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Information asymmetry is the main cause of investment deviating from the optimal level. Given that the existence of credit rating can mitigate information asymmetry and play a monitoring role in managerial investment decisions, we use a large sample of US listed firms over the period from 1997 to 2014 and find that there is a significantly positive relationship between the existence of credit rating and investment efficiency by using the panel regression models. Moreover, we find that the positive relationship between existence of credit rating and investment efficiency is less pronounced in firms with a more transparent information environment. Since CEO inside debt holdings can align the interests of CEOs with those of debtholders, CEOs with high inside debt holdings tend to conduct more conservative policies. By using M&A deals announced over the period between 2007 and 2015 in the US market and employing cross-sectional regression models, we find there is a significant negative relationship between CEO inside debt holdings and takeover premiums. Moreover, we find this negative relationship is confined to cash-dominated deals, rated bidders or rated targets. We collect M&A deals announced over the period from 2000 to 2015 from Thomson One Banker and employ a tobit model to examine the relationship between CEO power and payment method in M&A. Given that powerful CEOs motivated by entrenchment and an increase in compensations following M&As tend to pursue more M&As, we find powerful CEOs are more likely to finance with cash in order to make the deal successful. We further find that the positive relationship between CEO power and cash payment is less pronounced when the bidder has higher credit rating or higher institutional holdings.

Interbank markets are critical to banking systems, as they enable banks to manage liquidity and allow monetary policy to go through. As the 2007 global financial crisis shows, an unexpected "freeze up" of interbank markets can cause difficulties for central bank interventions and the overall economy, which demonstrates the need to better understand systemic risk. To this aim, a comprehensive picture of interbank markets and their lending networks is necessary and of much importance. The objective of this study is to deepen our understanding of interbank network formation, which has received relatively less attention. We hope to better perceive how factors like asymmetric information and liquidity preference influence the interbank structure, and to further explore impacts from monetary policy. In the first essay of this study, we develop a model of the formation of interbank lending network, with risk aversive banks maximising expected profits in the case of information asymmetry. The equilibrium interbank structures are investigated to understand how a "freeze" market is likely to occur in a stress situation. In the second paper of this study, we introduce another interbank network formation model where a large number of homogenous banks having preferences to both profits and cash. Interest rates are determined endogenously through an internal trade off between these preferences. Realistic network structures are found in the interbank market of computer experiments. The third essay further considers the impact of monetary policy on the interbank market proposed in essay 2. The key features of the interbank market structure remain roughly unchanged after central bank operation. However, banks of different network positions are not symmetrically impacted.

The theorisation of translation originated in a binary opposition embodied by the debate of word-for-word vs. sense-for-sense translation methods. It is true that by now, theories in Translation Studies (TS) have become significantly more elaborate and sophisticated. However, it cannot be denied that some of its most dominant and pertinent concepts continue to get portrayed in binary concepts, such as translation vs. original, translatability vs. untranslatability and translation vs. interpreting, among many others. This study believes that TS, not different from most intellectual inquiries of the human mind, has been built upon binarism. The current research project aims to identify the traces of this epistemological tradition in the different stages of the discipline's development, encompassing various theoretical models in the field, while reflecting upon the evolution of TS that marks its departure from such a tradition. It approaches the issue by examining three prevailing dichotomies in the field, namely source vs. target, prescriptive vs. descriptive and translation vs. non-translation. To propose an alternative to the existing binary perspective, this study borrows from the sociological models of Parsons and Giddens to portray translation as a social action. The binary concepts are then evaluated against empirical evidence obtained through a case study of two translators of Chinese Nobel Laureates, Howard Goldblatt and Mabel Lee. Both paratexts and metatexts are consulted to demonstrate that the scenario is much more complex than what is suggested by these dichotomies. It should be clarified that this study does not advocate that scholars discard these terms altogether. Instead, it acknowledges that dichotomies serve a definite purpose in certain contexts, but aims to problematise their uncritical application. Eventually, it seeks to heighten the awareness of binarism in the discipline and strives for a balance between the precision and standardisation of the metalanguage employed in discussing translation.

Various narratives of China and the Chinese have been elaborated in western literature since as early as the 13th century (for example, The Travels of Marco Polo, 1289). Prior to the 18th century, as documented in earlier studies, these narratives largely depicted China from a utopian and positive perspective. From the late 18th century to the early 20th century, China and the Chinese began to be cast in a generally negative light, in both non-translated European – mainly English and French – literature (for example, Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe) and translations of Chinese novels into European languages (for example, Hau Kiou Choaan, translated by James Wilkinson). Both of these periods (pre- and post-18th century to early 20th century) are well documented. By contrast, relatively few studies have been undertaken to date to examine how China and the Chinese are narrated in translations of Chinese novels since the 1980s. Most studies undertaken so far are not based on a large body of empirical data and/or are not theoretically informed. This study set out to examine the role played by translation in negotiating and mediating public narratives of China in the UK and US, with specific reference to the English translations of Chinese novels commissioned and sold in the UK and US literary markets between 1980 and 2010. Drawing on narrative theory, it examines publishers’ choices of source texts for English translation and the marketing strategies they employ in framing and promoting these novels, as well as critical responses to the translations, as articulated in book reviews published in mainstream media outlets in the UK and US during the period under study. The analysis carried out attempted to reveal some of the patterns which the publishing industry and other powerful institutions (such as reviewers, literary prizes, and universities) have given shape to, as these patterns of selective appropriation not only condition the ways in which individual Chinese novels are interpreted and received by English readers, but also evoke and consolidate the broader public narratives of China circulating in the UK and US. The findings of this research confirm the inextricable relationship between politics and the reception of Chinese novels in the Anglophone world during the period under study. English translations of Chinese novels have played a significant role in elaborating public narratives of China as a political and cultural Other, and in perpetuating these narratives across time and space. Adopting a chronological structure to examine these novels and the reviews they received, a crosscutting pattern of novels on personal trauma emerged from the selections of Chinese novels for English translation during the past 30 years. This pattern, which is prioritised and promoted by both UK and US publishers and reviewers, enjoyed a dominant position in the Chinese literary landscape in the Anglophone world and gained increasing currency through the feature of narrative accrual since the 1980s. Novels on personal trauma mainly centred on two specific historical moments in modern Chinese history: the Cultural Revolution, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square event. Focusing especially on narratives of censorship and dissidence, publishers and reviewers further framed the translations of this type of literature as valuable social documents, rather than creative literary works. This generic change makes it increasingly difficult for Chinese literature to be appreciated for its literary merits, independently from its political significance.

We study the Berry phase correction to the electron density of states and present a number of its applications. It is now well recognized that the Berry phase of the electronic wave function plays an important role in the dynamics of Bloch electrons. For instance, the electron will acquire an anomalous velocity term transverse to the applied electric field, giving rise to an intrinsic contribution to the anomalous Hall effect. On the other hand, we find that the Berry phase also has a fundamental effect on the electron phase space, and leads to a modification of the phase-space density of states. This surprising result has a number of applications, which we shall discuss in detail. We first derive an explicit expression of the orbital magnetization (zero and finite temperature), where it is shown that contributions to the orbital magnetization can be classified into a local rotation of the electron and global centerof-mass motion. Based on this formula, we develop a theory of the Berry-phase effect in anomalous transport in ferromagnets driven by statistical forces such as the gradient of temperature or chemical potential. We also study the Berry phase effect on magnetotransport, showing that a linear (in field) magnetoresistance is possible in ferromagnets. Finally, we propose that in graphene with broken inversion symmetry, a valley Hall effect exists and the finite valley polarization can be detected by measuring the magnetization.