Holding firm fundamentals constant, credit ratings of the Chinese firms have increased by one notch on average during 2009-2017. The rating standard relaxation coincides with rating inflation, as the feedback effects of higher ratings that help reduce financing cost and improve investment and...

In this paper, we study the role of Confucius Institute in supporting internationalization of Chinese enterprises. Employing a panel dataset containing 66 Belt-Road countries and 75 non Belt-Road countries from 2006 to 2017, we find that the Confucius Institute has had a positive effect on...

Utilizing the 2015 wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) that covers 7045 households, we study the effect of grandparents looking after grandchildren on quality of life and life satisfaction of grandparents. We find evidence of important favorable effects of...

Stock return volatility significantly predicts active leverage adjustment, consistent with the trade-off theory. Firms respond asymmetrically to rising volatility instead of falling volatility, more with debt reduction than equity issuance. The forecasting power of stock return volatility mostly...

This paper develops a text-based downside risk measure using corporate annual reports and assesses its ability to forecast future corporate policies. The forward-looking measure dynamically captures adverse firm conditions evolving from economic fundamentals. When the measure is below its sample...

We propose a novel high-frequency decomposition of daily stock returns into news- and non-news-driven components, and uncover evidence of pervasive stock market underreaction to firm news. Prices tend to drift in the same direction as the initial market response for several days after the news...

This article investigates how the legacy of colonization shapes the impact of inward FDI on employment in the Chinese labor market. The analysis utilizes provincial panel on overall employment and employment in the service sector during 2006-15. We find that inward FDI significantly promotes...

We formulate a tractable continuous-time rational expectations model in which the agent is ambiguity averse and would like to robustify asset return specification. Ambiguity affects the portfolio rule and asset pricing both individually and collectively with risk. Independently existing...

Corporate bond prices are known to be influenced by default and term structure risk in addition to non-default risks such as illiquidity. Putable corporate bonds allow investors to sell their holdings back to the issuer and may thus provide insurance against all of these risks. We first document...