Using the data of Chinese listed firms from 2003-2020, this study applies a System GMM estimation approach to document that high local government ecological concerns increase a firm’s stock price crash risk. This finding remains consistent after addressing endogeneity issues and undergoing robustness checks. This study also reveals that the implementation of the new environmental protection law in 2015 mitigates the relationship between local government ecological concerns and stock price crash risk. Further analyses indicate that stricter environmental regulation and high subsidies, as well as enhanced corporate social responsibility and governance, can effectively alleviate the adverse effect of local government ecological concerns on stock price crash risk. In addition, we note that the influence of local government ecological concerns on stock price crash risk is more significant in the eastern region, heavily polluting industries, and non-SOEs. Lastly, the research identifies two potential channels through which local government ecological concerns can impact stock price crash risk by reducing the quality of information disclosure and intensifying investor disagreement.

By exploring additional information, both institutional investors’ site visits and analyst coverage can stimulate corporate innovation. However, because analysts are more specialized in information exploration, their existence should weaken the effect of institutional site visits on corporate innovation. By using Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2013, we investigate the effect of institutional site visits on firms’ innovation output, with a focus on its heterogeneity from analyst coverage. We use patent citation records to accurately measure firms’ innovation output. We find that institutional site visits significantly enhance corporate innovation among firms without analyst coverage, among firms with low analyst coverage, while this effect turns insignificant among firms with high analyst coverage. IV estimations confirm the causality. Additionally, we find that our major results exist only among non-SOEs, firms with a lower quality of information disclosure, firms with lower liquidity, and newly listed firms. Overall, this paper helps better understand the interaction between institutional site visits and analyst coverage regarding information exploration.

This paper explores the relationship between ESG ratings and real earnings management using the data of Chinese listed companies from 2008 to 2021. We find that ESG ratings and real earnings management are negatively correlated. It reveals that the improvement of ESG rating will help to improve the level of corporate governance, standardize the business activities of enterprises and thus help to reduce the real earnings management of enterprises. Our findings still hold after controlling for potential endogeneity and robustness issues. Further analysis shows that internal and external oversight of companies further strengthens the negative relationship between ESG ratings and true earnings management. Overall, the impact mechanism of ESG rating on real earnings management revealed by us has clear policy implications for how managers can improve the quality of information disclosure in emerging markets.

This study investigates the effect of institutional cross-ownership on stock price crash risk using a sample of Chinese listed companies during the period 2011–2021. We find that institutional cross-ownership can significantly reduce stock crash risk. After a series of robustness tests, the above findings still hold. In addition, we find that the relationship is more pronounced for non-state-owned listed companies and those in less-developed regions. The study finds that the quality of corporate disclosure and financing constraints have the mediating effect. This paper provides new empirical evidence on how to reduce stock crash risk in emerging financial markets.