuses on firms in the PRD, using full life-cycle data from registration, operation, to deregistration. An XGBoost regression model is employed, incorporating the SHAP explanation algorithm, to systematically analyze the main factors influencing firm survival. The results show that: (1) Firm establishment time is the primary factor influencing survival, with significant “survival threshold” and “growth leap” effects—mature firms exhibit a distinct survival advantage; (2) Among spatial structure variables, moderate industry specialization and diversity enhance firm survival rates, while excessive concentration and diversification show diminishing or negative returns, reflecting an “ecological threshold” effect; (3) External shocks have a significant suppressive impact on startups, while policy support and capital size show limited explanatory power; (4) The ownership structure, especially state-holding, has a positive moderating effect on firm survival in specific contexts, indicating that private enterprises’ flexibility and adaptability can compensate for institutional gaps. This study offers insights into the spatial heterogeneity of firm survival mechanisms, providing quantitative evidence for regional economic policy adjustments and firm resilience-building. Recommendations include promoting differentiated policies, optimizing industrial ecological spatial layouts, and piloting systems to enhance survival resilience, especially for mixed-ownership firms.

Cultural tightness measures the extent to which individuals behave according to the broader values shared by other members in society. While cultural tightness has been studied extensively in the context of individuals’ behavior and (cross) country-level outcomes, much less is known about the explanatory power it holds in the setting of organizational structures. Motivated by the ambiguous relationship between cultural tightness and population-level gender equality documented by prior literature, we investigate whether cultural tightness helps explain board gender diversity levels in China. Rooting our hypotheses in institutional theory and the contextual governmental reforms of China, we leverage a large sample of Chinese A-share listed firms and document that firms located in culturally tight provinces have higher levels of board gender diversity. Further analyses reveal that cultural tightness in China partially offsets the impact of more traditional Confucian values, and the relationship becomes more pronounced in settings where firms can realize higher legitimacy gains from adopting women on their boards. Finally, we counter potential critiques of window dressing, by demonstrating that in culturally tighter areas women are more likely to be higher educated, have more experience abroad, hold more board positions, and are less likely to be independent directors.

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.

This paper examines biodiversity risk transmission to US agricultural futures markets. We find: (1) all futures exhibit moderate-to-high biodiversity sensitivity, with coffee showing highest response through transparent price transmission mechanisms; (2) wavelet analysis reveals time-frequency heterogeneity, where tropical crops maintain strong long-term synchronization with biodiversity risk, intensified during COVID-19; (3) frequency-dependent asymmetric correlations emerge, with grains shifting from positive long-cycle to negative short-cycle correlations; (4) systemic spillover analysis indicates moderate interdependence, with soybeans as primary risk receiver and sugar as dominant transmitter, revealing differentiated transmission roles.

This study investigates the impact of analysts' information source diversity on forecast bias and investment returns. We combine the GPT-4o model and text similarity, to extract the names of information sources from the text of analyst in-depth reports. Using 349,200 sources, we calculate information diversity scores based on the variety of data sources to measure analysts’ ability of selecting relevant information. The findings reveal that higher information diversity significantly reduces forecast bias and enhances portfolio returns. The effect is particularly pronounced for large companies, state-owned enterprises, those with low analyst coverage, low firm-specific experience, and reports with positive forecast revisions. Institutional investors recognize the value of this skill, while retail investors remain largely unaware, which contributes to financial inequality. This study highlights the critical role of information diversity in analyst performance.

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.

Biodiversity conservation incurs substantial economic costs. We investigate how financial markets price the risks such costs induce, exploiting the “Green Shield Action,” a major regulatory initiative launched in China in 2017 to enforce biodiversity preservation rules in national nature reserves. While improving biodiversity, the initiative led to significant increases in bond yields for municipalities with these reserves. The effects are driven by increases in local governments’ fiscal risk due to expected increases in transition costs resulting from shutting down illegal economic activities within reserves and additional public spending on biodiversity. Investors show little non-financial consideration towards endeavors counteracting biodiversity loss.

This study empirically investigates the impact of dialect diversity on corporate investment efficiency under different levels of economic policy uncertainty. Our findings reveal that local dialect diversity enhances investment efficiency during stable periods, but this advantage significantly diminishes under high economic policy uncertainty. This reduction primarily arises from underinvestment and overly cautious decision-making by fragmented management during periods of turmoil. Further analysis reveals that this reduction is exacerbated by stronger internal governance, which emphasizes checks and balances, and mitigated by stronger external governance, which focuses on supervisory power. Our results remain robust when using alternative measures of main variables and employing topography as an instrumental variable.

Purpose – This study aims to examine whether and how gender diversity on corporate boards is associated with voluntary nonfinancial disclosures, particularly water disclosures. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses corporate water information disclosure data from Chinese listed firms between 2010 and 2018 to conductregression analyses to examine the association between female directors and water information disclosure. Findings – Empirical results show that female directors have a significantly positive association with corporate water information disclosure. Additionally, internal industry water sensitivity of firms moderates this significant relationship. Originality/value – This study determined that female directors can promote not only water disclosure but also positive corporate water performance, reflecting the consistency of words and deeds of female directors in voluntary nonfinancial disclosures.

This study aims to examine the influence of Chinese immigrants on Canadian business culture and the role of Chinese business associations in shaping the Canadian business landscape. A qualitative research design was used to explore the topic, and semi-structured interviews were conducted as the primary method of data collection. 25 participants were selected for the study through purposive sampling, including Chinese immigrant business owners, employees of Chinese-owned businesses, and members of Chinese business associations in Canada. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data collected through the interviews and identify patterns and themes that emerged from the participants’ responses. The study found that Chinese immigrants have had a significant influence on Canadian business culture and that Chinese business associations play an important role in promoting business cooperation between different cultural groups. The results also suggest that embracing cultural diversity in the business environment has both benefits and challenges, and businesses must effectively manage cultural diversity in the workplace to promote cooperation between different cultural groups. This study provides valuable insights into the ways in which Chinese immigrants have shaped the Canadian business landscape and the importance of embracing cultural diversity in the business environment. [译]本研究旨在探讨华裔移民对加拿大商业文化的影响，以及华人商业协会在塑造加拿大商业格局中的作用。本研究采用定性研究设计，以半结构化访谈作为主要的数据收集方法。通过目标抽样选定了25名参与者，包括加拿大华裔移民企业主、华裔企业员工，以及加拿大华人商业协会的成员。本研究通过访谈收集数据，并使用主题分析法对参与者的回答进行模式和主题的识别与分析。研究发现，华裔移民对加拿大商业文化产生了显著影响，同时，华人商业协会在促进不同文化群体之间的商业合作中发挥着重要作用。研究结果还表明，在商业环境中拥抱文化多样性既带来了利益也带来了挑战，企业必须有效地管理工作场所中的文化多样性，以促进不同文化群体之间的合作。本研究为理解华裔移民如何塑造加拿大商业格局，以及商业环境中拥抱文化多样性的重要性提供了有价值的见解。