This paper explores the impact of capital adequacy requirements on the investment behavior of insurance companies from a new perspective. We specifically investigate one important feature of Risk-Based Capital (RBC) system, the square root rule in aggregating risk categories. We show that the...

This study uses two distinct quasi-natural experiments to examine the effect of institutional shareholders on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We first find that an exogenous increase in institutional holding caused by Russell Index reconstitutions improves portfolio firms' CSR...

The heavy reliance of Chinese local governments on land transfer revenues, which is termed land finance, has received much attention from researchers, practitioners and policy makers. Using a large sample of industrial firms, we explore the impact of local governments' dependence on land finance...

We investigate the effect of information asymmetry on corporate tax avoidance. Using a difference-in-differences matching estimator to assess the effects of changes in analyst coverage caused by broker closures and mergers, we find that firms avoid tax more aggressively after a reduction in...

We use import tariff reductions as a natural experiment to explore how trade liberalization causally affects the tax avoidance activities of U.S. firms. Using a Difference-in-Differences matching estimator approach, we find a significant increase in tax avoidance following tariff reductions. The...

This study examines whether the financial health of municipal bond investors can affect the municipal bond yield by especially focusing on the liquidity component. We find that the deterioration of the financial health of bond investors widens the liquidity spread of municipal bonds, and this...

The 2018 U.S.-China trade war has spurred wide-spread debates about the effects of Chinese imports on U.S. society. We examine the effect of United States' conferral of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) on China — a policy that eliminates the uncertainty of future tariff increases for...

This paper investigates the monitoring effect of institutional investors on portfolio firms' audit quality. We identify an exogenous discontinuity in institutional ownership around the Russell index threshold to overcome the endogeniety concerns. We find that an exogenous increase in a firm's...