Traditional tradeoff theories puzzlingly predict that firms use high leverage, issue debt carrying a high duration and low yield spread, and have optimal debt policies highly affected by managerial risk-shifting behavior. We offer an ambiguity-based explanation for these corporate debt puzzles....

This study empirically investigates the impact of energy related public environmental concerns on the pay gap within polluting companies. It uses the extreme environmental event of the PM2.5 surge at the end of 2011, which led to an upsurge in energy related public environmental concerns in...

This study investigates peer effects in the online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending market using data from a Chinese online lending platform (Renrendai). The empirical results indicate that peers’ greater success rate in attracting loans leads to borrowers’ greater success rate (peer effects of...

We investigate the role of managerial ability in the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm performance in the energy industry, where sustainability issues are of special interest. We first identify a positive association between CSR and firm value, which, however,...

We investigate the impact of public environmental concern (PEC) on corporate green investments from the perspective of CEO turnover using the extreme event of PM 2.5 surge at the end of 2011 in China as a quasinatural experiment. Compared with non-heavily polluting companies, the probability of...

Using the sample of China’s A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2019 and the index of jinshi density to measure the historical imperial examination system, we empirically test the influence of the imperial examination system on corporate social responsibility. We find that the imperial...

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effect of pilot green financial reform and innovation zones on corporate investment efficiency. To this end, we rely on a quasi-natural experiment of China’s introduction of this pilot policy in 2017. Our sample covers...

Using an international sample of 30,060 observations of firms from 32 countries, covering the period from 2004 to 2018, combined with a country-level index for societal trust, this study provides evidence that societal trust is negatively associated with corporate social responsibility (CSR),...