We study whether place-based tourism policy can promote corporate green innovation in a developing economy. Exploiting the staggered rollout of China's 5A National Tourist Attraction designation across 240 prefectures during 2003 to 2024, we find that designation increases green patent applications by 19%, concentrated in substantive invention patents. The result survives heterogeneity-robust estimators, an instrumental variable strategy using historical cultural heritage sites, propensity score matching, placebo tests, and extensive sensitivity checks. Mediation analysis reveals that public environmental attention, rather than direct regulatory coercion, serves as the dominant transmission channel. The treatment effect concentrates among tourism-linked, high-absorptive-capacity, and non-polluting firms, consistent with opportunity-driven voluntary adoption. A Spatial Durbin Model documents significant positive spillovers to neighboring cities, implying that conventional within-jurisdiction evaluations underestimate aggregate innovation gains by approximately one-fifth. These findings demonstrate that tourism governance can generate environmental innovation externalities extending well beyond the tourism sector.

Climate risk perceptions are increasingly influencing corporate behavior, yet their impact on green innovation along the supply chain remains insufficiently understood. We combine customer-supplier links among Chinese listed firms with a BERT-based measure of customer firms' climate-risk perceptions constructed from annual reports. We find that higher customer climate risk perceptions are associated with subsequent increases in supplier green innovation. Mechanism evidence indicates that the effect operates through customers' market power, technology spillovers, and financial support. The effect is stronger when suppliers have greater digital capability and environmental expertise, and when customers exhibit stronger ESG performance and higher information transparency. Dynamic analyses reveal that short-run responses attenuate over time, whereas persistent signaling sustains innovation momentum. Overall, the results suggest that customer climate-risk perceptions strengthen market-based supply-chain governance and bias technical change toward greener trajectories.

Climate change is a critical global challenge, intensifying risks and influencing corporate financial behavior. Employing a high-dimensional fixed-effects model on a panel dataset of 11,167 firms across 59 countries, the study finds that climate change acts as a significant catalyst for corporate financialization, compelling firms to increase their allocation of capital to financial assets. This effect, robust under various checks, operates via two mechanisms: climate change exacerbates financing constraints, prompting firms to accumulate liquid assets for precautionary motives, and it dampens the efficiency of real investments, driving a strategic reallocation of capital toward financial assets as a form of investment substitution. Heterogeneity is evident in relation to energy vulnerability, digitalization, industrial structure, carbon emission intensity, and Islamic countries. Furthermore, increased financialization leads to elevated dividend payouts. Adopting a global perspective, this study fills a critical gap, providing empirical evidence on firms’ strategic financial adaptation to climate change. It contributes to academic discourse and offers practical implications for policymakers and corporates.

We investigate how local government fiscal pressure is transmitted to corporate commercial credit provision. Heightened fiscal pressure significantly reduces firms’ net commercial credit supply. Mediation analysis reveals three transmission channels: expanded debt issuance crowds out corporate loan availability; intensified tax administration increases corporate tax burdens; and reduced government subsidies constrain corporate cash flows. Collectively, these mechanisms compel firms to curtail commercial credit extension. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that regions heavily dependent on debt, land revenue or tax revenue experience amplified adverse impacts; firms with higher customer concentration and supplier concentration and weaker institutional backing exhibit greater vulnerability. We demonstrate the microeconomic consequences of fiscal stress, emphasizing the importance of diversified revenue structures and robust government–business relationships for sustainable economic development.

The emergence of green credit policies has introduced a layer of uncertainty that could potentially dampen the enthusiasm of commercial banks to pursue green credit initiatives. To empirically investigate how the adoption of green credit policies has influenced the cost efficiency of these financial institutions, we employ the Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) to assess the cost efficiency of 103 major commercial banks in China over the period from 2009 to 2019. Our findings indicate that, in the short run, the enforcement of green credit policies significantly constrains the cost efficiency of commercial banks. Conversely, in the long term, these policies are likely to enhance banks' capacity to manage credit risks, improve their green reputation, and subsequently boost their cost efficiency. Notably, large commercial banks, state-owned institutions, and non-listed commercial banks exhibit lower cost efficiency due to the inhibiting effect of green credit policies.

Supply chain decarbonization has emerged as a pivotal developmental trend in the era of achieving carbon neutrality. The advancement of green finance is critical for enhancing a low-carbon supply chain finance system, enabling businesses to align better with green transformation commitments. Although previous research has examined the impact of green finance policies on enterprises, the specific mechanisms through which green finance innovations influence green supply chains have not been adequately explored. We use data from China's listed companies (2009-2022) and employ the Difference-in-Differences model to assess the effects of green finance innovation and pilot reform policies on corporate supply chain carbon emissions and their underlying mechanisms. We find that green finance policies significantly reduce supply chain carbon emissions because these policies foster low-carbon supply chains by enhancing enterprises' green innovation capabilities, alleviating financing constraints, and elevating corporate executives' green awareness. We additionally identify that the carbon emission reduction effect of green finance innovation on suppliers is enhanced in enterprises with a robust high-tech foundation, limited supply chain finance, or those located in regions with stringent environmental regulations. We offer theoretical and empirical support for governments to develop and refine differentiated green finance policies aimed at achieving sustainable economic development goals.

In the context of considering the double-edged sword of corporate innovation, this study investigates whether and how corporate innovation affects the cost of equity. Using a patent-based innovation dataset of China's A-share publicly traded companies from 2009 to 2020, the study reveals that corporate innovation is associated with the cost of equity. The results show corporate innovation and the cost of equity have an inverted U-shaped relationship. In the initial stage of innovation, corporate innovation leads to an increase in the cost of equity, exacerbating the problems it brought to the company; but in the middle and late stage of innovation, as the level of innovation increases, the cost of equity experiences a sharp decrease, suggesting that continuing participating in innovative activities can mitigate the problems and even reverse problems into benefits. This study also explores the role of government subsidies as mediator on the association between corporate innovation and the cost of equity. The findings show that subsidies mediate the relationship between corporate innovation and the cost of equity. Innovation can attract more government subsidies and meanwhile, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between subsidies and the cost of equity. The results provide empirical evidence to encourage managers to invest in innovative activities and also suggestions to policy makers to inject more funds to initial-stage innovative companies to foster innovation development.

We examine the effect of founder control on breakthrough innovation among Chinese high-tech firms from 2008 to 2022. We measure founder control by the equity held by founders actively involved in governance and identify breakthrough innovation with Sentence-BERT (SBERT) embeddings of patent texts. We find a strong positive association between founder control and future breakthrough innovation. Using unexpected founder departures as an instrument, our identification strategy establishes a robust causal relationship. The underlying mechanisms include talent investment, internal discipline, strategic reorientation, and technological resilience. The effect is heterogeneous across founding team's size, internal structure, attributes, and tenure. Our results support a structural view of founder governance where concentrated control serves as an engine for corporate innovation.

China's ambitious endeavor to curtail carbon emissions has led to heightened governmental attention on addressing the issue of excessive carbon emissions. As governmental tolerance for such emissions diminishes, governments promote and support more proactive emission reduction methods of green innovation in enterprises. This study analyzes panel data from Chinese-listed businesses to explore the correlation between regional carbon emission pressure and green innovation. Our findings indicate a positive relationship between carbon emission pressure and enterprises' engagement in green innovation initiatives. Governmentenvironmental attention, punitive regulations, and incentive subsidies are the main channels. Market policies, including carbon emission trading and green credit policies, potentially impact the interplay between carbon emission pressure and green innovation. Moreover, our heterogeneity analysis underscores that enterprises facing looser financing constraints, exhibiting more social responsibility initiatives, and operating within polluting industries tend to experience a more pronounced positive impact than their counterparts in other sectors.

Existing studies on the employment effects of a low-carbon economy predominantly focus on sectoral dynamics instead of regions, providing limited references for prefectural policymaking. We address this gap by employing a fixed effects model and a dataset of Chinese cities from 2006 to 2020. Our findings highlight the significant contribution of a low-carbon economy to regional employment through the industry agglomeration effect and innovation effect. Heterogeneities are evident in the employment-promoting influence of a low-carbon economy, as cities with lenient environment enforcement, ample education investment, and non-resource-dependent structures benefit more significantly. Notably, a low-carbon economy exhibits a disproportionately higher employment promotion effect in cities with mid-range employment populations. In addition, we identify co-benefits of a low-carbon economy, including higher average salaries and mitigation of aging trends. These insights foster a better understanding of the low-carbon economy and offer valuable guidance for prefectural governments seeking to develop targeted low-carbon economy strategies.

Green finance has emerged as a vital tool in addressing the dual imperatives of environmental protection and economic growth. This study investigates the relationship between green finance initiatives and environmental pollution in China. Drawing on urban data spanning from 2006 to 2021, we employ a comprehensive analysis to discern the impact of green finance policies on mitigating environmental degradation. Our findings highlight the pivotal role of green finance in reducing pollution through channels such as industrial structure optimization, energy mix transformation, and the promotion of green technology. Moreover, we identify specific conditions under which green finance interventions prove most effective, including regions characterized by robust digital economy development, competitive commercial banking, and stringent government environmental regulations. By shedding light on the nuanced interplay between green finance and environmental outcomes, this research underscores the importance of targeted policy measures in fostering ecological sustainability within China's evolving economic landscape.

This paper explores the impact of city-level air pollution on the financing costs of local and regional governments (LRGs) in China. The empirical results demonstrate that cities with poor air quality face higher credit spreads on bonds issued by local financing platforms (LFPs), underscoring the critical role of air quality in determining LRGs financing costs. Air pollution negatively affects the credit rating of municipal investment bonds and increases fiscal pressure on LRGs. However, when LRGs invest more in environmental protection, reduce reliance on tax revenue, enforce stricter environmental regulations, and implement auditing policy for natural resources management, the adverse effect of air pollution on bond credit spreads are mitigated. This study enriches the research on whether and how air pollution affects bond issuance pricing and provides insights into strategies for reducing LFPs financing costs and addressing LRGs debt crises.

Countries have implemented a series of economic policies to address the economic threats arising from climate change. We investigate the impact of climate change on economic policy uncertainty and explore the mechanisms and heterogeneity of the impact by constructing the grid area-weighted average temperatures based on monthly panel data of 20 major global economies during 1997–2017. We find that climate change exacerbates economic policy uncertainty. These findings still hold after the robustness test by adjusting the control variables, replacing core explanatory variables and replacing fixed effects. More interestingly, splitting the sample into country groups reveals a considerable contrast in the impact of climate change on economic policy uncertainty. The coefficient on climate change is statistically significant in the case of developing economies, economies with hot climates, low level of trade openness, strong climate impact and high level of corruption. In addition, climate change leads to higher levels of economic policy uncertainty through, reducing economic growth, widening income disparities, increasing inflationary pressures and unemployment rate. This study provides a new perspective for understanding the economic consequences of climate change and policy implications for dealing with climate risks.

The macroeconomic risk associated with climate change potentially results in a risk premium on asset prices. Using a sample of 11,468 Chinese quasi-municipal bonds from 2014-2021 in 267 cities, this research investigates the impact of climate risk on the credit spreads of quasi-municipal bonds. We employ principal component analysis (PCA) to construct a climate risk index and find that climate risk significantly increases credit spreads by increasing the local government fiscal gap and debt burden. The effect of climate risk is more remarkable for bonds that have shorter maturity and lower corporate ratings, issued by smaller city investment companies and corporations located in regions with stronger environmental regulation, stronger climate risk perception, and better green financial development. A significant relationship is also observed in the eastern regions but not the western regions. This study broadens the scope of quasi-municipal bond credit spread determinants from traditional financial to climate indicators.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of pay injustice and provide empirical evidence on the relationship between pay injustice and innovation at the firm level. Based on a sample of Chinese publicly traded firms over the 2012-2021 period, we find that pay injustice impedes corporate innovation in terms of patenting and R&D intensity. Moreover, we find that the negative effect of pay injustice on innovation is more obvious in environments where external supervision and more noticeable moral norms are present. Finally, we observe that human capital, agency costs, and operational uncertainty are three types of mechanisms by which pay injustice affects innovation. This paper offers new insights into organizational justice theory and provides managerial implications for pay system designers.

One of the best ways for nations to achieve sustainable economic development in the modern era is by accelerating energy transformation and enhancing energy efficiency. Sustainable finance plays a crucial role in bridging economic development and environmental protection. We calculate sustainable finance indexes at the provincial level and at the city level in China, and find that sustainable financial development can promote energy efficiency. These findings remain robust even after employing a series of robustness tests and implementing an instrumental variable approach to address potential endogeneity concerns. Investigations of the underlying mechanism reveal that sustainable finance primarily promote the energy efficiency by promoting technological innovation and optimizing the industrial structure. Moreover, sustainable finance has a particularly significant impact on energy efficiency in cities with non-low-carbon pilot and cities with strict environmental regulations. We further test whether green finance has a threshold effect on energy efficiency. This paper suggests leveraging the positive role of sustainable finance in the energy efficiency of firms, especially by encouraging firms to invest technologies to accelerate their energy efficiency. Furthermore, this paper aim to offer insightful recommendations for accurately formulating and applying sustainable finance development strategies.

Digital transformation can improve the operational efficiency and financial performance of en-terprises,but the mechanism of its effect on corporate sustainable development remains to be ex-plored.Using a double fixed-effects model and data from listed companies,this paper finds that digital transformation can significantly improve the level of corporate environmental,social and govern-ance.This finding still holds after a series of robustness and endogeneity tests.Mechanistic tests show that digital transformation contributes to ESG performance by promoting green innovation,internal in-formation transparency and investor attention.However,the effectiveness of digital transformation is affected by the level of economic development of the region in which the firm is located,the degree of marketization and its own pollution,the level of science and technology strength,the management's green perception and green experience.The results of the study expand the application value of enterprise digital transformation,provide solution ideas for enterprise sustainable development.