{"title":"Navigating digital frontiers: The impact of China's cybersecurity law on corporate digital innovation","authors":"Hongze Chen , Conggang Li , Jiatao Liu , Rong Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104182","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104182","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, we find that after the enactment of China's Cybersecurity Law, firms in core digital industries produce more digital innovation than those in industries with lower digital adoption. Leveraging this regulatory shift as a quasi-natural experiment, we examine its impact on corporate digital innovation using a text-based analysis of annual reports. The promotional effect of privacy regulations on digital innovation resembles the Porter hypothesis, which addresses the positive effect of environmental regulations on innovation. Our study delves into the nuanced dynamics, revealing that firms facing high market competition, customer concentration, and fewer financial constraints prioritize digital innovation. This research contributes by highlighting how strengthened data privacy regulation promotes firms' digital innovation, fostering sustained growth and productivity in the digital era.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104182"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738914","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}
Junyi Wang , Qigui Liu , Wei Huang , Tingting Ying
{"title":"Silence is gold: Narrative conservatism of SOE managers","authors":"Junyi Wang , Qigui Liu , Wei Huang , Tingting Ying","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104171","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104171","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Examining transcripts from earnings conference calls of Chinese listed companies from 2008 to 2020, our analysis uncovers a notable inclination among state-owned enterprise (SOE) executives, who exhibit a preference for brevity and a negative tone in their responses to investor queries. This tendency suggests an effort to minimize errors and a reduced motivation for tone management to artificially boost stock prices. Lower levels of management and employee shareholding, as well as reduced stock pledges by controlling shareholders, contribute to more concise and less distorted responses. Furthermore, female executives and those with experiences during the Great Famine display heightened conservatism in communication. Rigorous testing, including a difference-in-differences analysis using SOE remuneration reform as a natural experiment, confirms the robustness of these findings. Consequently, earnings conference calls by SOEs are associated with negative market reactions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104171"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143799578","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":"Specialization in Bank lending and firm deleveraging: Evidence from China","authors":"Zijia Ding , Qian Liu , Dexin Che","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104188","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104188","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Amid China's ongoing economic transformation, addressing enterprise deleveraging and promoting high-quality development have become pressing priorities. This study, using data from Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2007 to 2022, establishes a theoretical foundation for understanding the impact of specialization in bank lending on corporate deleveraging. The findings indicate that specialization in bank lending primarily facilitates corporate deleveraging by alleviating financing constraints, strengthening internal and external supervision, and improving efficiency. These conclusions remain robust across a series of validation tests. Moreover, the effect is more pronounced among firms with strong-financial flexibility, high corporate resilience, a high degree of market development, and low currency uncertainty. Additionally, this impact is further amplified under supportive policy environments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104188"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738107","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":"Perceived corporate individualism culture and corporate bond issuing costs","authors":"Yu Su","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104191","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104191","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates whether the perceived individualism culture of corporate executives influences U.S. primary bond market pricing. Corporate individualism culture is assessed through the cultural inheritance of executives, inferred from their surnames. Analyzing a sample of 4690 U.S. bonds issued by 675 firms between 2000 and 2021, this study finds a significant and positive relationship between corporate individualism culture and bond issuance costs, even after controlling for firm- and year-fixed effects. Moreover, the impact of a strong corporate individualism culture on bond issuance costs is more pronounced in firms experiencing high financial distress and weak corporate governance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104191"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738913","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}
Dan Gabriel Anghel , Iustina Alina Boitan , Kamilla Marchewka-Bartkowiak
{"title":"Climate risk impact on Treasury securities pricing: A global perspective of short-term and long-term period","authors":"Dan Gabriel Anghel , Iustina Alina Boitan , Kamilla Marchewka-Bartkowiak","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104167","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104167","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We extend the analysis of the Treasury debt market determinants by empirically investigating the impact of climate change risk on the pricing of Treasury securities across 102 countries around the world. The study takes advantage of a new dataset of climate change proxies that spans over four decades. We distinguish between physical and transition risk, and investigate both short- and long-term securities. We find that, on average, investors react to government commitments for combating climate change and take into consideration the average level of “brownness” of the economy, i.e. the total amount of CO<sub>2</sub> emitted per unit of production. The results also show that concrete government policies aimed at directly combating climate change also matter for sovereign security prices. Overall, countries can borrow at lower costs if they participate in global climate initiatives, enact legislation to favor the transition to green energy, or allocate more of the total budget expenditures to fighting against climate change.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104167"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738282","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}
Yong Jiang , Tony Klein , Yi-Shuai Ren , Jia-Hang Dai
{"title":"Through the looking glass: Unveiling geopolitical risks and sovereign bond spillovers in the eurozone","authors":"Yong Jiang , Tony Klein , Yi-Shuai Ren , Jia-Hang Dai","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104190","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104190","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study introduces a novel time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) frequency connectedness approach for measuring the frequency transmission mechanism and dynamic spillovers among the sovereign bond markets of 13 Eurozone countries. Furthermore, the impact of global geopolitical risk (GPR) on the spillovers is examined through a time-varying Granger causality test. The results reveal strong spillovers in the Eurozone over time, especially since the spillover is predominantly driven by the short-term frequency domain. Besides, an asymmetry exists in the spillover effects between positive and negative returns, with spillovers being more pronounced for positive ones. The predictivity of geopolitical threats (GPRT) and geopolitical acts (GPRA) show significant time heterogeneity, particularly in response to specific extreme geopolitical risk events. Additionally, GPR, GPRT, and GPRA can significantly predict the spillovers for aggregate market return, specifically for positive ones, but it does not hold for negative returns (except for a temporary predictive capacity during COVID-19 of 2020). Finally, the Russia-Ukraine conflict predominantly influences sovereign bond market return spillovers through GPRT.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104190"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143767517","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":"How active is your (nominally) actively managed quantitative fund?","authors":"António F. Miguel , Yihao Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104173","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104173","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study the <em>Active Share</em> (<em>AS</em>) of quantitative actively managed US equity funds (quants). Our results suggest that closet indexing is a common practice among these funds, with 50 % of the assets in quants managed by closet indexers by the end of 2019. This fraction significantly exceeds that observed among human–managed funds (non–quants). Our analysis indicates that <em>AS</em> is associated with lower performance for quants, in contrast to the positive relationship observed for non–quants. We incorporate <em>Tracking Error</em> (<em>TE</em>) alongside <em>AS</em> to further categorize funds based on their level of active management. We find that, after fees, quants tend to underperform their benchmarks across all categories. This result is particularly pronounced among stock pickers, with quants notably trailing non–quants, and for factor bets, which emerge as the poorest performing category. Our findings also challenge the common belief that quants charge lower fees. Although this is generally true for strategies characterized by low <em>AS</em>, it does not hold for those with high <em>AS</em>. Overall, our work documents the prevalence of closet indexing among quants and suggests that significant progress is needed before algorithms can effectively substitute human expertise in strategies that require extensive discretionary decision–making.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104173"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738918","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":"How does ESG affect systemic tail risk?","authors":"Xiaoxing Liu, Yizhong Wu, Xuemei Li","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104192","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104192","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the context of sustainable development, the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) terms are an important way to resist fluctuations in financial markets. This study explores the effects of ESG on systemic tail risk. This study finds that ESG can significantly decrease the level of corporate systemic tail risk. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the restraining impact is more obvious in non-state-owned enterprises, enterprises with higher financing constraints, and industries with lower levels of competition. Additionally, this study discuss the channel mechanism of ESG on systemic tail risk in enterprises from both internal and external perspectives. In terms of internal perspectives, the increase in ESG rating will inhibit agency cost and risk-taking levels. In terms of external perspectives, ESG will enhance the level of supply chain diversification and institutional investor shareholding ratio. This paper reveals the mechanism and effective path of corporate systemic tail risk in the sustainable development economy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104192"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738916","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":"Climate change exposure and short-termism: Evidence from net trade credit","authors":"Hari P. Adhikari , Deepak G. More , Nilesh B. Sah","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104193","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104193","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study the impact of climate change exposure on corporate short-term policies. We find that firms increase their use of accounts payable, receivable, and net trade credit due to high climate change exposure. We argue that affected firms increasingly use accounts receivable to boost sales and mitigate buyer reluctance, which can alleviate the downfall in sales, cash-flows, and profitability caused by climate risk. Moreover, such firms are oftentimes faced with credit constraints and increasingly use supplier-provided payables to ease financing woes. The cumulative impact of the receivable and payable policy is an increase in net trade credit, funded by forgoing research and development, which indicates a myopic and conservative strategy. Our results are robust and withstand multiple tests for endogeneity. Furthermore, our results are stronger for firms in industries and states exposed to climate change threats. Overall, climate change exposure encourages corporate short-termism and intertemporal substitution between short-term and long-term activities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104193"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143785919","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":"The dynamics of peer influence in corporate ESG practices","authors":"Yang Gao , Siqiang Liu , Lu Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104186","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104186","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study explores the influence of peer effects on corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance, focusing its overall construct, underlying mechanisms, and economic consequences. Using data from A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2011 to 2022, the analysis reveals significant industry-level peer effects, demonstrating that competitors play a crucial role in shaping firms' ESG practices. The study identifies two primary mechanisms driving these effects: social learning and market competition. Follower firms tend to emulate the ESG practices of industry leaders, whereas competitive market dynamics further amplify this behavior. Additionally, the study highlights the heterogeneity of peer effects, which vary based on firm age, institutional long-term investment holdings, and the marketization index. Although peer effects can mitigate short-term information asymmetry, they often negatively impact long-term market value, particularly for firms lagging in ESG performance. These findings offer practical insights for firms seeking to develop sustainable and customized ESG strategies and provide policymakers with guidance for strengthening regulatory frameworks to promote long-term ESG value creation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48226,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Financial Analysis","volume":"103 ","pages":"Article 104186"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143735225","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}