The side effect of automation on the economy has been discussed frequently, but little is known regarding its political consequences. This paper examines the causal effect that automation induces political costs for the local government. By combining the national individual-level panel data of political trust with the prefecture-level robot exposure rate in China biennially during the period 2012– 2018, we find that the development of automation would incur lower political trust in the Chinese local government. Furthermore, the impact may result from the risk of unemployment, intensified pessimism about local government, higher downside risk, and declining group participation, providing a few channels for the automation process to affect citizens’political trust. This paper provides empirical evidence for the impact of automation and the source of political legitimacy, contributing to the literature about automation by emphasizing the crucial role of government in coping with the technological progress and making good use of endogenous creative destruction.

Whether responsible investing reduces portfolio risk remains open to discussion. We study the relationship between ESG performance and downside risk at fund level in the Chinese equity mutual fund market. We find that fund ESG performance is positively associated with fund downside risk during the period between July 2018 and March 2021, and that the positive relationship weakens during the COVID-19 pandemic. We propose three channels through which fund ESG performance could affect fund downside risk: (i) the firm channel in which the risk-mitigation effect of portfolio firms’ good ESG practices could be manifested at fund level, (ii) the diversification channel in which the portfolio concentration of high ESG-rated funds could amplify fund downside risk, and (iii) the flow channel in which fund ESG performance may attract greater investor flows that could reduce fund downside risk. We show evidence that the observed time-varying relationship between fund ESG performance and downside risk is driven by the relative force of the three channels.

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.

The existing literature mainly documents the relationship between international and domestic fossil energy markets; however, empirical evidence of the dynamic relationships between fossil energy market and new energy market is lacking. This paper combines TGARCH model and copula model to explore the dynamic linkages and spillover effects between international fossil energy (crude oil, coal and natural gas) markets and China's new energy market using daily data from 4 January 2012 to 3 September 2018. The empirical results indicate that fossil energy returns and new energy returns are positive related over time. And the crude oil returns and new energy returns, as well as the coal returns and new energy returns have lower tail dependence, while there is upper tail dependence structure between natural gas returns and new energy returns. Furthermore, the extreme upside and downside risk spillover from international fossil energy markets to China's new energy market is asymmetric. Among the spillover effects, the downward risk spillover of crude oil market exerts the most significant impact on China's new energy market.

In this paper, we introduce a general downside risk measure based on high frequency downward moves below minimum acceptable target in asset prices. Our contribution to the existing literatures is threefold. Firstly, we construct a general downside risk measure, realized semivariance and downward absolute power variation are all special cases of our realized downside risk measure. Secondly, we derive the central limit theorem of this measure. Thirdly, we investigate the distributional properties of this measure in China’s stock market and show the potential of this measure in modeling downside risk.

We examine the impact of cross-border mergers and acquisitions on a target firm’s risk and return based on a sample of partially acquired target firms in 18 emerging countries between 1990 and 2007. We find that cross-border acquisitions significantly reduce both the total and downside risk of the target firms and that this reduction is more significant in acquisitions undertaken by bidders from countries that have better protection of investor rights. We also show that this risk reduction improves the risk adjusted performance of these firms. Thus, we conclude that cross-border partial acquisitions benefit an emerging market investors’ risk-return trade off by reducing investment risk and increasing investment returns; policy makers in emerging markets may be well advised to open their markets for partial cross-border acquisitions.

Abstract: It is negative risk if there is a good chance of coming out better than our reference level. This paper proposes a general risk measure: bilateral partial moment, where downside risk is supplemented with the "upside potential". Variance, mean absolute deviation, semi-variance and other downside risk definition are all incorporated in this framework. The portfolio selection problems in this general class of risk model are discussed. The portfolio optimization provides the flexibility for the selection of an appropriate target return and the weightiness of upside potentials.