Can Unemployment Insurance Spur Entrepreneurial Activity? Evidence from France

We evaluate the effect of downside insurance on self-employment. We exploit a large-scale reform of French unemployment benefits that insured unemployed workers starting businesses. The reform significantly increased firm creation without decreasing the quality of new entrants. Firms started postreform were initially smaller, but their employment growth, productivity, and survival rates are similar to those prereform. New entrepreneurs' characteristics and expectations are also similar. Finally, jobs created by new entrants crowd out employment in incumbent firms almost one-for-one, but have a higher productivity than incumbents. These results highlight the benefits of encouraging experimentation by lowering barriers to entry.     

FDI and Economic Development: Evidence from China’s Regional Growth

Abstract:

Using China’s provincial data for 1978–2011, we examine the channels through which foreign direct investment (FDI) affects China’s regional growth and inequality. We find that FDI facilitates growth by enhancing physical and human capital accumulation. FDI also has a negative effect on output growth by crowding out domestic investment, reducing local government revenue, and increasing the opportunity cost of technology innovations. The imbalance of FDI inflows among regions widens the interregional growth gap through its effect on physical capital accumulation and technology progress while it narrows the growth gap by affecting the level of higher education, industrial structure, government revenue, degree of openness, and trade surplus.     

Can minority investor activism promote corporate risk-taking? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

In this study, we investigate the potential of minority investor activism to alleviate risk-related agency problems. We focus on the China Securities Investor Services Centre (CSISC), a not-for-profit minority investor promoted by the China Securities Regulatory Commission to protect the interests of minority investors. Taking the popularity of the CSISC as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that CSISC shareholding significantly promotes corporate risk-taking. We also find that this positive effect is more pronounced when the controlling shareholder has a lower shareholding ratio or the counterbalancing force of other shareholders is larger. Large cash holdings and financial capacity, fierce market competition, and being in a non-high-tech industry also strengthen the role of the CSISC. Further, our analysis of the economic consequences of CSISC shareholding demonstrates that it can improve investment efficiency, constrain insiders' tunnelling activities, and improve information quality. Overall, the results shed light on the effectiveness of the CSISC in increasing investor activism and restraining insiders' risk aversion. As such, our findings have policy implications for the protection of minority investors.     

With Economic Integration Comes Financial Contagion? Evidence from China

China's economy has maintained a rapid growth rate over the past two decades; however, its stock market has exhibited a very different level of performance during financial crises. In this paper, we try to explain this phenomenon and answer two important questions: Is there financial contagion in China? Can economic integration aggravate financial contagion? We construct a composite index of economic integration by reviewing the incremental reform and opening-up process in China's financial markets. We utilize a dynamic conditional correlation model to capture the correlations between stock returns of China and those of other important markets around the world. The empirical results provide positive evidence for the aforementioned two questions.     

Can media deter management from manipulating earnings? Evidence from China

This study examines the influence of media exposure on managers’ earnings management behavior using China’s publicly traded firms during 2001–2009. We find that firms with more media exposure (both negative and non-negative) manage their earnings less than firms with less media exposure. We also find that “suspect firms” (being specially treated or with refinancing plans like seasoned equity offerings or right offerings) with more media exposure engage in more accrual-based earnings management relative to other firms. These results suggest that Chinese media serve as an external monitor to the majority of firms and place excessive pressure on suspect firms. This paper contributes incrementally to the literature by emphasizing the conflicting role media exposure plays in managerial decisions in earnings management. The findings of this study have practical implications for regulators, auditors, financial analysts, as well as other information intermediaries.     

Do Stock Index Futures Affect Economic Growth? Evidence from 32 Countries

This article investigates the relationship between stock index futures markets development and economic growth using time-series methods for 32 developed and developing countries. Evidence of cointegration between stock index futures and real economy in 29 countries suggests the presence of co-movements among the variables, indicating long-run stationarity in those countries. Our findings show that there is Granger-causality from stock index futures markets development to economic growth for middle-income countries with relatively low real per capita GDP, and Granger-causality in the reverse direction for the countries with high real per capita GDP. Variance decomposition and impulse-response function (IRF) analyses results support the existence of a relationship between stock index futures and real economy.     

Can foreign suppliers act as “innovation springboards” for firms? Evidence from China

This study provides a new approach for measuring supplier characteristics by distinguishing the countries where they are located. Using data of Chinese listed companies, we explore how firms' R&D investment and innovation efficiency (patents and citations) are affected by having foreign suppliers in their top five suppliers. Our findings suggest that foreign suppliers acting as transmitters of international technology increase firms' innovation efficiency based on organizational learning theory. Moreover, a series of uncertainties caused by foreign suppliers encourages firms to invest more in R&D based on strategic growth option theory. Mechanism tests show that foreign suppliers from countries with high innovation capacity and a similar Eastern culture have a greater impact on corporate innovation. Firms conduct more R&D activities to mitigate the uncertainties caused by foreign suppliers when they have insufficient overseas channels to acquire international knowledge and a high degree of dependence on foreign suppliers. These results are consistent with a series of robustness tests after accounting for endogeneity.     

Can the Life Insurance Market Provide Evidence for a Bequest Motive?

Using U.K. microeconomic data, we analyze the empirical determinants of participation in the life insurance market. We find that term insurance demand is positively correlated with measures of bequest motives like being married, having children, and/or subjective measures of strong bequest motives. We then show that a life‐cycle model of life insurance demand, saving, and portfolio choice can rationalize quantitatively the data in the presence of a bequest motive. These findings provide evidence supporting the presence of a bequest motive.     

Are Remittances Insurance? Evidence from Rainfall Shocks in the Philippines

Do remittances sent by overseas migrants serve as insurancefor recipient households? In a study of how remittances fromoverseas respond to income shocks experienced by Philippinehouseholds, changes in income are found to lead to changes inremittances in the opposite direction, consistent with an insurancemotivation. Roughly 60 percent of declines in household incomeare replaced by remittance inflows from overseas. Because householdincome and remittances are jointly determined, rainfall shocksare used as instrumental variables for income changes. The hypothesiscannot be rejected that consumption in households with migrantmembers is unchanged in response to income shocks, whereas consumptionresponds strongly to income shocks in households without migrants.     

Can corporate governance deter management from manipulating earnings? Evidence from related-party sales transactions in China

This study investigates whether good governance structures help constrain management's opportunistic behaviors (in the form of transfer pricing manipulations) in one of the world's most dynamic economies. Our data are a unique sample of 266 companies listed on the Shanghai stock exchange that disclose gross profit ratios on related-party transactions. We find that firms with a board that has a higher percentage of independent directors or a lower percentage of “parent” directors (i.e., directors who are representatives of the parent companies of the listed firms), or have different people occupying the chair and CEO positions, or have financial experts on their audit committees, are less likely to engage in transfer pricing manipulations. Overall, our research findings reveal that the quality of corporate governance is important in deterring the use of manipulated transfer prices in related-party sales transactions.     

Can compulsory liability insurance reduce agency costs? Evidence from China

This paper discusses the impact mechanism of compulsory liability insurance on agency costs. Studying the companies listed in China’s food manufacturing industries in 2011–2018, we find that compulsory liability insurance significantly reduces the two types of agency costs, namely, alleviating the principal-agent problem and the principal–principal problem. Robustness tests confirm this finding. The reduction of information asymmetry and the improvement of internal control quality are the mechanisms leading to this result. Compulsory food safety liability insurance plays a significant role in reducing agency costs when company ownership is concentrated or when media coverage is high. This paper provides empirical evidence for joint regulation by the public and private sectors, also provides theoretical reference for further optimizing food safety governance mode.     

Can Industrial Restructuring Significantly Reduce Energy Consumption? Evidence from China

This article uses China’s input–output (I-O) tables in 2002, 2007, and 2012 to estimate the real energy consumption of each sector after the I-O adjustment. The relationship between the sectors is further analyzed using the utility analysis method based on ecological network analysis. The empirical results show that although the traditional energy-intensive industries are the major energy-consuming sectors from a direct energy consumption perspective, large energy consumption by energy-intensive industries is transferred to downstream industries through intermediate products after the I-O adjustment. Specifically, the building industry and service sector are the sectors with the highest real energy consumption. With the upgrading and optimization of the industrial structure, the proportion of energy-intensive sectors in China is declining. However, the development of the service sector and infrastructure construction still requires large intermediate inputs. Thus, industrial restructuring cannot significantly reduce China’s total energy consumption.     

How do insured deposits affect bank risk? Evidence from the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act

This paper tests whether an increase in insured deposits causes banks to become more risky. We use variation introduced by the U.S. Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in October 2008, which increased the deposit insurance coverage from $100,000 to $250,000 per depositor and bank. For some banks, the amount of insured deposits increased significantly; for others, it was a minor change. Our analysis shows that the more affected banks increase their investments in risky commercial real estate loans and become more risky relative to unaffected banks following the change. This effect is most distinct for affected banks that are low capitalized.     

Can non-executive equity incentives reduce internal control ineffectiveness? Evidence from China

Using data from Chinese listed firms for the period 2012–2018, we provide new evidence that the intensity of non-executive equity incentives can reduce the likelihood of internal control weaknesses and improve internal control effectiveness. We also find that internal control weaknesses are more likely to be remedied in firms that implement strong non-executive equity incentive polices. Besides, we document novel results that employee equity incentives for non-executives can optimise the internal environment, improve the internal supervision system, and thereby reduce the operational-level weaknesses of a company’s internal controls.     

Do banks price environmental transition risks? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

This paper assesses the risk arising from transition toward a low-emission economy and examines its transmission channels within the financial system. The environmental dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (E-DSGE) model shows that tightening environmental regulation impairs firms' balance sheets in the short term, as it enforces firms to internalize the pollution costs, which consequentially escalates the risks facing the financial system. For the empirical analysis, we employ the Clean Air Action that the Chinese government launched in 2013 as a quasi-natural experiment. The analysis on a unique dataset containing more than one million loans indicates that the default rates of high-polluting firms rose by around 80% along their environmental policy exposure. Further analysis shows those joint equity commercial banks with lower degree of government intervention and better corporate governance structure were able to appropriately manage their exposure to transition risks, while the state-owned banks failed to factor in such risks when extending credit to the borrowers targeted by the environmental regulation.     

Economic Growth or Environmental Sustainability? Drivers of Pollution in the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration in China

In this article we examine the effects of foreign trade, economic growth, and inter-city strategic interaction on pollution in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) Urban Agglomeration in China. We find that when the effects of many factors are controlled for, foreign trade is positively related to pollution intensity in the YRD cities. Our results also support the Environmental Kuznets Curve by showing that when per capita income grows larger, pollution intensity first rises and then falls. We also find that ceteris paribus, a higher level of city human capital intensity is associated with a lower level of city pollution intensity. In addition, our results show that there exists inter-city strategic interaction among the governments of the YRD cities in determining their effort levels with respect to environmental protection.     

Can the probability of extreme returns be the basis for profitable portfolios? Evidence from China

Based on the generalized logit predicting model from Jang and Kang (2019), this paper estimates the ex-ante probability of extreme returns and finds that the significantly negative (positive) influence of the predicted crash (jackpot) probability is robust, whether based on the traditional portfolio construction, orthogonalized portfolio construction and Fame-Macbeth cross-section regression. Further analyses show both the behavioral speculators' trading and rational investors' arbitrage limits could be the sources of mispricing caused by extreme returns. Overall, this paper applies a predicting model to estimate the probabilities of the future extreme returns, and figures out the significant influence and possible sources of the crash and jackpot probabilities in China. Portfolios based on extreme return probabilities can be profitable and steady bases for uninformed investors in the Chinese stock market.     

Can third-party online sales disclosure help reduce earnings management? Evidence from China

Alternative data plays an increasingly important role in investment and commodities market analysis. This study empirically investigates the effect on earnings management of disclosure of third-party online sales as a type of alternative data. We show that earnings management is reduced with the public disclosure of a firm’s third-party online sales data in a well-known Chinese financial database. Our results are robust to a series of endogeneity corrections and robustness checks. We also find that the negative association between third-party online sales disclosure and earnings management is more pronounced in firms with an opaque external information environment, weaker corporate governance, a higher proportion of online sales relative to total sales, and when sales are more likely to be the target of manipulation. Our results indicate that third-party online sales disclosure reduces earnings management by decreasing its benefits and increasing the risk of its detection. Our findings yield important implications for regulators and policy makers.     

Does the Prohibition of Long-lived Asset Impairment Reversals Affect Corporate Innovation? Evidence from a Quasi-experiment in China

China modified the asset impairment standard in 2007, prohibiting long-lived asset impairment reversal, which it had previously allowed. Using this setting as a quasi-experiment, we investigate how the prohibition of long-lived asset impairment reversal affects corporate technological innovation. Our empirical results demonstrate that the prohibition of impairment reversal has negative impacts on corporate innovation outputs. Further analyses reveal that the negative effect of this prohibition on corporate innovation is more prominent in companies with high discretionary accruals, high shareholding ratios for the largest shareholders, and companies in highly competitive markets.     

Do anti-corruption campaigns affect IPO underpricing? Evidence from a central discipline inspection of the CSRC in China

The system of central discipline inspections has become a key anti-corruption governance tool in China since 2013. This paper investigates the impact of a central discipline inspection of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) on initial public offering (IPO) underpricing. We find that IPO firms listed during the inspection period exhibit greater IPO underpricing than those listed outside the inspection period. The reason is the increased focus of the CSRC on maintaining capital market stability, which makes it more inclined to approve IPO firms with lower issue prices during the inspection period compared with other periods. We also find that IPO firms listed during the inspection period have better short-term market performance but poorer long-term returns than those listed outside the inspection period. Moreover, the effect of the anti-corruption inspection on IPO underpricing is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises, firms with low-quality auditors and firms located in regions with high corruption. Overall, our paper enriches the literature on IPO underpricing and the economic consequences of the central discipline inspection system.