In this paper, we use a distinct quasi-natural experiments to examine the effect of liberalization of the stock market on corporate environmental, social, and governance(ESG) disclosure quality. We find that the liberation of the opening of Shanghai(Shenzhen)-Hong Kong Stock Connect (SHSC) significantly and consistently improves ESG disclosure quality of listed companies, and this effect is most evident in environmental information disclosure. We then find that the SHSC can improve the quality of ESG disclosure of listed companies through “voting with feet” and “external supervision” effect. Furthermore, the effect is stronger in firms that are Non-SOEs and with low equity concentrations. Overall, our results suggest that the liberalization of stock market can improve the quality of companies’ ESG disclosure quality.

This study examines the effect of mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firm excess perks by exploiting China’s 2008 mandate requiring firms to disclose CSR activities with a difference-in-differences design. We find that firms mandated to report CSR experience a decrease in excess perks subsequent to the mandate. Our empirical results also reveal that the decrease in abnormal perks is more pronounced for firms with worse information environments and lower CSR disclosure quality, suggesting that mandatory CSR disclosure significantly reduces executive abnormal perks and restricts managers’ unethical behavior by improving the quality of the information environment for investors. Our main finding does not change using the subsample before 2012, indicating that the reduction of abnormal perks is driven by the enaction of mandatory CSR rather than the anti-corruption campaign started in 2012. The last but not the least, the reductions of excess perk consumption are primarily driven by non-SOE firms and competitive industries, and mandatory CSR firms are subject to a significant and stronger pay-to-performance, which again confirm the well-governed view of corporate social responsibility.

This paper finds that Chinese stocks rise in February instead of January. Further analysis shows that the February premium is attributed to the Chinese New Year. We propose an alternative explanation for this premium based on liquidity preference, i.e., investors prefer holding liquid assets before the holiday and illiquid assets after the holiday. We find a substantial decrease in monetary base and increase in market activity after the Chinese New Year. The empirical fact that the Chinese New Year effect is particularly strong for stocks with low institutional holdings also supports this hypothesis.

Using daily news tone data between 2017 and 2020, we examine whether news tones can predict stock returns in Chinese A-share market. We first document that the news tones significantly and positively predict the cross-sectional stock returns over next day and over the next 12-weeks. When we separate the news into online news and paper news, the online news exhibit strong predictive power for future returns, while the printed news only displays marginal predictive power. We hypothesize that the online news is more related to firm fundamentals, while the paper news is more linked to political aspects of firm information. Our results using earnings surprises and SOE subsamples provide supportive evidence for the hypothesis.

考虑企业价值进而股票收益中实物期权及其影响的部分，本文利用随机贴现因子法理论上探讨了CAPM 是线性定价模型的本质，并据此指出实物期权资产或其可能的非线性影响是导致 CAPM 模型失效的原因。进一步，利用 1998-2012 年间我国沪深 A 股上市公司的数据，根据 Fama-French 市值规模和账面市值比，以及企业所处行业构造投资组合，通过比较实物期权调整前和调整后组合预期收益-贝塔关系的差异，实证发现调整实物期权将使得 CAPM 有效。

商业银行开展普惠金融服务到底是出于声誉还是绩效考虑？本文在理论论证传统普惠金融模式对商业银行的负向激励与信息化普惠金融改进银行绩效的机制基础上，以某大型商业银行信息化普惠金融县域层面的数据进行检验。结果发现：与网点扩张型普惠金融模式相比，信息化普惠金融能够提高商业银行的盈利性和成长性，实现普惠金融的商业可持续性，进而提出商业银行信息化普惠金融发展的建议。

This study documents a pervasive inverse relationship between asset growth rates and bond performance among non-investment and low-investment grade bonds. We argue such inverse relation holds ex ante considering a high growth rate in firm total assets results in growth in tangible assets and lowers bond default probabilities. Our empirical finding supports this hypothesis. Tangible asset growth of poorly rated bonds is negatively associated with contemporaneous bond performance and expected default probability. The finding is robust to different economic conditions and investment sentiments.

发展绿色金融旨在促进企业生产方式低碳转型，尤其支持企业开展绿色创新。本文以绿色债券为例，利用双重差分模型研究了绿色金融对企业绿色创新的支持效应。研究发现，发行绿色债券显著提升了企业绿色创新能力，这主要体现在绿色发明专利和绿色实用新型专利两个方面，其中发行绿色债券对绿色发明专利的促进作用具有更好的动态持续性。异质性检验发现，国有企业、非重污染企业、无第三方认证企业、专利密集型企业在发行绿色债券后绿色创新表现更加积极。进一步分析发现，发行绿色债券对企业绿色创新的促进作用源于资源效应和监督效应两个机制。本文最直接的政策含义是，为企业实现环境保护与竞争力提升的“双赢”和加快发展绿色金融促进企业绿色创新进而更好地实现绿色经济发展提供了有益的理论借鉴。

Using political turnovers in mayoral appointments at the prefecture-city level in China, we show that investors in the municipal corporate bond market price their concerns for rising local political uncertainty into bonds and relocate capital toward other corporate bonds issued by local firms. Municipal/non-municipal corporate bond issue spreads increase (decrease) by 8.9 (14) basis points before the expected political turnover of mayors and reverse afterwards. The effect is more prominent for bonds issued in cities with investors who have a strong local preference, suggesting investors switch from MCBs to local non-MCBs in their bond holdings. The pricing effect is also stronger for bonds issued in regions with more developed financial markets and bonds with lower credit ratings. Lastly, bond market participants only price in the political risk induced by the turnovers of politician with direct involvement in local economic activities.

This study investigates the impact of independent directors' participation in the shareholders meeting on corporate governance, and finds that the more frequently the independent directors attend shareholder meetings, the lower the degree of earnings management by the enterprise; the mechanism test shows that more information increases the probability, frequency, and severity of independent directors’ subsequent dissenting opinions; This study identified a new channel for independent directors to independently obtain true information and this is of great significance for regulators, shareholders, company board, and other stakeholders with an interest in how the information influence independent directors governance effects.