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.

Between high-quality and high-efficiency green innovation, which can truly reduce stock price crash risk? We use data from Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2022 to study the impact mechanism and effect of radical and incremental green innovation stock price crash risk. Results show that radical green innovation can significantly reduce stock price crash risk, and this effect is more evident than the incremental one. Radical green innovation can improve information efficiency and enhance risk management, thus reducing stock price crash risk. Besides, among companies held by trading institutions and with low analyst coverage, the inhibitory effect is more evident.

The healthy operation of the stock market relies on sound liquidity. We utilize the semantic information from disclosure texts of listed companies on the China Science and Technology Innovation Board (STAR Market) to construct a daily corporate network. Through empirical tests and performance analyses of machine learning models, we elucidate the relationship between the similarity of company disclosure text contents and the temporal and spatial correlations of stock liquidity. Our liquidity indicators encompass trading costs, market depth, trading speed, and price impact, recognized across four dimensions. Furthermore, we reveal that the information loss caused by employing Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) topology significantly affects the explanatory power of network topology indicators for stock liquidity, with a more pronounced impact observed at the document level. Subsequently, by establishing a neural network model to predict next-day liquidity indicators, we demonstrate the temporal relationship of stock liquidity. We model a liquidity predicting task and train a daily liquidity prediction model incorporating Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) modules to solve it. Compared to models with the same parameter structure containing only fully connected layers, the GCN prediction model, which leverages company network structure information, exhibits stronger performance and faster convergence. We provide new insights for research on company disclosure and capital market liquidity.

Facing external shocks, maintaining and stabilizing imports is a major practical issue for many developing countries. We first document that sourcing market switching (SMS) is widespread for Chinese firms (For 2000-2016, SMS firms account for 76.29% of all import firms and 96.30% of total import value). Then we use Chinese firm-level data to show that SMS can significantly mitigate the negative impacts of international uncertainty on imports, which further stabilizes firm employment and innovation, leading to increases in national and even world welfare. Possible motivations for SMS include stabilizing import supply, lowering import tariffs, raising the real exchange rate, and increasing product switching. We also find that the effects of SMS vary by the type of uncertainty, firm ownership, productivity, credit constraints, trade mode, and product features.

Informal institutions can play a crucial role in fostering corporate and policy innovation, especially when formal institutions are weak. However, their intangible nature makes them difficult to quantify. In this paper, we proxy the strength of kinship-based informal institutions using surname homogeneity among business owners, specifically, the extent to which they share a limited number of surnames within the same county. Our analysis reveals that a one-standard-deviation increase in the strength of informal institutions leads to a 21.1% increase in patent filings and an 18.9% increase in policy innovation. We find that kinship-related informal institutions foster corporate innovation by compensating for weak formal institutions, enhancing protection for intellectual property rights, facilitating access to finance, improving public service delivery, and promoting supply chain cooperation. We also suggest that kinship-related informal institutions encourage local governments to engage in policy experimentation, which relies on the collaboration of business owners. This experimentation process is easier to coordinate and monitor in counties dominated by a few kinship networks. Both informal institutions and policy innovation contribute to economic development and foster entrepreneurial market entries. However, the positive impact of informal institutions declines over time as formal institutions strengthen in China.

We investigate the effect of third-party certification for green bonds by analyzing its impact on issuer's future green innovation performances. We find that third-party certification for green bonds can significantly promote issuer's future green innovation performances. Furthermore, the promotion effect is more prominent in non-state-owned issuers, large issuers and heavy polluting issuers, and can be more significantly exerted by professional and reputable third-party certification agencies. Besides, third-party certification for green bonds can play the effect by reducing the issuer's tax expenditure, increasing the issuer's loan financing, and receiving a positive response in stock returns. But unexpectedly, it cannot play the effect by further reducing the credit spread of green bonds. Our findings indicate that independent external supervision can play a positive role in green bond issuance, but there is still a long way to go.

Using firm-customer matched data from 2005 to 2020 in China, we examined the spillover effects and mechanisms of green innovation (GI) among supply chain partners. Results show a positive association between customers' GI and their supply firms' GI, indicating spillover effects in the supply chain. Customers' GI increase from the 25th to the 75th percentile leads to a significant 19% increase in supply firms' GI. Certain conditions amplify the spillover effect, including customers with higher bargaining power, operating in less competitive industries, and supply firms making relationship-specific investments or experiencing greater customer stability. Geographic proximity and shared ownership further enhance the spillover effect. Information-based and competition-based channels drive the spillover effect, while customers with higher GI encourage genuine GI activities by supply firms. External environmental regulations, such as the Chinese Green Credit Policy and Environmental Protection Law, strengthen the spillover effect, supporting the Porter hypothesis. This research expands understanding of spillover effects in the supply chain and contributes to the literature on GI determinants.

Based on the sample of Chinese A-listed firms from 2003 to 2020, this paper investigates the effect of common institutional ownership on labor income share. The result shows that common institutional ownership can significantly increase firms’ labor income share. Mechanism tests indicate that common ownership can: 1) alleviate financial constraints by reducing the debt financing costs and increasing the trade credit financing, thus increasing the labor income share; 2) improve corporate innovation and therefore enhances the demand for highly-skilled labor, which eventually boost labor income share. Competitive hypothesis test represents that common institutional ownership can reduce the monopoly power of enterprises and decrease monopoly rent, so as to increase the proportion of labor in the distribution. Further analyses present that the network formed by the common ownership can effectively exert the financing support role of SOEs and the knowledge spillover effect of innovative-advantage firms, which contributes to the labor income share increasing of other related firms in the network connection. This study not only enriches the economic consequences of common institutional ownership, but also provides policy guidance for the government to further optimize the income-distribution pattern by deepening the reform of the financial market.

This paper examines the impact of asset bubbles on innovation and long-run economic growth within a semi-endogenous growth framework, incorporating idiosyncratic productivity shocks and endogenous credit constraints in the R&D sector. It demonstrates that pure bubbles tied to intrinsically useless assets and equity bubbles linked to intermediate goods firms can coexist, relaxing credit constraints and boosting entrepreneurs’ total factor productivity (TFP), which stimulates R&D and enhances growth along the transitional path. However, these bubbles generally do not influence the long-run economic growth rate. The model’s mechanisms and predictions are supported by aggregate and firm-level evidence, showing a positive correlation between equity bubbles and R&D investment, with stronger effects during periods of tightened financial constraints.

Recent research highlights the significant impact of managerial industry tournament incentives on internal firm decisions. However, their potential impact on external stakeholders-in the context of evolving product market relationships-has received scant attention. To address this gap, we examine the effect of customer aspiration, incentivized by CEO industry tournaments (CITIs), on supplier innovation. Utilizing customer-supplier pair-level data from 1992 to 2018, we establish that customer CITIs enhance supplier innovation, both in quantity and quality. Additionally, we identify that CITIs positively impact the relationship-specific innovation and market valuation for suppliers. The effect of CITIs is more pronounced when customers are larger, geographically closer, socially connected, and have long-standing relationships with their suppliers. The results remain robust to alternative specifications and considering potential endogeneity issues. Our study highlights the bright side of executives’ industry tournament incentives, which not only drive innovation within the sector but can also positively influence related sectors within the supply chain.