Lacking the authority to raise debt on their own, Chinese local governments set up financing vehicles for urban construction and investment to issue the so-called chengtou bonds. While these bonds are commonly understood to carry implicit government guarantee, the identity of the guarantor is...

We investigate the impacts of real estate price changes on firms' investment and financing using detailed real estate transaction data in China. China witnessed the real estate prices rise for more than a decade and recent "housing purchase restriction" policies enforced in 46 cities generated...

Models of political risk predict that increases in political uncertainty cause stock prices to fall, especially for politically sensitive firms. We use the event of the Bo Xilai political scandal in 2012 in China as an exogenous shock to identify the impact of political uncertainty on asset...

Using the staggered introduction of regional specialized debt recovery courts as a quasi-natural experiment, we estimate the impact of bankruptcy resolution on the financing cost of corporate bonds in China. We find that the introduction of specialized courts reduces the bond financing cost by...