Understanding how firms interpret and respond to carbon price signals based on their strategic priorities is crucial for aligning climate policies with corporate financial and environmental objectives. We propose a novel composite financial–environmental performance index that adjusts the emphasis on each dimension. Using a machine learning model, we evaluate the sensitivity of this index to carbon

This study offers a novel explanation for the dynamics of the ‘greenium,’ that is the negative yield differential of corporate green bonds relative to equivalent conventional bonds. Utilising a matched dataset of green and conventional corporate bonds from January 2014 to July 2022, we find that the ‘greenium’ in the secondary market responds significantly, even if briefly, to climate policy events

Differentiated lending terms for clean and dirty capital have become a popular tool among commercial banks as they promote themselves as advocates of environmental sustainability. Using a two-sector New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model where emissions are a by-product of dirty capital, we incorporate an interest spread responding elastically to carbon emissions: Banks offer

This paper investigates the transmission of U.S. monetary policy shocks to oil market dynamics, focusing on oil price uncertainty and tail risks. Using a structural VAR model, we reveal that tight monetary policy induces a sustained increase in oil market uncertainty while reducing left-tail risk, as hedgers exhibit diminished concern over extreme downside risks. In contrast, the impact on right-tail

we examine whether regulatory punishments imposed on a firm affect the behavior of other firms that have not been punished previously but share cross-ownership with the former. We find that when a firm's cross-firm is punished, the probability of that firm engaging in misconduct decreases significantly in the subsequent year, suggesting that the punishment event generates a spillover effect. Our findings

This study focuses on A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2023, aiming to analyze the impact of government subsidies on corporate financialization and the moderating role of economic policy uncertainty. The empirical results show that government subsidies significantly inhibit corporate financialization, while economic policy uncertainty amplifies this inhibitory effect. Specifically, when economic

This paper investigates the global loan pricing puzzle, focusing on the significantly higher interest rate spreads in the U.S. compared to the European market. Using syndicated loan data from U.S. and European firms between 1992 and 2014, we find that bank information rents are the primary driver behind this disparity. U.S. banks leverage their informational advantages to extract higher borrowing costs

This paper investigates the impact of CEOs' traumatic experiences on corporate tax avoidance. Using CEOs who experienced the Korean War, we find that firms led by war-traumatized CEOs exhibit lower levels of tax avoidance than those led by non-traumatized CEOs. Our results are robust to controlling for managerial characteristics, such as CEO age, education, and stock ownership, and to the applications

This paper contributes to the financial life cycle literature by studying the effect of firm age on SMEs' debt policies, focusing for the first time on a multi-country context comprising 28 European countries. It also examines, in a novel way, whether this effect is influenced by periods of economic crisis, and in particular whether the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis

The first objective is to examine the asymmetric impact of European Union carbon emission trading system (EU-ETS) and oil price uncertainty (OPU) on the quantiles of European equity market returns. After confirming nonlinear dynamics in the daily time-series data for EU-ETS, OPU, and European stock returns, we use the quantile-based autoregressive distributive lag (QARDL) model. The second objective

The upgrading of industrial structure is the driving force of economic transformation. This study explores the quantitative relationship between fiscal decentralisation, financial decentralisation and industrial structure upgrading. The results show that: (1) Financial decentralisation has a positive impact on the industrial structure advancement, and fiscal decentralisation has a positive impact on

This study examines the impact of public attention on corporate green investment decisions and the mechanisms involved, focusing on the role of climate sentiment. Public attention is measured using the Baidu search index, while corporate green investment is assessed as the ratio of environmental investments to total revenue. A climate sentiment index is constructed using text analysis and lexicon methods

How does gender influence ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) investing behavior? Using survey data from a sample of French investors, we primarily find no significant gender differences in the proportion of ESG funds or stocks held, nor in the willingness to pay to invest in a firm with a high ESG score. However, this lack of significance results from two simultaneous significant indirect gender

While investor behaviour in relation to sustainable finance products has recently received scholarly attention, consumer adoption of these products remains poorly understood. This study investigates the reasoning behind adopting sustainable bank accounts at the household level using a quantitative approach with a nationally representative sample of 1501 consumers in Germany. The most important determinant

When firms freeze their employees qualified defined benefit (DB) pension plans, they often re-evaluate and may similarly freeze their non-qualified supplemental executive retirement plans (SERPs). This study draws from agency theory to investigate the determinants and consequences of SERP freezes. We find that the decision to freeze SERPs is predominantly influenced by the power dynamics between top

The disclosure of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information by firms can signal to the capital markets the potential sustainable development capabilities of the company and provide oversight to curb opportunistic management practices. However, the continuous disclosure of ESG information not only leads to excessive investment and increased operational risks but also contributes to information

Amid the growing complexity of the global financial system and tightening regulatory standards, this study examines the relationship between intensified financial regulation and the risk-taking behavior of financial enterprises. Using a comprehensive dataset of publicly traded financial firms from 2009 to 2022, the analysis reveals a nuanced relationship: stronger financial regulation generally enhances

This study examines whether cryptocurrency markets offer more resilient safe haven properties than gold for stock markets in the BRICS economies from 28th April 2013 to 27th September 2024. Unlike traditional studies that primarily focus on Bitcoin or top-market cap cryptocurrencies, we introduce a novel Crypto index that includes 9468 active and defunct cryptocurrencies, providing a comprehensive

The article selects the panel data of 4319 listed companies in A-share from 2010 to 2022, empirically examines the relationship between government subsidies and corporate environmental protection investment by using two-way fixed-effects model, explores the role of government subsidies on corporate environmental protection investment by using mediated-effects model and assumes that media attention

In this study, we use mandatory gender quota rule for corporate boards introduced in the year 2015 in India as an identification strategy to explore the relationship between women on board and accounting conservatism. Our results based on the difference-in-differences regression model, using firms that appointed women for the first time after the law as the treatment group, support the conjecture that

We integrate three enterprise networks, i.e., the stock return network, risk spillover network, and market transaction network to predict the credit risk in supply chain finance (SCF) by applying the explainable GraphSAGE model. We construct the aforementioned networks to comprehensively illustrate the relationships among enterprises, train the GraphSAGE model to classify the nodes in the graph structure

This paper provides a comprehensive review of various measures of uncertainty and their asset pricing implications in the cross-section of U.S. stock returns. With a focus on survey-based uncertainty, we add to the list of uncertainty measures previously studied in the literature with novel measures of forecast disagreement sourced from three professional forecast datasets. Through portfolio analyses

ESG metrics play a crucial role in sustainable finance but face growing criticism for their inability to accurately capture actual sustainability improvements. This study investigates how methodological choices can introduce distortions in ESG scores, with a primary focus on Refinitiv ESG data, while offering insights applicable to other providers as well. We show that data aggregation and score normalization

This paper examines the predictive role of two dominant climate risk categories – physical and transition risks – in forecasting U.S. equity market risk premiums. The results reveal a pronounced asymmetry: physical climate risk significantly and negatively predicts stock returns both in-sample and out-of-sample, whereas transition climate risk demonstrates insignificant forecasting ability. This superior

ESG (Environmental, social, and governance) has become increasingly crucial in the investment of pension funds. This paper develops a multi-objective dynamic model to analyze the ESG-integration investment strategy of Target Date Funds (TDFs). The model optimizes three objectives: expected return, variance, and ESG score, incorporating human capital in the budget constraint and considering inflation-linked

Climate change is a growing challenge for global economic stability, with significant implications for financial sector development. This study examines the relationship between climate vulnerability and the growth and structure of financial systems across a global sample of 29 countries. Using panel data, we find a positive relationship between climate risks and the overall size of financial systems

This study investigates the hedging and safe-haven properties of art investments relative to traditional financial assets, employing a Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregression (TVP-VAR) approach across major art market sub-indices during several periods of financial crises, including the collapse of the dot-com bubble, the Global Financial Crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Art indices are found

Environmental disclosure is a topic of global importance. When negative environmental news emerges and is eventually revealed, it can influence investor decisions and lead to significant stock price movements, potentially resulting in stock price crashes. Therefore, using a sample of A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2017 to 2022, we construct an environmental

This study examines the impact of national board heterogeneity on firm risk during periods of geopolitical instability by focusing on non-financial companies listed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. Drawing on resource dependency, agency, and critical mass theories, we highlight the dual-edged nature of board heterogeneity. Although diverse boards

This study aims to investigate the causality among geopolitical risk, financial development and energy transition in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Using balanced panel data for 25 OECD countries from 2000 to 2019, we apply slope heterogeneity test, cross-sectional dependence test, unit root test, cointegration test, pooled mean group estimation, and panel

This study investigates the impact of climate policy uncertainty (CPU) on green total factor energy efficiency (GTFEE) and examines the moderating role of green finance (GF). Using a panel data analysis framework combined with the super-efficient SBM-DEA model, the study finds that CPU has a significant negative effect on GTFEE, indicating that increased policy uncertainty hinders the improvement of

This study examines whether and to what extent insiders exploit their informational advantage, surrounding extreme weather events. Adopting the US as our context, we find that public and private related tropical-storm information provides insiders with profitable buying opportunities, notably higher in the pre-landfall period and for executives. Our results suggest that insiders not only process meteorological

We employ social media-derived measures to gauge opinion divergence among retail investors and investigate how shifts in this divergence influence asset prices following earnings announcements. We find that a higher magnitude of changes in investors' opinion divergence correlates with lower price sensitivity to earnings surprises. We test the uncertainty resolution hypotheses and reveals that the divergence

Using machine-learning-based measures for political and climate risks derived from corporate conference calls, we discover a link between the two in a large sample of US firms from 2002 to 2021. Our findings suggest that firms facing higher political risk are more susceptible to climate risk. Additionally, we find that a firm's emitter category industry classification and exposure to environmental

The current context of heightened U.S.–China tensions impact various aspects of the global economic and geopolitical scene. Understanding their implications for global resources, such as crude oil, is crucial. This study focuses on how U.S.–China tensions affect the global crude oil supply in industrialized countries. Using the newly developed U.S.–China tensions (UCTs) index, we analyze the macroeconomic

This study utilizes a dual fixed-effects model to examine the connection between venture capital involvement and enterprise digital-intelligence empowerment. The findings demonstrate that venture capital participation plays a significant role in promoting enterprises' digital-intelligence transformation, providing crucial support for operational optimization and the application of digital technologies

This paper shows that portfolio optimization operates with low volatility in the portfolio weights and out-the-sample Sharpe ratio higher than the 1/n rule by shrinking the vector of averages to its grand mean and minimizing the mean square error of the portfolio weights. It is also shown that shrinking the vector of means to its grand mean and minimizing the mean square error of the vector of means

This study investigates the relationship between military service and mortgage stress. Utilizing data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), our analysis reveals that veterans exhibit a higher likelihood of experiencing mortgage stress compared to non-veterans. We explore potential mechanisms underlying this association, finding evidence that mental health deterioration and unemployment may

The environmental, social, and governance (ESG) framework integrates economic development with sustainability, addressing critical issues such as climate change. Implementing ESG practices contributes to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and advancing carbon neutrality. This article explores the determinants of firms' ESG scores from an industry-level perspective, in contrast to previous

Financial resource mismatch is a significant obstacle to a nation's high-quality development. Establishing well-performing financial systems can help with efficient financial resource allocation, reduce financial resource mismatches, and promote economic health development. This paper explores the causal relationship between implementing the new Securities Law, a representative of capital market legalization

This paper examines the effect of firm complexity on credit ratings. Using a sample of U.S. non-financial firms and the state-of-the-art measure of firm complexity, we document a significantly negative relation between firm complexity and credit ratings, suggesting that rating agencies assign significantly lower credit score to more complex firms. Our results remain robust to alternative specifications

We investigate the benefits of downside risk reduction through coinsurance in multi-segment firms. Using a coinsurance measure based on industry default risk connections derived from credit default swap (CDS) spread changes of single-segment firms, we isolate the effects of downside risk reduction from those due to the upside potential of diversification. We find multi-segment firms realize significantly

Using sample data of A-share listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2016 to 2020, this study empirically explores the impact of political connections on corporate fulfilment of social responsibility for targeted poverty alleviation based on the panel regression model. The results showed that political connections can effectively encourage enterprises to fulfil social responsibility

Private equity controlled firms are often utilized as platforms for the consolidation of industries. Using a sample of Spanish firms acquired in leveraged buyouts, we argue that add-on acquisitions are distorting conclusions presented in the literature. For instance, Boucly et al. (2011), Bernstein et al. (2019), Battistin et al. (2017) and others associate buyouts, and specifically leveraged buyouts

This study uses a dataset of publicly traded companies from 2010 to 2022 to conduct a comprehensive analysis of how supply chain concentration and internal controls affect corporate risk-taking behavior. The findings reveal a significant positive relationship between supply chain concentration and the degree of corporate risk-taking. Notably, internal controls play a critical moderating role in this

The objective of this paper is to explore whether NFT investors represent a distinct cohort within the broader crypto investment sphere. Employing data from a public survey with global outreach, we first find that NFT owners are younger and possess, on average, a lower educational level than the general crypto population but a higher cryptocurrency knowledge. Second, there are no significant gender

We develop a model to analyze the optimal strategies of creditors and CDS issuers. By establishing conditions that ensure the reservation price of creditors exceeds that of the issuers, we demonstrate the existence of a CDS market. The difference between these reservation prices, influenced by factors such as risk aversion and fundamental uncertainty, plays a crucial role in shaping CDS market dynamics

This study theoretically confirms the promoting effect of market competition mechanisms on the utilization level of enterprise data elements and offers important policy insights into improving fair market competition systems to foster high-quality and transformative enterprise development. This study investigates A-share non-financial listed companies from 2010 to 2018, using the introduction of the

This paper examines the impact of host country environmental regulations and labor standards on the export competitiveness of home countries. Our findings indicate that as follows: (1) environmental regulations and labor standards vary significantly across three dimensions (i.e., levels of economic development, EU membership, and regional differences); (2) stricter environmental regulations and higher

Equity repurchase agreements are a key financial strategy for mitigating conflicts of interest between investors and financing entities; at the same time, they signal confidence to supply chain firms. In high-growth sectors like retail (Alibaba Group), social e-commerce (TikTok), and technology (Cisco Systems), firms utilize repurchases to enhance market credibility, stabilize expectations, and optimize

This study utilizes the TVP-VAR time-frequency method and high-frequency data to analyze the complex risk spillover relationships and portfolios involving fossil energy, new energy, and environmental governance markets. The findings reveal intricate risk transmission mechanisms among these three markets, with the new energy market identified as the primary source of risk, the environmental governance

Stocks are embedded within a network of digital connections that arises from the online communication of investors on social media platforms. This paper aims to investigate how the centrality of this network impacts the stock liquidity. Using user-generated text data from the Eastmoney forum, we find that the network centrality can enhance stock liquidity. This enhancement may be achieved through improving

By combining the time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) model and the marginal spillover analysis, we investigate the dynamic return spillovers among digital, green, and traditional financial assets while considering the uncertainty exemplified by unprecedented events, including technical security threats, trade policy turbulences, public health emergencies, and geopolitical upheavals

This study aims to propose a new model of ESG derivative pricing by introducing a new concept of sustainability arbitrage arising from ES components vertical to market risk and examine the model’s usefulness in practice by focusing on the mean-reverting properties of ESG asset prices. The ESG derivative pricing model, an extension of good-deal bounds (GDB) in an incomplete market, can overcome the

This study examines the impact of financial technology (fintech) on corporate supply chain resilience. The findings indicate that fintech development significantly strengthens supply chain resilience, particularly in enhancing resistance to disruptions and recovery capabilities. A mechanism analysis reveals that this effect is driven by the expansion of supply chain finance and the reduction of supply

Building on human relations and stakeholder theories, we demonstrate a negative relationship between state-level diabetes burden, measured by diabetes-related death rates, and firm value. We identify three key moderating channels: organizational capital, which captures a firm's ability to attract and retain skilled labor; labor-intensive industries, such as mining and manufacturing; and labor productivity

This study investigates the relationship between cyberattacks and corporate share repurchases among U.S. firms. The results indicate that firms typically increase share repurchases following a cyberattack, driven by firm undervaluation and improvements in corporate governance. To address potential endogeneity concerns, this research employs several methods to enhance the robustness of our findings

The application of big data in tax administration has emerged as a crucial catalyst for technological advancements in enterprises, promoting sustained growth and significantly enhancing the development of new quality productivity. This research uses a difference-in-difference (DID) model, anchored by the ‘Golden Tax Phase III’ project as a natural experiment benchmark, to empirically investigates how