This study evaluates whether electric vehicles (EVs) in China have delivered on their “green” promise by improving air quality and reducing private ownership costs. Combining city–month data on EV adoption and air pollution with detailed vehicle-level transaction records, we find little evidence that rising EV adoption reduces concentrations of major pollutants or greenhouse gases. Both the traditional instrumental variable (IV) and the Bartik IV estimations show that the null effects persist after addressing potential endogeneity. The limited environmental gains are largely attributable to the continued dominance of coal in electricity generation and to a sizable rebound effect whereby lower operating costs increase vehicle usage. On the private side, although EVs reduce energy expenditures by roughly CNY 16,747, their faster depreciation leads to an average net loss of about CNY 18,175 over the ownership period relative to fuel vehicles (FVs). Counterfactual simulations show that EVs match the emissions of fuel vehicles when the coal share falls to about 55%, deliver measurable benefits below 49%, and require a reduction to around 31% once higher utilization is considered. The results show that the environmental benefits from EV adoption depend on a transition toward cleaner electricity generation.

As China’s shadow banking sector expands, the impact of listed companies’ involvement in financial stability and the real economy accumulates increasing attention. Despite being a crucial channel for non-financial firms to participate in shadow banking, the literature has given limited consideration to the acquisition of wealth management products (WMPs). Using data from Chinese listed firms between 2007 and 2020, we analyze how excessive equity financing affects companies’ WMP acquisitions. Our findings indicate that over-financing significantly boosts WMP purchases among these firms, particularly in cases of private ownership, raised environmental uncertainty, and strict financing constraints.

This study investigates the impact of ultimate government ownership or control on the cost of debt of Chinese listed corporations. We first examine the relative level of cost of debt of corporations under government control compared to corporations under individual or family control. We then explore circumstances under which government control is likely to reduce a corporation’s cost of financing. Our results suggest that the benefits of government control are conditional on firm-specific financial circumstances and internal- and external-corporate governance environment. We find that, on average, government controlled corporations have lower cost of debt but the effect is not homogeneous. Government controlled corporations have lower cost of debt when they are highly financially constrained and have higher risk of being expropriated by controlling shareholders and in provinces where the local government is less effective, but not otherwise.