We study how government intervention in the bank loan granting process affects firms’ leverage dynamics. We exploit the setup of administrative approval centers (AACs) in China, a program aiming to reduce bureaucracy in business activities, as a quasi-natural experiment. On average, AACs help to shorten the leverage rebalancing period by as much as a quarter. This acceleration pattern persists in under-leveraged firms, which issue more debt to rebalance accordingly. Cross-sectional analyses show that the positive effect of AACs on leverage adjustment is more pronounced for firms that are in poorer legal environment, with more financial constraints, or less politically connected. ics.

As “sin” stocks and “brown” stocks generally earn higher returns than “green” stocks, fund managers face a trade-off between profitability and sustainability preferences when investing in environmental, social and governance (ESG). We explore the investment styles of ESG funds in the Chinese A-share market and analyze the behavior of ESG funds in terms of asset allocation and portfolio adjustment. We find that ESG funds prefer stocks with high return performance over stocks with high ESG performance. Textual analyses of prospectuses reveal a degree of “greenwashing” behavior by ESG funds. Overall, we show that ESG funds not purely ESG-driven.

This study investigates venture capital (VC) reputation impact on the pre-IPO performance of the entrepreneurial firms backed by three kinds of VCs. This study employs backward stepwise regression models following prior theoretical frameworks to examine the research question. Based on a database of the top 50 VC firms ranked during 2016 to 2020 and their portfolio firms. This study shows some contingent contribution to pre-IPO firm performance. Firstly, the reputation of the Chinese government-owned VCs is negatively associated with their portfolio firm performance. Still, there is a positive relationship between foreign and local private VCs. Secondly, entrepreneurial firm performance is significantly associated with industry policy and entrepreneur’s performance than VC reputation. This study has practical implications for entrepreneurs and limited partners regarding their corporation relationships with the Chinese VCs.

Recent financial frauds in China such as Kangmei Pharmaceuticals’ case have raised suspicion in the capital market and among academics about the reliability of accounting information of listed companies, and as a result, various non-financial information that is compulsory or encouraged to be disclosed by regulators and voluntarily disclosed by listed companies is gradually gaining attention from various stakeholders and academics. The corporate social responsibility (CSR) information is one of the most widely disclosed non-financial information by listed firms, but its reliability and motivation are also questionable, for example, is CSR commitment affected by firms’ financial information quality? Using China a-share listed companies that disclosed their corporate social responsibility reports from 2009-2019 as a sample, we investigate whether earnings management can influence corporate social responsibility by analysing the management’s motives embedded in earnings management, in order to further examine whether Chinese listed companies are morally motivated to undertake social responsibility or use social responsibility as a strategic tool to maintain the reputation of the firm and the management. The results of the study show that earnings management and CSR are positively correlated, and the finds continue to be robust when using 2SLS, Heckman two-step regression and propensity score matching to control for reverse causality and self-selection bias, proving that China's listed companies are ethically motivated to fulfil their social responsibility. Therefore, it is important to focus on the quality of earnings information in order to perceive the motivation of CSR when evaluating a company’s CSR commitment.

We investigate how marginal corporate tax rate affects corporate policy changes in response to a regulatory credit crunch. With a surge in debt due to a fiscal stimulus after 2008, the Chinese government rolled out the “deleveraging” program in 2015 which, through tightening monetary policies, restricting credit flows, and regulating shadow banks, significantly increased firms’ cost of debt and the incentive to deleverage. With a difference-in-differences design, we find that high-tax-rate firms reduce leverage to a less extent than low-tax-rate firms after the initiation of the deleveraging program. This effect is stronger in non-state-owned firms and firms with less non-debt tax shields. More importantly, through retaining more debt, high-tax-rate firms reduce dividend and switch to equity financing to a less extent, and also cut less investments in fixed assets, R&D and human capital. We conclude that tax constitutes an important factor in shaping the micro-economic consequences of a credit crunch.

This paper creates default-probability-(PD)-implied credit ratings for Chinese firms following the S&P global rating standard. The domestic credit rating agency (DCRA) ratings are higher than the PD-implied ratings by ten notches on average for the identical level of default risk, implying that the domestic ratings are significantly inflated. The PD-implied ratings outperform the DCRA ratings in detecting defaults and complement the latter in predicting yield spreads. The PD-implied ratings draw information from operating efficiency-related variables; in contrast, the DCRA ratings pay attention to scale-based firm characteristics in credit risk assessment.

This paper examines the Urban Construction Investment Bond (UCIB) as a tradable product in the financial market and a financial tool for local government in China. The development of this financial product is contextualised in infrastructure finance and local government debt. The creation of UCIB helps finance infrastructure investment and potentially reveal the relative risks through the secondary market. The spatial distribution of UCIB demonstrates different relative risks of this financial instrument in local conditions. The government uses this financial tool to bridge the emerging capital market and infrastructure finance, and the Chinese financial market now treats UCIB as an emerging asset class. The development of UCIB has sped up the pace of financialisation in China. Although relative risks help investors choose different UCIBs, the overall risk of UCIB cannot be ignored.

当前，绿色金融备受关注，然而该领域的基础理论非常薄弱。根据经济学的一般原理，由于污染的外部性问题，环保的主要力量应当是公共部门而非金融系统。然而为什么越来越多的国家选择发展绿色金融？其背后的经济学原理是什么？深入探讨这些问题，是有效制定政策、构建绿色金融理论体系的基础。基于跨国面板数据的分析表明，绿色金融对经济增长具有显著的促进效应，表现出与公共部门环保投入的显著差异。在此基础上，本文构建基于经济增长框架的绿色金融理论模型，对经验事实给出了理论解释。模型指出，绿色金融的风险分担功能使其具有独特的长期增长效应，是经济发展高级阶段的必然选择；而绿色金融政策与绿色财政政策的协调配合是实现高质量发展的有效手段。本文从理论层面回答了“我们为什么需要绿色金融？”的问题，为绿色金融的经济学理论发展和政策分析提供了可借鉴的框架

发展绿色金融已经成为新时代中国一项重要的国家战略，但这一领域的理论研究并不深入，研究“多而不精”、理论基础模糊、理论框架欠缺。本文通过系统性地梳理绿色金融的理论渊源、学说脉络和前沿趋势，提出绿色金融的核心议题是以金融手段促进经济的绿色发展。这一核心议题在宏观层面直接关系到经济的高质量发展，而在微观领域涉及金融机构和投资者的社会责任理论。在此基础上，本文提出金融的“绿色功能”假说，并给出了一个基于一般均衡理论的“绿色金融的经济学基准模型”。这一基准模型有效地连接了绿色金融的微观运行机制和宏观经济效应，不仅能够实现多种扩展、用于政策分析，而且从理论层面指明了未来研究的方向、为绿色金融理论体系的构建提供了一种思路。

This paper examines whether a government can play an important role in determining a firm’s related party transactions associated with tunnelling. Through the lens of political turnover in 31 Chinese provinces for 2000-2018, we show that political turnover is negatively associated with state-owned enterprises’ (SOEs’) related party transactions (RPTs) but has no impact on non-SOEs’. Political turnover engenders uncertainty to SOEs, which curtail tunnelling-related RPTs. We identify two channels – corruption and policy-induced RPTs – leading political turnover to reduce RPTs. Corruption RPTs fall more significantly in highly corrupt provinces and before the 2012 anti-corruption campaign. Policy RPTs of SOEs with delisting risk and in high public debt provinces decrease considerably. Financially constrained firms, older officials and within-province appointments diminish the impact of political turnover on RPTs. On average, the fall in RPTs starts a year before a political turnover and ends a year after.