{"title":"The Effect of Firm-Level Investment on Income Inequality and Poverty Around the World","authors":"Mehmet S. Tosun, Ethan D. Watson, Serhat Yildiz","doi":"10.1111/irfi.70084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/irfi.70084","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine the relation between firm-level investment and income inequality in an international setting. We find that firms' investments reduce income inequality and poverty. We document that increases in employment, compensation paid to employees, and labor productivity due to firms' investment activities can be the underlying drivers of the negative firm-level investment and income inequality link. The impact of firms' investments on income inequality varies across industries and countries. The negative investment and income inequality relation disappears when credit markets are in distress and stock market participation is low. Our findings indicate that encouraging firm-level investment can be a valuable tool for economic policymakers who aim to reduce income inequality and poverty.</p>","PeriodicalId":46664,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Finance","volume":"26 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/irfi.70084","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148324330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does Paying More Taxes Mean Less Volatile Stock Returns?","authors":"Deepanshi Arora, Neeru Chaudhry","doi":"10.1111/irfi.70088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/irfi.70088","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Paying more corporate taxes may signal tax compliance. An alternative view suggests that corporations that pay more taxes are less efficient in designing their tax strategies than those that pay less taxes. Therefore, firms may adopt tax-saving strategies. The problem arises when firms become too aggressive and embark upon the gray zone, where there is no clear distinction between tax saving and tax avoidance/evasion. We provide empirical evidence that tax aggressiveness causes an increase in firm-specific risk. This effect is more pronounced for opaque firms, but it is not sensitive to the quality of corporate governance. It does not differ between multinational and domestic firms, or between firms that borrow money from the foreign debt market and those that do not. Additionally, we find that tax aggressiveness is positively related to higher levels of earnings volatility, stock price crash risk, total risk, and systematic risk. The relationship between tax aggressiveness and idiosyncratic volatility is unaffected by managerial incentives, past investment behavior, ESG performance, or innovation intensity.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":46664,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Finance","volume":"26 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148300139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Share Pledge and Corporate Debt Financing","authors":"Yi-Wen Chen, Meng-Na Huang, Chu-Bin Lin, Yan-Lin Yu","doi":"10.1111/irfi.70086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/irfi.70086","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This study examines the relationship between controlling shareholders’ share pledging and (a) firms’ financial leverage and (b) the cost of debt. The evidence shows that controlling shareholders’ pledging activity is positively associated with firms’ total debt ratios and cost of debt. Further analyses show that better corporate governance and greater transparency can mitigate the increase in debt costs. The results remain robust after addressing endogeneity concerns using an instrumental variable approach and propensity score matching. We also conduct additional tests suggesting that information asymmetry may be an important driver of our findings while partially ruling out two alternative explanations. Overall, this study provides support for the pecking order theory and suggests that controlling shareholders’ share pledging is an additional determinant associated with firms’ capital structure and cost of capital.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":46664,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Finance","volume":"26 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148300142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Common Suppliers and Stock Return co-Movement: Evidence From China","authors":"Xianhang Qian, Le Zhang, Kunzhu Zhao","doi":"10.1111/irfi.70087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/irfi.70087","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This article investigates the impact of common suppliers on the stock return co-movement of firms using a sample of Chinese listed firms. We find that firms with common suppliers show a higher stock return co-movement. Common suppliers are an additional determinant of the correlation in future operating performance between paired firms. The effect of common suppliers is more pronounced in the period of worse market performance as well as for firms with closer size and geographical distance relative to their common supplier, higher purchasing proportions from common supplier, and no overseas common supplier. Finally, the channel analyses show that common suppliers can improve the common stock informativeness of firms and the consistency of investor attitudes and trading behaviors, which then increases the firms' stock return co-movement. Overall, our results shed light on the role of supply chain in stock market performance.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":46664,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Finance","volume":"26 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148282439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Common Suppliers and Stock Return co-Movement: Evidence From China","authors":"Xianhang Qian, Le Zhang, Kunzhu Zhao","doi":"10.1111/irfi.70087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/irfi.70087","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This article investigates the impact of common suppliers on the stock return co-movement of firms using a sample of Chinese listed firms. We find that firms with common suppliers show a higher stock return co-movement. Common suppliers are an additional determinant of the correlation in future operating performance between paired firms. The effect of common suppliers is more pronounced in the period of worse market performance as well as for firms with closer size and geographical distance relative to their common supplier, higher purchasing proportions from common supplier, and no overseas common supplier. Finally, the channel analyses show that common suppliers can improve the common stock informativeness of firms and the consistency of investor attitudes and trading behaviors, which then increases the firms' stock return co-movement. Overall, our results shed light on the role of supply chain in stock market performance.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":46664,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Finance","volume":"26 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148282451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Effects of Corporate Governance Code on Corporate Governance Practices and Firm Performance in Vietnam","authors":"Hanh Minh Thai, Thanh Thi Phuong Nguyen, Rezaul Kabir","doi":"10.1111/irfi.70081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/irfi.70081","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article investigates the impact of Vietnam's Corporate Governance Code (CGC) on corporate governance practices and firm performance from 2016 to 2023. We find that the CGC enhances board independence and gender diversity. Tobin's <i>Q</i> has improved for firms that have increased the number of independent and female directors and for firms with external monitoring exposure. There was no empirical evidence for an increase in the accounting measure of operating performance, except for firms having Big 4 auditors and high state ownership. These findings suggest the capital market's appreciation of corporate governance reforms, but limited operating performance benefits. The study highlights the CGC's role in shaping corporate behavior in emerging markets and offers implications for policymakers and business leaders seeking to strengthen governance frameworks.</p>","PeriodicalId":46664,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Finance","volume":"26 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/irfi.70081","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148167046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Effects of Corporate Governance Code on Corporate Governance Practices and Firm Performance in Vietnam","authors":"Hanh Minh Thai, Thanh Thi Phuong Nguyen, Rezaul Kabir","doi":"10.1111/irfi.70081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/irfi.70081","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article investigates the impact of Vietnam's Corporate Governance Code (CGC) on corporate governance practices and firm performance from 2016 to 2023. We find that the CGC enhances board independence and gender diversity. Tobin's <i>Q</i> has improved for firms that have increased the number of independent and female directors and for firms with external monitoring exposure. There was no empirical evidence for an increase in the accounting measure of operating performance, except for firms having Big 4 auditors and high state ownership. These findings suggest the capital market's appreciation of corporate governance reforms, but limited operating performance benefits. The study highlights the CGC's role in shaping corporate behavior in emerging markets and offers implications for policymakers and business leaders seeking to strengthen governance frameworks.</p>","PeriodicalId":46664,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Finance","volume":"26 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/irfi.70081","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148167045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}