Portfolio underdiversification is one of the most costly losses accumulated over a household’s life cycle. We provide new evidence on the impact of financial inclusion services on households’ portfolio choice and investment efficiency using 2015, 2017, and 2019 survey data for Chinese households. We hypothesize that higher financial inclusion penetration encourages households to participate in the financial market, leading to better portfolio diversification and investment efficiency. The results of the baseline model are consistent with our proposed hypothesis that higher accessibility to financial inclusion encourages households to invest in risky assets and increases investment efficiency. We further estimate a dynamic double machine learning model to quantitatively investigate the non-linear causal effects and track the dynamic change of those effects over time. We observe that the marginal effect increases over time, and those effects are more pronounced among low-asset, less-educated households and those located in non-rural areas, except for investment efficiency for high-asset households.

This study investigates the impact of analysts' information source diversity on forecast bias and investment returns. We combine the GPT-4o model and text similarity, to extract the names of information sources from the text of analyst in-depth reports. Using 349,200 sources, we calculate information diversity scores based on the variety of data sources to measure analysts’ ability of selecting relevant information. The findings reveal that higher information diversity significantly reduces forecast bias and enhances portfolio returns. The effect is particularly pronounced for large companies, state-owned enterprises, those with low analyst coverage, low firm-specific experience, and reports with positive forecast revisions. Institutional investors recognize the value of this skill, while retail investors remain largely unaware, which contributes to financial inequality. This study highlights the critical role of information diversity in analyst performance.

This study assesses the impact of China’s Green Credit Guidelines (GCG) 2012 on the quality of firms’ green innovation and their financial asset allocations. While examining patent applications and grants, our findings reveal that, although the GCG 2012 led to a significant increase in green patent applications, its influence on granted patents, especially in the invention category, was minimal. This highlights a discrepancy between innovation intent and quality, suggesting that highpolluting enterprises (HPEs) prioritize rapid policy compliance rather than substantial environmental improvements. However, HPEs seem to prioritize liquidity over long-term financialization, potentially indicating enhanced credit allocation efficiency.

Why do firms appoint expired independent directors? How do expired independent directors affect corporate governance and thus impact investment decisions? By taking advantage of the sharp increase in expired independent directors’ re-employment in China caused by exogenous regulatory shocks, Rule No. 18 and Regulation 11, this paper adopts a PSM-DID design to test the impact of expired independent directors on CSR performance. We find that firms experience a significant decrease in CSR performance after re-hiring expired independent directors and the effect is stronger for CSR components mostly related to internal governance. The results of robustness tests show that the main results are robust to alternative measures of CSR performance, an extended sample period, alternative control groups, year-by-year PSM method, and a staggered DID model regarding Rule No. 18 as a staggered quasi-natural experiment. We address the endogeneity concern that chance drives our DID results by using exogenous regulatory shock, an instrumental variable (the index of regional guanxi culture), and placebo tests. We also find that the negative relation between the re-employment of expired independent directors and CSR performance is more significant for independent directors who have more relations with CEOs and raise less objection to managers’ decisions, and for firms that rely more on expired independent directors’ monitoring roles (e.g., a lower proportion of independent directors, CEO duality, high growth opportunities, and above-median FCF). The mediating-effect test shows that the re-employment of expired independent directors increases CEOs’ myopia and thus reduces CSR performance. In addition, we exclude the alternative explanation that the negative relation is caused by the protective effect brought by expired independent directors’ political backgrounds. Our study shows that managers may build reciprocal relationships with expired independent directors in the Chinese guanxi culture and gain personal interest.

This study investigates how abnormally hot temperatures affect firms’ environmental behavior in China. We find that firms exposed to abnormally hot temperatures participate in more environmental engagement. We also find that this improvement effect is driven mainly by environmental concerns, including public concerns, CEOs, and governments. Our results remain intact after an array of robustness tests. Further analysis shows that the effect of abnormally hot temperatures on corporate environmental engagement is more pronounced in SOEs, heavily polluting firms, and firms located closer to local environmental protection agencies. Moreover, the positive impact of environmental engagement on firm value is stronger when firms are exposed to abnormally hot temperatures. Overall, this study sheds light on the potential stimulation of firms’ environmental actions by global warming, which is yet to be fully understood.

We investigate the impact of financial geographic density on corporate financial asset holdings in emerging market. We proxy for financial geographic density by calculating the number of financial institutions around a firm within a certain radius based on the geographic distance between the firm and financial institutions. Using data on publicly listed A-share firms in China from 2011 to 2021, we find that financial geographic density has a positive impact on nonfinancial firms’ financial asset investments, especially for the firms located in regions with a larger number of banking depository financial institutions or facing greater market competition. An increase in the number of financial institutions surrounding firms increases corporate financial asset holdings by alleviating information asymmetry. Moreover, we document that Fintech has little impact on the relationship between financial geographic density and corporate financial asset holdings. As the rise of financial geographic density, firms hold more financial assets for precautionary motives, which contribute to corporate innovation.

统筹金融开放和安全是构建高水平开放型金融新体制的基本要求。本文以美国货币政策为切入点，先从实证角度分析美国加息对我国产出的影响，然后构建包含跨境金融关联的两国DSGE模型，定量分析美国货币政策的溢出效应及应对之策。研究发现，美国加息1个百分点使中国产出下降约0.4个百分点，其中贸易渠道和金融渠道分别使中国产出下降0.2个百分点。分析作用机制发现，UIP偏离机制使金融中介净值波动和汇率波动相互强化，外部融资溢价机制使金融中介净值波动和企业净值波动相互强化，正是这两个机制放大了美国货币政策的外溢效应。进一步研究发现，金融开放度越高和汇率越缺乏弹性，美国加息冲击对我国变量的传导效应越显著。基于不同的福利函数特征，本文构建了统一的政策评估框架，对宏观审慎政策和双支柱调控应对美国加息冲击的有效性作出了精准评估。结果表明，无论是针对国内金融机构信贷监管的宏观审慎政策还是针对跨境资本流动和外汇相关的宏观审慎政策，均能降低美国加息的溢出效应，且宏观审慎政策有效性与汇率制度无关。在联合最优政策组合下，货币政策无需对名义汇率作出反应，外汇市场要强化价格调控淡化数量干预。在货币政策和宏观审慎政策相互协调搭配下，双支柱调控通过维护经济金融稳定具有显著的社会福利增进效应。本文为构建高水平开放型金融新体制，以金融高质量发展加快推进中国式现代化提供了政策启示。

收益率非对称性定价是金融研究中长期存在争议的重要问题。本文创新性地提出了基于概率分布、反映收益率整体非对称性的新测度（Return Asymmetry, RA），首次为该争议提供了跨市场的系统性证据。研究发现：首先，RA测度在中、美等主要市场均能负向预测股票横截面收益率，其解释力较传统测度显著提升；其次，RA的定价优势源于其对收益率复杂分布信息的更全面捕捉，特别是能有效识别系统与特质非对称之间的交互效应；最后，通过博彩偏好、投资者情绪、关注度和套利限制等多维度渠道分析，证实行为因素是驱动收益率非对称性定价的核心机制。本研究不仅有助于弥合学术分歧，更建立了具有全球适用性的非对称定价分析范式。

Firstly, the article elaborates on the concepts of metaverse and industrial metaverse, pointing out that the metaverse has driven changes and optimizations in multiple dimensions such as urban form, social organization form, and industrial production form; Secondly, the metaverse has empowered urban governance in Guangzhou, improving the efficiency of urban management, enhancing the city's emergency management capabilities, improving the quality of interaction between people and the city, and promoting the construction of a smart city; Once again, the focus was on the practices and good results achieved by Guangzhou in utilizing blockchain technology, digital twin technology, generative artificial intelligence technology, unmanned aerial vehicles+AI and other technologies in urban governance and serving the public; Finally, it is clarified that metaverse related technologies will promote the integration of carbon based civilization and silicon-based civilization in urban and social governance. Humans can use silicon-based civilization technology to expand their living space and improve their quality of life, while silicon-based civilization can also draw inspiration from the culture and emotions of carbon based life, achieving more comprehensive development.

How does executive authority affect household behavior? I develop a model in which the executive branch of the government is partially constrained. These constraints credibly limit intervention under normal conditions but can be overridden when a sufficiently large fraction of the population is in distress. Households anticipate this and strategically coordinate their financial risks through public markets, creating collective distress that compels government bailouts. Weaker constraints lower the threshold for intervention, making implicit guarantees more likely. The model explains why implicit guarantees are prevalent in China and predicts that such guarantees may discontinuously emerge elsewhere as executive constraints gradually weaken.