This paper examines the effects of economic shocks originating from China’s Five-Year Plans on firms’ shareholders and stakeholders in the U.S. Using establishment-level data, we show that the shocks were not preceded by low production or employment, nor were they anticipated by the U.S. stock market, but were followed by shrinkage of targeted sectors. Well-financed firms with adaptable sectorial and territorial layouts came out mostly unscathed due to within-firm adjustments, such as shifting production to upstream or downstream industries that benefited from the boost in the focal industries in China, or offshoring to encouraged industries in China. These adjustments extended limited benefits to employees and communities, measured by employment and opioid usage.

In the information age, major negative events can spread quickly and affect investor perceptions and decisions. Selecting major violent crime events in China, we investigate the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in mitigating regional negative public sentiment. We find that the firms with better CSR performance have higher stock returns around the event day. We also find that investors react more positively for firms engaging in technical CSR activities (those targeting a firm’s primary stakeholders) than institutional CSR activities (those serving the public). Moreover, the effect is more pronounced for firms with better internal control quality and higher information transparency. Overall, this study documents a positive role of CSR in securing firm value in the face of negative public sentiment.

The equity premium puzzle, properly termed the American Equity Premium Puzzle, is one of the most significant empirical anomalies in finance, as it pertains to the observation that the expected return on equities has been consistently higher than that of bonds for many years, and that this premium is excessive. This paper presents one answer to the Equity Premium Puzzle, viz., the Disruptive Dependency Theory. The Disruptive Dependency Theory states that the world can be viewed in terms of “core” and “periphery” nations. Thus, there is a "core" set of nations in the world that are strong and a "periphery" that is relatively weak. This has been the state of the world since the end of the Second World War. The nations in the "core" are the strong nations. This includes the United States, China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom. What constitutes the "periphery" is a bit nebulous, but certainly the weakest nations such as island nations (Vanuatu, Togo, Jamaica, Antigua & Barbuda) belong the periphery. The nations in the core use the following to exert their influence on the nations in the periphery: (a) political strategies; (b) economic strategies; (c) social and cultural strategies; (d) technological strategies. Disruptive innovation has emerged as one of the chief strategies. With the rise of disruptive innovation, they are able to "disrupt" existing business in a very large number of periphery nations, thereby a very small number of individuals are becoming super-rich billionaires while the rest of the world remains still quite poor. According to this theory, it is the power differential of nations that historically resulted in the equity premium for stocks being excessively high. This paper explores the implications of the Disruptive Dependency Theory and its potential contribution to understanding the Equity Premium Puzzle.

We conducted an assessment of the impact of Property Rights on the toxic emissions of Chinese industrial firms. Specifically, we focused on the 2007 enactment of the Property Law in China and utilized difference-in-difference estimations to analyze firms’ pollutant emissions. Our findings reveal compelling evidence that firms with low net fixed assets considerably reduce their chemical oxygen demand (COD) emissions after the implementation of the Property Law. Moreover, the effect is more prominent in firms that face stronger financial constraints and are situated in areas with high external pressure on environmental protection or robust government monitoring. We concluded that the Property Law's influence on firms’ toxic emissions is through improving credit conditions and technology upgrades. Overall, our results indicate that a well-established Property Law has a significant impact on industrial firms' environmental policies.

This paper examines the impact of a policy targeting firms with implicit government guarantees (IGGs). We focus on the debt management policy (DMP) proposed for state-owned enterprises in China. Our analysis shows that the DMP lowered the average yield of SOE bonds by 6.6 basis points. However, when accounting for the information effect of the policy announcement, the DMP’s impact ranged from 6.6 to 32.1 basis points. Our findings reveal that the information effect weakened the intended effect of the DMP and increased the average bond yields of both private-owned enterprises. We emphasize the need for policymakers to carefully design their policy communication to mitigate the information effect and consider the response of the financial market.

This study develops an intertemporal model to investigate the causal relationship between government subsidies and employment and employs firm-level panel data to procure an estimation of the elasticities of government subsidies concerning employment, which is approximately 0.7 percent. To address endogeneity issues, we construct a novel Bartik shift-share instrumental variable for government subsidies. In heterogeneity analysis, our study discloses that government subsidies create a plethora of jobs, most predominately for individuals with advanced degrees, such as masters or doctorate. Additionally, our article identifies the top five industries that are most influenced by the effects of government subsidies.

Through a unique database on daily activities of municipal party secretaries, we find that they spend a significant part of their work time on political and propaganda activities, including organizing various meetings to promote the central government's spirit ideology. We find that officials engage in these behaviors more often before a government reshuffle, plausibly tend to leave a loyal and obedient impression on the superior government and increase their promotion probability. This is on contrary to economic behaviors, which are more common in the early stages of officials' terms, possibly because investment projects require time. This is more evident among younger, well-educated politicians due to age-based promotion restrictions. Our study may shed light on how the Communist Party of China balancing economic development and political loyalty when selecting officials.

The side effect of automation on the economy has been discussed frequently, but little is known regarding its political consequences. This paper examines the causal effect that automation induces political costs for the local government. By combining the national individual-level panel data of political trust with the prefecture-level robot exposure rate in China biennially during the period 2012– 2018, we find that the development of automation would incur lower political trust in the Chinese local government. Furthermore, the impact may result from the risk of unemployment, intensified pessimism about local government, higher downside risk, and declining group participation, providing a few channels for the automation process to affect citizens’political trust. This paper provides empirical evidence for the impact of automation and the source of political legitimacy, contributing to the literature about automation by emphasizing the crucial role of government in coping with the technological progress and making good use of endogenous creative destruction.

增强服务实体经济的能力是发展金融科技的根本目的。本文在利用自然语言处理技术对上市银行年报进行分析，测度银行个体层面金融科技水平基础上，实证检验金融科技对银行贷款配置的影响及其作用机理，以此考察金融科技对提升金融服务实体经济能力的作用效果。研究发现，商业银行发展金融科技尽 管显著提高了零售贷款供给，但是对实体贷款供给产生了挤出效应，并且该挤出效应对于放贷资金紧张的商业银行更为显著。机制检验结果表明，挤出实体贷款与银行追求利益最大化的经营目标一致，是银行出于增加收益、减少损失和降低风险的理性决策行为，表现为在零售贷款相对于实体贷款收益率更高、实体贷款不良率更高以及风险资产率更高的银行中，该挤出效应更为明显；同时，商业银行发展金融科技能够显著降低总贷款的不良率和显著提高总贷款的收益率。进一步的证据还表明，该挤出效应对于拥有手机 APP的银行，在数字金融素养高和贷款需求旺盛的区域，以及在消费者信心指数高的宏观环境下也更为明显。本文的研究结论从商业银行金融科技影响贷款配置的视角揭示了一个金融科技影响实体经济增长的潜在负向效益，有助于深入理解技术驱动的金融创新与经济发展之间的关系，同时在监管层面为促进我国金融科技高质量发展提供重要参考和政策建议。

Volatility in the financial markets is commonplace and it comes with a cost. One of these costs is abrupt and huge drop in stock price that is known as stock price crash. To model this, we propose a new machine-learning based stock crash risk measure using minimum covariance determinant (MCD) to detect stock price crash. Using this proposed dependent variable, we try to predict stock price crash using cross-sectional regression. The findings confirm that the method properly capture the stock price crash and our proposed model performs well in terms of statistical significance and financial impact. Moreover, using newly introduced firm-specific investor sentiment index, it is identified that stock price crash and firm-specific investor sentiment are positively correlated. That is, higher sentiment leads to an increase with stock price crash risk, a relation that remains robust even when different firm sizes and detoned firm-specific investor sentiment index are considered.