This study examines two credibility-enhancing tactics when managers use Twitter as a platform to disclose a message about an employee training programme, which is an important dimension of corporate social responsibility (CSR). I conduct an experiment where I manipulate (1) whether a firm's CEO retweets the company disclosure tweet in their personal Twitter account (hereafter, 'retweeting'), and (2) whether the company's tweet mentions the organisation that cooperates with the company's CSR activities when the organisation, as an involved party, has a verified Twitter account (hereafter, 'mentioning'). I document higher disclosure credibility for retweeting than non-retweeting, as it establishes a closer association between the CEO and the message. In addition, mentioning increases the social presence of the parties involved, as users can observe the interactions between them and the disclosing firm in real time. Furthermore, I find that the higher social presence of an involved party (e.g. customers, suppliers, and managers) due to mentioning results in higher disclosure credibility. Finally, investors are more likely to sceptically scrutinise signals from an internal party, which makes CEO retweeting less effective than mentioning. The effect of retweeting is subdued when both tactics are used.

ABSTRACT Can culture explain regional differences in minority shareholder expropriation? Examining regional variation in China, we document that the influence of historical Confucian values persists, despite decades of political movements clamping down on these values, and that these values reduce minority shareholder expropriation in local public firms. The effect on minority shareholder expropriation, in part, operates through the establishment of oversight mechanisms (i.e., greater financial reporting quality and dividend payouts) that constrain expropriation. The findings have important implications for understanding the origins of enduring regional differences in minority shareholder expropriation and capital market development.

The issue of inconsistency in international investment arbitration has become more evident with the proliferation of investment disputes. This article analyzes the value as well as the desired extent of consistency and coherence for investment arbitration, and further proposes a new test that would enhance consistency and foster the development of investment law. By matching the current status of investment arbitration with three identified conditions for the application of stare decisis or jurisprudence constante, this article concludes that strictly applying the doctrines to achieve consistency is neither feasible nor favorable for the investment arbitration regime. Further, while the public nature of this dispute-resolution mechanism requires consistency and coherence, existing attempts and approaches in this regard have significant limitations. As such, this article proposes a soft precedents test to reach a balance between consistency and flexibility. The test requires the tribunals to consider previous cases in good faith when facing the same or similar issues discussed therein, and the core consideration in whether to agree with previous cases is to develop international investment law. It is suggested that this proposed test would help to clarify, enrich and develop the content of the law within the investment arbitration community.

Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades play pivotal roles in plant defense against phytopathogens downstream of immune receptor complexes. The amplitude and duration of MAPK activation must be strictly controlled, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we identified Arabidopsis CPL1 (C-terminal domain phosphatase-like 1) as a negative regulator of microbe-associated molecular pattern (MAMP)-triggered immunity via a forward-genetic screen. Disruption of CPL1 significantly enhanced plant resistance to Pseudomonas pathogens induced by the bacterial peptide flg22. Furthermore, flg22-induced MPK3/MPK4/MPK6 phosphorylation was dramatically elevated in cpl1 mutants but severely impaired in CPL1 overexpression lines, suggesting that CPL1 might interfere with flg22-induced MAPK activation. Indeed, CPL1 directly interacted with MPK3 and MPK6, as well as the upstream MKK4 and MKK5. A firefly luciferase-based complementation assay indicated that the interaction between MKK4/MKK5 and MPK3/MPK6 was significantly reduced in the presence of CPL1. These results suggest that CPL1 plays a novel regulatory role in suppressing MAMP-induced MAPK cascade activation and MAMP-triggered immunity to bacterial pathogens.

Can historical culture explain persistent regional differences in minority shareholder expropriation? We document that minority shareholder expropriation in Chinese public firms is negatively associated with regional Confucian culture, captured by data from the Qing Dynasty of Imperial China (1644--1912 AD). The results are robust to controlling for local economic development, enforcement of property rights, and geography and to using two instruments constructed from data in the Ming Dynasty (1368--1644 AD). The findings suggest that Confucian culture represents a fundamental force that constrains minority shareholder expropriation, which has important implications for capital market and economic development (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, 2001; Rajan and Zingales, 2003).