Using unique data from a major Chinese bank, we find that following the bank’s adoption of a nonlinear incentive scheme for its credit card sales managers, the number of credit cards approved increases sharply at the end of each month. Further analysis shows that this occurs through a...

This article examines the time-series predictive ability of monthly option-implied idiosyncratic skewness (Skew, hereafter) for stock market excess returns. Skew is a strong negative predictor of returns with particular strong power at long horizons. Specifically, the out-of-sample R^2...

Is the strength of favoritism from social ties gender-dependent? Collecting election data of the most distinguished Chinese scientific academies over a decade, we find favoritism from some social connections, such as sharing a hometown, college, or employer, between recruiters and candidates can...

Using a comprehensive data set of earthquakes in China, we show that investors perceive increased credit risk in quasi-municipal bonds exposed to devastating earthquakes, leading to a significant positive risk premium. Our study identifies that this bias is temporary and decreases as investors...