International Review of Financial Analysis最新文献

{"title":"Can intellectual property protection policy enhance enterprise innovation capability? Quasi-natural experimental study","authors":"Qiuhan Zhao ,&nbsp;Wei Wu ,&nbsp;Yuanqin Ge ,&nbsp;Jing Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104163","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104163","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Intellectual property (IP) protection policies are widely recognized as critical for stimulating innovation; however, their effectiveness in emerging economies remains contentious. The exact processes by which tailored IP protection policies affect firm-level innovation potential in developing countries remain vague, despite current literature examining the general impact of IP rights on innovation. This gap is particularly significant in light of China's rapid economic transformation and aggressive innovation goal. We leverage China's National IP Demonstration City initiative as a quasi-natural experiment to explore the causal effect of increased IP protection on enterprise innovation capability. Employing a difference-in-differences technique on a dataset of 20,471 firm-year observations from 2007 to 2021, we find that the program significantly increases firm innovation output. Our study shows that increased research and development investment, government subsidies, and the removal of financing barriers mediate this effect. Furthermore, the effects vary across regions and industries, with higher impacts observed in more developed areas and pollution-intensive sectors. These findings demonstrate that targeted IP protection laws can effectively stimulate innovation in emerging economies, providing policymakers with useful insights into developing nuanced strategies for fostering innovation-driven growth in various economic contexts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104163"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Does external labour market activeness affect agency problem?","authors":"Yuyun Claudie Huang ,&nbsp;Jamie Yixing Tong ,&nbsp;Joey W. Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104165","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104165","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the relationship between external labour market and the agency problem. Exploiting the staggered recognition of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by US state courts to capture a drop in external labour market activeness, we examine whether and how the activeness of external labour market affects managers' empire building behaviour. We find that in IDD-recognising states, managers are less engaged in empire-building activity, thus reducing agency costs and improving firm performance. The effect is concentrated in managers with heightened career concern where their firms experience higher degrees of financial constraints or operate within an industry of more intense in-state competition. We also rule out alternative explanations in which lower levels of empire building are associated with managers pursuing a quiet life or underinvestment. Our results hold for a battery of robustness tests and offer insights into the disciplining role of external labour markets in mitigating the agency problem.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104165"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143783574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The silent cost of biodiversity loss: Unveiling its impact on institutional ownership","authors":"Yueyang Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104075","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104075","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Biodiversity loss poses significant challenges to global ecosystems, economies, and corporate practices. As institutional investors increasingly integrate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors into their investment decisions, understanding the influence of biodiversity risk on institutional ownership becomes critical. This study investigates the impact of biodiversity risk on institutional ownership using a sample of U.S. companies from 2009 to 2023. Employing textual analysis of firms’ 10-K filings to measure biodiversity risk, the findings reveal a significant negative association between biodiversity risk and institutional ownership. Companies facing higher biodiversity risks tend to experience a reduction in institutional ownership, likely due to concerns over increased financial and reputational risks. Heterogeneity analyses demonstrate that biodiversity risk significantly reduces the proportion of institutional investors in large companies, companies with higher profitability, companies with strong innovation capabilities, and high-growth companies. These results underscore the importance of incorporating biodiversity considerations into corporate risk management practices. The study offers practical implications for corporate managers and investors, emphasizing the need for proactive management of biodiversity-related risks. Keywords: Biodiversity Risk; Institutional Ownership; Firm-level Biodiversity Risk;</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104075"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143807562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Return connectedness between energy commodities and stock markets: New evidence from 31 energy sector companies in Europe","authors":"Małgorzata Just ,&nbsp;Agata Kliber ,&nbsp;Krzysztof Echaust","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104094","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104094","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The prices of oil and gas significantly affect the world economy, and their fluctuations influence the financial and economic stability of many countries. This study considers the relationship among Brent crude oil, TTF natural gas price shocks, and the 31 European largest companies from the energy sector. We employ a connectedness framework of Diebold–Yilmaz to investigate the static and time-varying connectedness between them. Our sample period ranges from March 2018 to December 2023, comprising the COVID-19 pandemic and the period of the Russo-Ukraine war. We investigate connectedness in the center and in the tails of the return distributions. We show that the overall connectedness reached its maximum at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. The role of oil changed from net receiver during the pandemic to a net transmitter in extrema afterwards, while gas switched from shock absorber to being disconnected. The main contributors to the connectedness in the system in the median are the biggest companies from developed markets and the oil &amp; gas sub-sector. Other companies generate fewer shocks to the markets. They mainly contribute to the connectedness in extrema.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104094"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143735224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Green credit policy and heavily polluting enterprises' green transition","authors":"Huaixin Lu ,&nbsp;Yong Pan ,&nbsp;Rujie Fan ,&nbsp;Wei Guan","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104162","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104162","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study empirically examines how green credit policy affects the green transition of heavily polluting enterprises. We use the implementation of the Green Credit Guidelines as a quasi-natural experiment to analyze the effects from production and emissions perspectives. The results reveal that green credit policy significantly promotes a prevention-led green transition while inhibiting a governance-led green transition in heavily polluting enterprises. The policy effects analysis confirms that green credit policy promotes heavily polluting enterprises' green transition by restricting credit scale, tightening credit channel constraints, improving environmental information disclosure quality, and lowering credit costs. The findings suggest that policy intensity should increase with enterprises' pollution level. Heterogeneity analysis of policy effects on different types of enterprises reveals that green credit policy significantly aids heavily polluting enterprises' green transition with low tax contributions, high-quality internal controls, and favorable financial geographic positioning. Extended analysis reveals that state ownership and political connections can hinder effective green credit policy implementation, while executives with financial backgrounds can enhance its effects. This study provides empirical evidence on how green credit policy promotes heavily polluting enterprises' green transition and highlights the need for policy to focus on identifying the characteristics of enterprises' internal and external resources. Strengthening green credit policy's environmental information disclosure and regulatory mechanisms and optimizing the identification and feedback mechanisms related to enterprise characteristics will ensure the policy's fairness and effectiveness.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104162"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143748154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A flight-to-safety from Bitcoin to stock markets: Evidence from cyber attacks","authors":"Yang Fang ,&nbsp;Cathy Yi-Hsuan Chen ,&nbsp;Chunxia Jiang","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104093","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104093","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We discover a novel flight-to-safety (FTS) effect from cryptocurrency markets to stock markets, triggered by a series of hacking attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges. This phenomenon is driven by heightened uncertainty, which increases investors’ risk awareness and prompts asset reallocation in favour of safer stock markets over riskier cryptocurrency markets. We conduct an extensive global examination of this effect across 39 countries and confirm this novelty. This effect is amplified by frequent attacks when investors’ risk awareness is strengthened. Notably, social media sentiment surrounding these attacks serves as both a timely warning indicator for upcoming hacking events and a measure of the FTS pressure following such attacks. We conclude that the collapsed investor confidence and increased risk aversion are the primary cause of such an effect. We further substantiate the FTS hypothesis by offering evidence of significant abnormal fund flows into US mutual funds following these hacking events. As such, through the lens of cyber attacks, we document how a shock in cryptocurrency markets is transmitted into stock markets via investors’ FTS behaviour.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104093"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143725313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bond default of super-large real estate company and government debt risk","authors":"Junyi Jia ,&nbsp;Jingwei Chen ,&nbsp;Yao Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104158","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104158","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates risk spillover from the real estate sector to local government debt in China. Using Chinese real estate giant Evergrande's bond default as a shock and data on the issuances of urban investment bonds (UIBs), we find that super-large real estate company' default significantly increases the risk premium of UIBs, which typically represents the risk associated with local governments' implicit debts. The risk spillover is more pronounced in less developed regions, for local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) with lower credit ratings, and for debt instruments with inadequate guarantee measures. Further analysis reveals that the spillover effect is related to land asset values and triggered by two mechanisms: “land finance by local governments” and “the debt burden of LGFVs”. This study enriches our understanding of the risk interconnectedness between the real estate sector and local government debt.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104158"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143706000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Heterogeneous housing bubbles and monetary policy","authors":"Kun Duan ,&nbsp;Liya Zhang ,&nbsp;Shuyun Chen ,&nbsp;Andrew Urquhart","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104079","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104079","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper isolates rational and naive bubbles within a unified framework allowing bounded rationality, and studies how monetary policy surprises affect these bubbles’ characteristics differently. Employing a comprehensive dataset in urban China, our results demonstrate that both the magnitude and type of housing bubbles evolve across locations over time. Tightening monetary policy is found to exert a containing role in rational bubble dynamics but its role in naive bubbles is less significant. Our results confirm the effectiveness of contractionary monetary policy and home purchase restrictions in combating China’s housing bubbles thanks to the nationwide dominance of a rational bubble type.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104079"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143748149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Quantifying uncertainty in economics policy predictions: A Bayesian & Monte Carlo based data-driven approach","authors":"Shafeeq Ur Rahaman ,&nbsp;Mahe Jabeen Abdul","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104157","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104157","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Economic policy uncertainty relates to the unpredictability in government policies that can impact economic decision-making. High policy uncertainty can lead to less investment, slower economic growth, and increased volatility in financial markets. In this study, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations and Bayesian Hierarchical Modeling (BHM) are employed to quantify policy prediction uncertainty. This research focuses essentially on key policy domains and macroeconomic tools where uncertainty underlies crucial influences upon economic decisions. The methodology integrates data collection, feature scaling, normalization, Bayesian inference using MCMC simulations, uncertainty quantification and policy prediction to produce predictive insights under various economic scenarios. The Bayesian Hierarchical Model was employed to estimate the relationships between macroeconomic variables and policy outcomes. The posterior distribution results revealed significant predictors, with certain factors like monetary policy uncertainty exerting a substantial negative impact, while others such as equity market-related uncertainty showed positive influence. A rigorous uncertainty quantification step provided credible intervals for predicted outcomes with a 95 % credible interval ranging between 0.276 and 0.359. This enabled an assessment of the potential variability in predictions based on differing levels of economic uncertainty. The study concluded with policy predictions generated under two distinct economic scenarios. Under conditions of high uncertainty during global economic crisis, the predicted policy outcome was −0.2346, while a moderate uncertainty scenario during typical economic fluctuations resulted in a less negative outcome of −0.2060. These results demonstrate the sensitivity of economic policy predictions to varying levels of uncertainty. The findings provide a robust framework for understanding and quantifying uncertainty in economic policy-making. By applying BHM and Monte Carlo methods, this study can help in the establishment of more flexible and adaptive economic strategies in the face of uncertainty.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"102 ","pages":"Article 104157"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143678303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tax incentives, business environment, and entrepreneurial and innovation outcome","authors":"Liming Sun ,&nbsp;Feixiang Lu ,&nbsp;Haoyuan Guan ,&nbsp;Xiang Lu ,&nbsp;Jun Zhai ,&nbsp;Junchao Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104154","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104154","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using panel data from 294 cities in China (290 prefecture-level cities and 4 municipalities directly under the central government) from 2011 to 2020, this study investigates the impact of tax incentives on local innovation and entrepreneurship performance. Furthermore, it examines how the business climate and fiscal expenditure on science and technology (S&amp;T) affect this process. Findings reveal that tax incentive programs significantly improve the effectiveness of innovation and entrepreneurship in cities, which is supported by robustness checks and endogeneity tests. Further mediation analysis indicates that tax incentives directly improve innovation and entrepreneurship performance and indirectly foster such activities by enhancing the business environment and augmenting fiscal allocations to S&amp;T.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104154"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}