This study examines the relationship between ESG rating dispersion and corporate innovation. Measured as differences in ESG scores across multiple rating agencies, ESG rating dispersion captures information inconsistency, rating noise, and firm-level complexity. Using Poisson, Negative Binomial, and pooled linear regression models, we find that higher ESG rating dispersion is associated with lower corporate innovation. Greater dispersion is also associated with higher information asymmetry, weaker ESG signaling, and increased uncertainty, which in turn link to financing constraints, reduced innovation willingness, and lower human capital deployment. Subsample analyses indicate these associations are more pronounced for firms with higher financial constraints and higher ESG ratings. The findings highlight the informational role of ESG rating dispersion and its relevance for understanding variation in corporate innovation.
Recent scholars have focused on the intriguing inverted-U relationship between import competition and innovation. Prior studies that measured import competition at the industry level have found this relationship to be nuanced, often failing to capture the full inverted-U curvature. This paper attempts to mitigate such a concern by measuring import competition at the province level in China. Our findings reveal a robust inverted-U pattern at this more aggregate level across diverse regions within China. Notably, the entry of China into the World Trade Organization (WTO) has intensified competition from foreign counterparts, leading to an earlier occurrence of the negative effect of import competition. Our finding broadens the scope of our understanding of the interplay between import competition and innovation, suggesting that the inverted-U relationship holds both at the micro- and macro-economic levels, across both developed and developing nations.
China's response to population aging includes up-skilling elderly workers and encouraging them to delay retirement. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2015–2018), we find that up-skilling may trigger early retirement. In a life-cycle model, we characterize the optimal retirement age as a function of employer-provided training. We identify the critical maximum threshold for training above which training would encourage early retirement. We apply these insights to explain our empirical findings, thereby contributing to the evaluation of China's retirement policies. We also consider novel policy insights by introducing a special role of AI in our extended model.
In this paper, we develop a theory of revocable delegation under double-sided information asymmetry. A principal is imperfectly informed about the agent's use of local discretion, while the agent is uncertain whether and how an informed principal will intervene. Selective overruling balances two opposing forces: it weakens initiative by reducing expected implementation authority, but disciplines corner-cutting by making discretion insecure. With loss aversion, both effects intensify: withdrawal is more damaging to effort yet more effective as a deterrent. The principal therefore chooses an interior intervention policy rather than always or never overruling. Extensions show how protean, interpretive authority changes the effective boundary of incomplete contracts. The model links organizational authority, behavioral contracting, and strategic ignorance, and explains why organizations may use informational opacity to govern informational opacity.
