This study conducts a correspondence study and employs machine learning based attractiveness ratings to investigate gender differences in the sources of appearance discrimination in the Chinese labor market. Our findings reveal that female applicants predominantly face statistical appearance...

We demonstrate the negative impact of air pollution on China’s Initial Public Offering review process. We find that the pass rate of firms with connection to the review committee is increased by 10 percentage points when reviewed on a polluted day. The effect only exists for air pollution...

Using location- and time-specific fine particulate matter pollution (PM2.5) data in Beijing, we document that regulators are more likely to approve IPOs in China on hazy days. Our results are robust to specifications that control for listing firms' characteristics, composition of the IPO review...

Based on microdata from a large Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending platform, this paper explores P2P investors’ perception of the platform’s role when making P2P investment decisions. Inconsistent with the regulation assumption that investors primarily evaluate the risks of their investment...

An emerging literature suggests that biodiversity on the earth broadly affect the functioning of ecosystems and society. This paper investigates whether and how the local biological diversity improves the scientific research competitiveness. Using a manually-collected dataset of research grants...

The pace of biodiversity loss requires drastic shifts in conservation efforts that carry substantial costs. We investigate how the financial market prices such conservation costs exploiting the "Green Shield Action," a major regulatory initiative launched by the Chinese central government in...