We evaluate the impact of digital finance on the ESG performance of manufacturing enterprises and whether digital and traditional finance play a complementary or substitute role in promoting the ESG performance. First, we find that developing digital finance can alleviate financing constraints and promote technological innovation, thereby increasing enterprises' investment in environmental, social, and governance, providing sufficient technical support, and improving their ESG performance. Furthermore, digital finance and traditional finance have a direct impact on the ESG performance and further enhance their influence through complementary effects. Therefore, this paper may provide a valuable reference for finance to support manufacturing enterprises' development effectively.

The study indicates that under conditions of financial repression, a enterprise’s ESG performance significantly impacts the extent of its short-term debt used for long-term purposes. The mechanism test reveals that ESG performance mitigates the degree of short-term debt for long-term use through three pathways: enhancing information transparency, alleviating financing constraints, and curbing excessive investment. Further research suggests that the influence of ESG performance on the use of short-term debt for long-term purposes is more pronounced among private enterprises, high-pollution and high-energy-consuming enterprises, and enterprises in underdeveloped regions. This paper enriches the research on the relationship between ESG performance and corporate financing decisions.

Using comprehensive account-level data and 192 asset pricing anomaly signals, we investigate whether retail investors and institutions trade on anomalies in China. We find that retail investors tend to trade contrary to anomaly prescriptions, suggesting that they have a strong tendency to buy (sell) overvalued (undervalued) stocks. In contrast, institutions trade consistent with anomalies, indicating that they buy (sell) undervalued (overvalued) stocks. Regarding the information content of anomalies, we find that small retail investors trade contrary to trading-based anomalies, whereas institutions trade consistent with both trading- and accounting-based anomalies. Additionally, lottery stock preference and return extrapolation help explain investors’ trading behavior on anomalies.

Utilizing a dataset from 2013 to 2022 on China’s listed companies, we explored whether a hedge fund network could help explain the occurrence of Chinese stock crash. First, this study constructs a hedge fund network based on common holdings. Then, from the perspective of network centrality, we examine the effect of hedge fund network on stock crash risk and its mechanism. Our findings show that companies with greater network centrality experience lower stock crash risk. Such results remain valid after alternating measures, using the propensity score matching method, and excluding other network effects. We further document that the centrality of hedge fund network reduces crash risk through three channels: information asymmetry, stock price information content and information delay. In addition, the negative effect of hedge fund network centrality on crash risk is more prominent for non-SOEs firms. In summary, our research shed light on the important role of hedge fund information network in curbing stock crash.

To specify the peer effects that affect influencers’ sponsored content strategies, the current research addresses three questions: how influencers respond to peers, what mechanisms drive these effects, and the implications for social media platforms. By using a linear-in-means model and data from a leading Chinese social media platform, the authors address the issues of endogenous peer group formation, correlated unobservables, and simultaneity in decision-making and thereby offer evidence of strong peer effects on the quantity of sponsored content but not its quality. These effects are driven by two mechanisms: a social learning motive, such that following influencers emulate leading influencers, and a competition motive among following influencers within peer groups. No evidence of competition motive among leading influencers or defensive strategies by leading influencers arises. Moreover, peer effects increase influencers’ spending on in-feed advertising services, leading to greater platform revenues, without affecting the pricing of sponsored content. This dynamic may reduce influencers’ profitability, because their rising costs are not offset by higher prices. These findings emphasize the need for balanced strategies that prioritize both platform growth and influencer sustainability. By revealing how peer effects influence competition and revenue generation, this study provides valuable insights for optimizing content volume, quality, and financial outcomes for social media platforms and influencers.

Under the guidance of the dual-carbon target, the development of the carbon financial system is of great significance to compensate for the gap between green and low-carbon investment. Considering the current state of the development of carbon financial system, China has initially formed a carbon financial system, including participants, carbon financial products and macro and micro operation structures, but the system is still in the initial development stage. Given the current restrictions on the development of carbon finance, it can be seen that there are still problems such as unreasonable economic structure, insufficient market construction, single product category, low utilization rate and urgent construction of relevant judicial guarantee system. Therefore, the system should be improved at the economic level and the legal level. The economic level includes adjusting the layout of economic development structure, strengthening the construction of market infrastructure, encouraging the diversification of carbon financial products and strengthening publicity and education promotion strategies. The legal level includes improving the top-level design, formulating judicial interpretation to promote carbon financial trading, promoting commercial law amendment, and promoting the linkage mechanism between specialized environmental justice and carbon finance and other safeguard measures. Finally, improving the carbon finance system is required to promote and protect the orderly development of carbon finance. To promote the reform of the pattern of economic development, the concept of ecological and environmental protection in the financial sector needs to be implemented to form an overall pattern of pollution reduction, carbon reduction and synergistic efficiency improvement.

Despite nearly twenty years of privatization, mixed-ownership reform has been the mainstay of SOE reform in China in recent years. This raises the question of whether the financial performance of mixed-ownership firms (Mixed firms) is better than private-owned enterprises (POEs). Although Mixed firms suffer more from government intervention, unclear property rights, and interest conflicts between state shareholders and private shareholders, they can also benefit from the external resources controlled by the state. Therefore, the performance of Mixed firms is still unclear. Collecting data from the Chinese A-share listed market, we divide the firms into POEs, Mixed firms controlled by the state (MixedSOEs), and Mixed firms controlled by the private sectors (MixedPOEs). Measuring profitability using ROA and ROE, we find that on average, POEs perform better than Mixed firms, and MixedPOEs have a higher profitability than MixedSOEs. Within Mixed firms, more state shares are related to lower profitability, and more private shares are related to higher profitability. Using the NBS survey data, we further find that on average, SOEs exhibit the lowest profitability, with MixedSOEs and MixedPOEs in the middle, and POEs have the highest profitability. We try to address the endogeneity challenge in several ways and get similar results. Overall, our analysis provides new evidence on the financial performance of mixed-ownership firms.

A second-tier patent system with relatively low protectability standards has been adopted by many countries, but empirical evidence on how it is used by firms israre. Using Chinese patent data, we exploit “parallel filings” – where a second-tierpatent is filed simultaneously with an invention patent – to shed light on its usein practice. The data indicate that while parallel filings appear to be inventionswith a narrower scope, they are cited more frequently in the early years and morelikely to be licensed or transferred compared to inventions protected by standardpatents. We provide evidence that parallel filing is likely a strategic choice forshort-life-cycle technologies that achieve high value early in their lifetime but decayfast. The rapid issuance of the second-tier patent facilitates knowledge diffusionand technology transfer, thereby helping the patentees capitalize on the value of fast-moving technologies. This study provides some much-needed empirical evidenceon how the quick procedure of the second-tier patent system serves short life-cycletechnologies.

Does large-scale privatization increase income inequality? To answer this question, we analyze the impact of China’s reform of state-owned enterprises on labor market outcomes in urban areas from 1992 to 2004, exploiting cross-prefecture variation in reform exposure stemming from initial differences in the employment shares of urban collective enterprises and state-owned enterprises. Our analysis reveals that workers in prefectures with higher exposure to the reform experienced a more rapid decline in employment and a slower increase in income, compared to those in less exposed areas. Further analysis shows that individuals with lower income and those with lower educational attainment experienced greater losses. A back-of-the-envelope analysis indicates that the reform contributed to more than 40% of the study period’s increase in income inequality.

The scale expansion of low-carbon industries and the green transformation of carbon-intensive industries are two sides of the same coin in achieving the “dual carbon” goals. However, research on transition finance supporting the upgrading of traditional existing carbon-intensive industries remains insufficient. The key to examining the effectiveness of transition finance lies in distinguishing whether the supported enterprises are engaging in greenwashing or green evolution. Based on data of Chinese A-share listed companies in the carbon-intensive industries, an empirical study is conducted and offers the following findings: (1) Transition finance not only does not increase greenwashing but also promotes comprehensive green innovation in carbon-intensive enterprises. (2) In terms of the influencing mechanism, transition finance exerts “resource effects” and “signaling effects,” promoting green innovation by improving debt maturity mismatch and attracting green institutional investors. (3) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive impact of transition finance on green innovation is particularly pronounced among enterprises in the eastern region, state-owned enterprises, and those with lower levels of managerial myopia. (4) Further industry spillover effects analysis reveals that transition finance empowers green innovation within industries though peer effects and competitive effects. The findings are essential for understanding the effectiveness of transition finance and offer valuable insights for policymakers.