Innovation represents the source of a company's core competitiveness. Using the data on China's A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2022, this study examines whether and how industry expert independent directors influence corporate innovation. Based on the dual-function view of independent directors, we find that industry expert independent directors promote both the quantity and quality of innovation while mitigating the patent bubble problem by reducing agency costs and optimizing the allocation of innovation resources, thereby fulfilling their dual role in monitoring and resource provision. The positive impact of industry expert independent directors on innovation is particularly pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises and those located in eastern China. This effect is further amplified when these directors possess an educational background, political connections, academician status, a high activity level, and higher reputational capital. Additionally, while promoting both the quantitative and qualitative growth of innovation, industry expert independent directors can effectively promote the transformation of innovation into real productivity and improve the total factor productivity of firms. This paper provides decision-making references for firms in formulating innovation strategies and selecting independent directors.

Research Question/Issue This study exploits China's 2015 introduction of stock market stabilization funds (SMSFs) as a quasi-natural experiment and uses panel data on Chinese A-share-listed companies from 2010 to 2018 to assess the causal effect of SMSFs on corporate innovation through a difference-in-differences (DID) framework.Research Findings/Insights We find that China's SMSFs significantly enhance corporate innovation. Mechanism analyses indicate that SMSFs promote corporate innovation through the corporate governance effect (curbing managerial self-interest and controlling shareholder tunneling) and the risk shock mitigation effect (reducing stock price crash risk). Furthermore, we find that the positive effect of SMSFs on corporate innovation is stronger when a firm is held by multiple SMSFs or when SMSFs increase their stock holdings. This effect is also more pronounced for state-owned firms or firms receiving greater analyst attention. Finally, we find that China's SMSFs more effectively promote corporate innovation in regions with higher marketization levels and better government quality.Theoretical/Academic Implications First, we broaden the existing research on the relationship between government intervention and corporate innovation by providing new empirical evidence to clarify the debate on this relationship from the perspective of causal identification. Second, we link the literature on SMSFs and corporate innovation to enrich the understanding of the economic consequences of SMSFs, expand the existing research on institutional investors, and offer new perspectives for exploring the factors influencing corporate innovation.Practitioner/Policy Implications Our findings confirm the positive role of government intervention in promoting corporate innovation and demonstrate that moderate, well-designed, and long-term-oriented government intervention in capital markets can yield beneficial outcomes. Our study provides valuable implications for the operation of SMSFs in other East Asian economies and for the healthy and sustainable development of capital markets in emerging economies.

In recent years, the government of China is pursuing bankruptcy trial reform (BTR) to strengthen the enforcement of its bankruptcy laws. While prior literature has emphasized the role of BTR in creditor protection and corporate investment efficiency, its implications for labour market dynamics remain underexplored. Based on a quasi-natural experiment of staggered establishment of liquidation and bankruptcy trial tribunals in different regions, this study examines the impact of BTR on corporate employment levels. Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2012 to 2022 and a multi-period difference-in-differences model, this study found that BTR can significantly expand the scale of labour employment in enterprises in pilot cities. Mechanism analysis shows that BTR expands the scale of bank credit to alleviate the financing constraints of enterprises. It also reduces tax burdens and transaction costs to promote the governance of zombie enterprises, thus expanding the scale of enterprise labour employment. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that institutional reform effects are stronger in state-owned enterprises, labour-intensive firms, regions with lower judicial quality, and areas with higher labour supply. Extended analysis finds that BTR also helps enterprises improve their human capital structure and labour income share.

Few studies on trade credit financing have addressed the government's specific behaviors or policies that support the healthy development of the stock market, even though the healthy development of the stock market will ultimately exert influence on the cooperative trust relationship between listed firms and upstream and downstream firms (UDFs) and consequently affect the listed firms' trade credit financing. Therefore, the research on trade credit financing cannot ignore the influences from the governmental behaviors that support the healthy development of the stock market, especially the government bailout programs. We use the introduction of the stock market stabilization funds (SMSFs) by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) in 2015 as an external shock, finding that SMSFs can significantly enhance trade credit financing, implying that China's SMSFs have a supply chain financing promotion effect. The channel tests reveal that enhancing insider governance and the eye-catching star effect, reducing corporate operation risk, and improving accounting information quality are crucial channels for SMSFs to increase trade credit financing. Additionally, we discover that the positive effect of the SMSFs to enhance corporate trade credit financing is stronger when the level of SMSFs' shareholding is higher, SMSFs increase their shareholdings, SMSFs are among the top 10 shareholders and there are multiple SMSFs major shareholders. We also find that SMSFs have a higher beneficial impact on trade credit financing when a firm has weaker corporate governance, more severe financing constraints, and faces higher economic policy uncertainty (EPU). Furthermore, we find that SMSFs can increase corporate value while optimizing supply chain financing. Overall, we link the literature on government rescue, SMSFs, and trade credit financing. We broaden the study of the influencing factors on trade credit financing from the dual perspectives of governmental rescue actions that promote the stock market's healthy development and state-owned special institutional investors. Also, our research will help to deepen the understanding of the positive effects of China's SMSFs and offer valuable lessons for other East Asian or emerging economies.

In 2018, the Ministry of Commerce of China, together with eight other departments, jointly carried out pilot work on supply chain innovation and application, encouraging companies to utilize modern digital technologies to drive the transformation and upgrading of industrial chain supply chains. Utilizing the supply chain innovation and application pilot work as a quasi-natural experimental setting, we used the PSM-DID method to investigate the impact of supply chain digitalization on the ESG performance of suppliers. Our findings reveal that the digitization of supply chains enhances the ESG performance of suppliers. Furthermore, supply chain digitalization has more significant effect when suppliers are located farther away from the pilot firms. The research offers empirical evidence for the government's promotion of supply chain digital transformation, contributing to sustainable development of enterprises and the overall prosperity and stability of the economy and society.

Supply chain digitization, abbreviated SCD, has become an inevitable trend in corporate development due to the rapid advancement of digital technology. Taking the pilot work of supply chain innovation and application as an opportunity, a Propensity Score Matching with Difference-in-Differences (PSM-DID) model was constructed based on panel data from 2013 to 2023 to explore the causal relationship between SCD and enterprise cash holdings. SCD has been found to improve corporate cash holdings significantly. The mechanism tests show that this enhancement is mainly due to the information governance effect of SCD rather than the capital financing effect and that SCD increases cash holdings by suppressing ineffective cash depletion, such as executives’ on-the-job consumption and overinvestment. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of SCD on improving cash holding levels is more evident in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), enterprises with better supply chain operating environments, those with lower corporate governance levels, and those with poor information disclosure quality. Economic consequence analysis indicates that SCD enhances enterprise value while facilitating increased cash holdings. While enriching the research on corporate cash holdings, this study provides empirical evidence for the government to promote the transformation of SCD.

Prior literature shows that digitalization can reduce transaction costs and improve operating efficiency. However, the success of enterprise digitalization heavily depends on a variety of complementary human capital and employee capabilities. We focus on whether and to what extent enterprise digitalization affects employee upgrading, and whether digitalization is more valuable in firms where digitalization matches with human capital. Our analysis measures employee upgrading using detailed employee-level data (i.e., experience and education) and matches these data to metrics on enterprise digitalization to determine whether a firm's digitalization facilitates employee upgrading. Using the data of A-share listed companies from two Chinese exchanges between 2007 and 2020, we find that firms that undergo digital transformation have a greater demand for more highly technologically skilled and highly educated employees but experience a decrease in the demand for production workers. We also find that digitalization helps firms to create new demand for more skilled and higher educated labor and the re-training of existing manufacturing workers. Furthermore, we find that firms that undergo digital transformation receive higher value benefits from their complementary relationship between enterprise digitalization and labor skills, indicating that digitalization can increase firm value through upgrading their employees' labor skills. These results shed light on the fact that firms aiming to digitally transform successfully not only need to have digital assets but also must develop or acquire human capabilities related to digital technologies.

This study examines the impact of administrative monopoly on corporate innovation, specifically focusing on the Fair Competition Review System (FCRS) implemented in China. Based on Chinese A-share listed firms from 2012 to 2020, we use the implementation of the FCRS as a natural experiment to conduct a difference-in-difference test. Our findings show that the FCRS significantly increases the level of innovation among SOEs through the mechanisms of resource acquisition and market competition. The incentive effect is not only at the strategic innovation level but also promotes the improvement of the substantive innovation level of SOEs. The heterogeneity test indicates that improvements stemming from the FCRS are more pronounced in specific functional categories, regions with poor business environments, and state-owned enterprises in industries that receive key policy support. Finally, our study also reveals that the FCRS promotes the input-output efficiency of innovation among SOEs. This research contributes to the literature by filling the research gap on the impact of administrative monopoly on corporate innovation, providing novelty evidence on the economic consequences of regulatory administrative monopoly, and offering policy insights regarding the FCRS.

We investigate the relationship between state-owned shareholders' participation and the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of private firms. Based on a sample of Chinese private firms between 2009 and 2022, we find that state-owned shareholders' participation can significantly improve the ESG performance of private firms. Our mechanism tests suggest that state-owned shareholders play a role in improving the ESG performance of private firms through resource support and governance supervision. Moreover, the positive effect of state-owned shareholders' participation on ESG performance is more significant if private firms have lower carbon emission intensity and in industries with a higher degree of competition. We also find that state-owned shareholders' participation effectively increases firm value while improving the ESG performance of private firms. Our results are robust after a series of endogenous and robustness tests. The findings of our study enrich the existing research on the economic consequences of state-owned shareholders' participation in private firms and the factors influencing corporate ESG performance.

This study takes CSRC's (China Securities Regulatory Commission) random inspection as a quasi-natural experiment, employs a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2007 to 2021, and tests the impact of a preventive regulation on firms' financialization using a difference-in-differences model (DID). We found that CSRC's random inspection significantly reduces the financialization of entity enterprises, especially over financialization. The mechanism test shows that random inspection can reduce the firms' financialization through two paths: the resource effect, which alleviate financing constraints, and the governance effect, which restrain agency costs and earnings management. Further analysis shows that the mitigating role of the CSRC's random inspection is especially prominent for enterprises faced with more efficient securities regulation, more serious media pressure or executives lack of financial background. Moreover, the CSRC's random inspection have a regional spillover effect. In the economic consequences test, we found that firms' financialization reduces long-term value-creating activities such as R&D investment, innovation output and main business performance, while CSRC's random inspection mitigate such adverse effects. These findings enrich not only the research related to financialization in emerging economies, but also provide meaningful implications for the current securities regulatory system reform in China and other countries in which have implemented or are going to implement the preventive regulatory.

Innovation is crucial for business development and economic growth. This study examines the significance of industry and regional peer effects on company innovation, the underlying motivations, and their economic consequences. We find industry and regional peer significantly affects company innovation. Instrumental variables method is used to confirm the robustness of the findings. We also find that rivalry-based imitation is the key driver of innovation among peers. Further analysis reveals that these peer effects enhance companies’ total factor productivity. The peer effects, driven by rivalry-based imitation, positively influence the focal companies. This study expands the scope of factors influencing company innovation and enriches understanding of peer effects.

Digital economy has become an innovation for social and economic development. As important for the implementation of digitalization, will the digitalization of factors in the context of reconstruction production lead to 'cross-border changes' in enterprises? This paper studies the impact of digital transformation on enterprise diversification with samples of The Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange enterprises from 2007 to 2020. The results show that digital transformation promotes the diversified development of enterprises. The main mechanism is to improve the level of innovation, strengthen talent agglomeration and internal control quality. The expansion test shows that the diversified development brought by digital transformation can effectively improve investment efficiency, and also alleviate the negative relationship between diversification and enterprise value. Meanwhile, digital transformation is more inclined to vertical business expansion, and the enterprise value is effectively improved through related diversified development. The conclusions make up for the lack of research on enterprise diversification and also provide experience for enterprises to improve the corporate governance mechanism and accelerate the promotion of digital transformation.

This study uses a multi-period DID (difference-in-difference) model and data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2019 to analyse the relationship between capital market opening and insider trading profitability. We find that capital market opening can significantly inhibit insider trading profitability. This relationship remains substantially unchanged after a series of robustness tests. Enhancing stock pricing efficiency and corporate governance are two plausible mechanisms through which capital market opening reduces insider trading profitability. A cross-sectional analysis finds that the mitigating role of the capital market opening is more pronounced in bull stock markets, and in firms with higher price sensitivity and investor attention. Overall, these results enrich the literature on capital market opening and provide new insights into its effects on emerging markets.

如何以资本市场高水平开放推动经济高质量发展是当前中国立足新发展格局需要回答的时代之问.基于创新驱动经济高质量发展视角,文章利用2014～2021年MSCI中国A股在岸指数的所有成分股数据构建多期双重差分模型,从正向促进和负向抑制双重视角考察A股纳入MSCI指数这一资本市场国际化事件对企业创新的影响.研究发现:首先,A股纳入MSCI指数可以显著增加标的企业的研发投入和创新产出;其次,A股纳入MSCI指数主要通过治理效应和融资效应促进企业创新水平提升;再次,A股纳入MSCI指数提升企业创新的激励效应在高市场竞争行业与高科技行业、信息环境差与制度环境差的企业中更强;最后,A股纳入MSCI指数在提高企业创新投入产出效率的同时,也增加了企业创新价值.上述研究为深化金融改革开放、改善企业创新效率提供借鉴启示.

以2007～2019年A股上市公司为样本,借助金税三期工程上线为"准自然实验",通过多期双重差分模型检验税收征管如何影响现金持有.研究发现,税收征管显著提高了企业现金持有水平,且该效应在非国有企业、产品市场竞争较激烈企业、市场化进程较高地区更显著;机制检验发现,这种现金增持效应主要源于税收征管的治理效应,通过抑制管理层超额持现引致的过度投资和在职消费进而提升现金持有量;进一步研究发现,超额现金将用于公司研发投入和股利发放,实现了资金的二次优化配置,最终提升了现金持有价值.这为金税工程的政策绩效评估提供了微观层面的证据,同时也为进一步完善智能化监管,推进纳税系统信息化提供理论及经验支持.

基于国务院国资委披露的人事任免公告,手工整理2009-2019年央企集团高管职务任免数据库,以央企集团控股上市公司(简称"控股公司")为研究对象,考察央企集团高管变更对控股公司投资效率的影响.研究发现:央企集团高管变更通过抑制过度投资行为显著提升控股公司投资效率,并且这种提升作用在高管职务变更类型为晋升和降职的央企集团中更为明显.机制检验发现,央企集团高管变更主要通过发挥威慑效应弱化代理动机和激励效应强化内部监督进而优化控股公司的投资决策.进一步研究发现,在控股公司行业竞争程度较高、高管权力较大以及央企集团持股比例较低的情况下,央企集团高管变更的威慑与激励效应更为明显.

Does CSR reflect the "self-interest tool" of management or the "value tool" of shareholders? This paper seeks to examine the impact of CSR on corporate cash holdings in China's stock markets. This paper presents evidence that CSR significantly increases corporate cash holdings, and our findings remain consistent after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis shows that CSR mainly affects cash holding by optimizing corporate governance, which is reflected in that CSR improves the efficiency of investment and increases dividend and R&D investment. Furthermore, CSR has a spillover effect and value enhancement effect that can improve cash holdings at the industry level and also enhance corporate market value.

公平有序的竞争环境是市场经济体制的核心.作为维护公平竞争秩序和规制行政垄断的重大制度安排,《公平竞争审查制度》有助于优化市场竞争环境,破除妨碍要素和资源自由流动的障碍,从而推动经济高质量发展.文章基于2012-2020年我国A股上市公司数据,以《公平竞争审查制度》的出台作为准自然实验,运用双重差分法考察了该制度实施对企业创新活动的影响.研究发现,《公平竞争审查制度》的实施可以显著提升行政垄断行业内企业的创新水平,且更多表现为实质性创新水平的提升.渠道检验表明,该制度主要通过政府补贴、信贷配给和市场竞争机制,促进企业创新水平提升.进一步研究发现,该制度对企业创新的促进作用在国有企业和融资约束较严重的企业,以及市场化程度较低地区和非高科技行业的企业中更加显著;此外,产业政策会削弱《公平竞争审查制度》的创新促进作用.文章丰富了企业创新影响因素的相关研究,为《公平竞争审查制度》的实施效果提供了评价依据,而且对于深化垄断行业规制改革、推动建立高标准市场体系以及构建新发展格局具有重要的政策意义.

Based on the empirical evidence from the panel of A-shares listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2019, this paper shows that: networks of institutional investors can significantly enhance corporate cash holdings, and the positive influence of institutional networks on corporate cash holding levels is more significant in groups with higher management power and lower internal corporate governance levels. The research on the mechanism finds that the positive impact of institutional networks on cash holding levels is primarily attributable to the effective play of its governance effect, which mitigated the cash "dissipation" behavior of senior executives by restraining the over-investment and perquisite consumption of management. The institutional network can optimize the redistribution of excess cash holdings and enhance enterprise value by improving the innovation level of enterprises. This paper confirms that the improvement of corporate cash holdings by institutional networks derives from the effective network governance, and enriches the research on the influencing factors of cash holdings and the consequences of institutional networks.

以2009—2019年沪深A股上市公司为研究对象,探究非控股大股东退出威胁与投资效率间的内在关联.研究发现:非控股大股东退出威胁有利于公司更好地把握投资机会,提高投资-投资机会敏感性,具有资金优配效应;其作用路径为抑制管理层在职消费及控股股东掏空行为.异质性检验发现,当财富股价敏感性越高、股市压力越大、退出威胁可信性越强时,上述作用越显著.进一步研究表明,非控股大股东退出威胁对投资效率的影响主要源于对过度投资的抑制;且非控股大股东退出威胁利于投资机会较好公司获取增长期权价值,利于投资机会较差公司获取清算期权价值.