This paper examines the impact of green mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on firms’ transition to green exports. We develop a “Technology-Qualification” theoretical framework and conduct the empirical analysis using a matched dataset of Chinese listed manufacturing firms and customs records. The findings show that green M&As significantly promote firms’ green exports, and this effect remains consistent across a series of robustness test. Mechanism analysis reveals that green M&As promote green exports through two key channels: green innovation spillovers and green qualification spillovers. Further heterogeneity analysis indicates that the positive impact of green M&As on green exports is more pronounced among firms with stronger operational performance, weaker green foundations, and those involved in processing trade. In addition, green M&As not only stimulate green exports but also prevent the entry of polluting products and reduce the exit of green product, thereby driving a green-oriented dynamic restructuring of firms’ export structure. This paper offers micro-level insights into how firms can navigate the dual challenges of enhancing green production capabilities and overcoming barriers to green trade during their transition to green exports.

This study explores the anchoring effect of previous bid premiums on acquirers’ bidding behavior in serial acquisitions. We demonstrate that, after controlling for deal characteristics, learning, and unobserved factors, the current bid premium is positively correlated with the acquirer’s previous bid premium. The strength of this anchoring effect diminishes with longer time intervals between acquisitions and increases with the industry similarity of targets. Notably, it remains unaffected by the acquirer’s state ownership or acquisition frequency. Additionally, the anchoring effect is less pronounced during periods of high economic uncertainty and can reverse following a change in the acquirer’s CEO. Our findings suggest that serial acquisitions are interrelated events, challenging the notion that each bid is an isolated occurrence. This research provides insights into the underperformance of serial acquirers compared to single acquirers and the declining trend in announcement returns across successive deals.

This study examines the economic consequences of China’s Three-Red-Lines policy—introduced in 2021 to cap real estate developers’ leverage by imposing strict thresholds on debt ratios and liquidity. Developers breaching these thresholds experienced sharp declines in financing, land acquisitions, and financial performance, with privately-owned developers disproportionately affected relative to state-owned firms. Using granular project-level data, we document significant drops in sales and a demand shift from private to state-owned developers. The policy also reduced local governments’ land sale revenues, prompting greater reliance on hidden local government financing vehicles for land purchases. The policy induced broad structural changes in China’s housing and land markets.

This paper investigates whether regional negative public sentiment associated with extreme non-financial social shocks (e.g., violence or crime) will affect the resident firms’ M&A announcement return. Using a sample of 3,200 M&A deals in China, our empirical results consistently show that M&A announcement return is significantly lower after the firm’s headquarter city has experienced negative social shocks. We further find that better CSR performance helps to mitigate the impact of these negative shocks. Overall, we show that firm operations will be largely affected by the resident environment and location, and better CSR performance acts as an effective risk management strategy.

Using Chinese publicly listed firms from 2007 to 2020, this study empirically explores the impact of non-controlling shareholders’ network on the corporate excess goodwill. We find that the centrality of non-controlling shareholders’ network significantly decreases the excess goodwill from mergers and acquisitions, indicating that non-controlling shareholders’ network can restrain the goodwill bubbles. Moreover, the inhibitory effect of non-controlling shareholders’ network on excess goodwill stems from pressure-resistant institutional investors and individual investors. This effect is achieved through the information effect, resource effect, and governance effect. Furthermore, this inhibitory effect is more pronounced in firms located in less developed regions and legal environments, and firms with lower audit quality. In conclusion, non-controlling shareholders’ network plays a positive role in the restriction of excess goodwill in listed companies.

We examine the impact of bankruptcy court establishment (BCE) on corporate acquisition activities using hand-collected data of city-level BCE in China from 2008 to 2020. The results show that BCE promotes corporate acquisition activities largely due to mitigated information asymmetry and decreased deal inefficiency. Our results highlight the important role of judiciary reform in corporate acquisition decisions in emerging markets.

We find that investors react more favorably to corporate announcements of share repurchases, SEOs, earnings, dividend changes, and acquisitions if the announcement is made immediately prior to or on holidays. These announcements are associated with more positive reactions for favorable events and less negative reactions for unfavorable events. This effect is robust to controls for market conditions and a selection bias, is accompanied by subsequent reversals, and is present in several international markets. Our findings suggest that predictable individual mood changes can cause biases in market reactions to firm-specific news.

This paper investigates the effects of serial acquisitions on labor cost stickiness. We show that serial acquisitions can significantly increase the labor cost stickiness through increasing managerial optimism, agency costs and labor adjustment difficulty, and the labor cost stickiness further damages corporate value. The baseline findings are weaker in firms with better internal control and higher institutional ownership. Overall, this study contributes to the literature on serial acquisitions and cost stickiness, provides a new perspective for the value-destroying effect of serial acquisitions in a typical emerging market.

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 non-controlling shareholders' network on corporate excess goodwill using Chinese publicly listed companies from 2007 to 2020. We find that a stronger centrality of non-controlling shareholders' network leads to a significant decrease in excess goodwill resulting from mergers and acquisitions. This implies that the non-controlling shareholders’ network has a significant inhibitory effect on the occurrence of goodwill bubbles. Mechanism analysis finds that non-controlling shareholders' network can inhibit excess goodwill thorough information effect, resource effect, and governance effect. Furthermore, this inhibitory effect is attributed to pressure-resistant institutional investors and individual investors, and is more pronounced in firms located in less developed intermediary market and legal system environment, as well as firms with lower audit quality. In summary, the non-controlling shareholders' network plays a positive role in curbing excess goodwill in listed companies.