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Green bonds are relatively new in the financial market compared to other financial securities but are useful in financing environmentally friendly projects. Just like other financial securities, green bonds are affected by various factors, such as economic policy uncertainty. Our aim of this paper was to conduct a systematic literature review of the impact of economic policy uncertainty on green bonds. We sought to do a thorough analysis of the existing literature on the assessment of the impact of economic policy uncertainty on green bonds and the techniques used in assessing the impact. Our findings showed that economic policy uncertainty had a strong impact on the green bond, with its intensity varying by location. This impact tended to be more pronounced in periods of heightened uncertainty. Also, our findings highlighted that the assessment of the impact of economic policy uncertainty on green bonds gained popularity in 2019, with China emerging as a prominent contributor. However, other countries, such as Finland, even though they had few published papers, their citations signified the production of quality papers in this field. Additionally, we found that the application of the quantile analysis method was utilized by many recent studies, which signified its importance in this field. Our findings highlighted the importance of considering appropriate techniques in assessing the impact of economic policy uncertainty on green bonds while taking into account the paper quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the dynamic linkages among economic policy uncertainty (EPU), the green bond market, the carbon market, and the macroeconomy using the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model with monthly data spanning from January 2016 to December 2021. Additionally, it assesses the robustness and accuracy of the empirical results through the Bayesian vector autoregressive (BVAR) model. The findings indicate that EPU negatively affects the green bond market in the short term but has a positive impact in the medium and long term. Conversely, EPU has a positive impact on the carbon market in the short term but a negative impact in the medium and long term. Furthermore, the green bond market negatively influences the carbon market in both the short and medium to long term. These results suggest that emerging markets, such as the green bond and carbon markets, are influenced by EPU. The adverse impact of the green bond market on the carbon market, however, contributes to expediting China's attainment of its low-carbon objectives. Appropriate economic policies can play a vital role in accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy. The study also reveals that the US-China trade war has expedited the development of green capital markets in China, despite its impact on the green economic transition in the country. These findings provide insights for the government and investors to formulate suitable strategies for risk mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to effectively reduce CO2 emissions by examining the impact of three distinct incentive and constraint policies on the quality of rating and certification information in China's green bond issuance market. To accomplish this, the government has implemented incentives, while regulators have introduced constraints to curb the spread of inflated rating and certification information. We build on the integrated rating and certification regulation mechanism by presenting a two-stage Stackelberg game model that involves four key participants: the China Securities Regulatory Commission, local governments, green evaluation and certification agencies, and credit rating agencies. We incorporate environmental effects indicators into the expected utility of rating and certification agencies to investigate the equilibrium conditions under three policy scenarios: a single financial incentive policy, a single regulatory constraint policy, and a combined incentive and constraint policy. The paper employs Stackelberg game theory to analyze how different policies mitigate the occurrence of "inflated" ratings and "greenwashing" in certifications. Numerical analysis is conducted to validate the theoretical findings. Moreover, we assess the impact of these policies on the quality of rating and evaluation information, using data from China's green bond issuance market between 2016 and 2021. Our research offers valuable management insights and regulatory recommendations for both regulators and local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The green bond (GB) is a new financial product in the green finance field that has recently become a corporate social responsibility (CSR) tool for organizations. Previous studies show that high-CSR firms receive more trust from shareholders during a financial crisis. This paper aims to assess the stock performance of publicly listed Chinese companies that issued GBs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bond sample covers 2016–2019 and consists of 67 listed issuers. The paper uses the event study method based on the market and Fama-French (1993) three-factor models. Our results show that GB issuers exhibited significantly positive cumulative abnormal stock returns on the official announcement dates of the COVID-19 outbreak. The positive cumulative abnormal returns are mainly driven by non-financial GB issuers rather than financial GB issuers. The results reflect the attitudes of investors toward GB-issuing companies primarily in the context of the crisis and contribute to the development of green finance policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the aim of effectively preventing and controlling systemic risk, by stimulating the advancement of the green bond market, it is significant and imperative to help investors and policymakers adopt more effective measures, which will ensure them to maximize profit. We construct VAR, DCC-GARCH and Copula-CoVaR models, and study the spillover effect between the green bond market and traditional bond market from the three perspectives of mean spillover, volatility spillover and extreme risk spillover using the data on daily closing prices of green bond market and traditional bond market indices. The research findings of this paper are as follows: (1) There are three spillover effects of mean value, volatility and extreme risk among the green bond market, corporate bond market, enterprise bond market and conventional bond market. (2) From the perspective of mean spillover between markets, only the mean spillover between the conventional bond market and the green bond market is bidirectional, and there is the profoundest impact of spillover from the green bond market to the conventional bond market. (3) As far as the volatility spillover between markets is concerned, the volatility spillover between the three traditional bond market and the green bond markets are all positive. The volatility spillover between the conventional bond market and the green bond market is the largest, which is particularly obvious in the first half of 2018 and the first half of 2020. (4) In terms of inter-market extreme risk spillover, the risk spillover between the green bond market and the traditional bond market is positive. The green bond market contributes more to the risk spillover of the enterprise bond market, and it has a time-varying risk spillover effect on the traditional bond market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a procedure to measure firms' longitudinal accounting comparability and investigates whether it affects bond risk premiums. The results provide robust evidence that bonds of firms with more longitudinally comparable accounting information have lower credit spreads. This effect is stronger when the firms' financial performance is poor and for bonds with speculative credit ratings. Results also reveal that firms with less longitudinally comparable accounting information are more informationally asymmetric and do have a higher expected default probability. Finally, the effects of the longitudinal and the cross‐sectional comparability in reducing bond credit spreads are incremental to each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses frequency and quantile-varying linkage between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and green bond index (GBI) using wavelet multiscale decomposition and quantile-on-quantile regression approaches. We construct nine different time frequency combinations of short-term EPU and long-term GBI and find that dynamic coefficients exist for their relationship across different quantiles. For the same cases, the corresponding coefficients even change from positive to negative or conversely, further proving the unstable linkage related to different quantiles and frequencies. The major contribution of this study is that time frequencies and quantile-varying analysis are used simultaneously. In addition, China's economic reform and complex external economic shocks make it a case worthy of study. Furthermore, this work indicates a nonlinear link, which adds to the theoretical foundation of EPU and GBI. Thus, authorities should stabilize their economic policy, avoid drastic policy changes and increase policy transparency, which can strengthen investors' confidence in the green bond market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2015, when China opened up its onshore bond markets more substantially, foreign investors have significantly increased their investments in Chinese local currency bonds. This study aims to examine the effects of foreign participation on Chinese government bond yields. This study adopts a robust least squares model and a cointegration model. (Greater) foreign participation can significantly decrease 10-year Chinese government bond yields. There are almost no studies of the benefits and costs of foreign participation in Chinese bond markets. The conclusion drawn from this study is the first of its kind in the academic literature on the Chinese market, and contributes to knowledge about foreign participation in local currency bond markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large corporations usually cover their capital and operating expenses by issuing bonds with fixed rates and different maturities. This paper proposes a multistage stochastic programming (MSP) model with multiple objectives to optimize bond issuance by satisfying the three common objectives of corporate managers, as follows: (i) Minimizing expected discounted cost under cash liquidity and financial leverage risk constraints. (ii) Minimizing financial leverage risk under expected discounted cost and cash liquidity risk constraints. (iii) Minimizing cash liquidity risk under expected discounted cost and financial leverage risk constraints. We measure liquidity risk as conditional payment-at-risk (C P a R), according to the corporation's financial characteristics. Financial leverage risk is captured by conditional financial leverage-at-risk C F L a R , which we design based on conditional value-at-risk (C V a R). Through empirical analysis of a company in China, we explore the efficient frontier curves for the three above objectives and provide the corresponding issuance compositions of an optimal bond portfolio. Our MSP model offers guidance for corporations on achieving a trade-off between cost and risk when issuing corporate bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's bond market has been ranked third globally; however, China's corporate bonds are significantly less liquid than its stocks. Liquidity risk is an important component in China's corporate bond spreads. In this paper, we propose a stochastic liquidity discount factor model to evaluate the liquidity risk premium and its term structure in China's corporate bond market. The Monte Carlo simulation technique is used to quantify the impact on the liquidity premium of various liquidity factors: the liquidity level, liquidity volatility, liquidity shock, and the liquidity elasticity. Our findings conclude that the liquidity level is the most significant component of a liquidity premium. The impact on the liquidity premium of other liquidity factors is all conditional on the liquidity level. In addition, the impact of liquidity shocks and volatility is also subject to the market's equilibrium mechanism. Further, the term of a bond affects the premium both directly and indirectly through its influence on a bond's liquidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of multidimension liquidity, credit risk, and the interaction between liquidity and credit risk on corporate bond spreads based on a large transaction data set from July, 2006 to June, 2016, including the monthly data of 3716 bonds in China. Our main findings reveal that liquidity premiums are the main parts of corporate bond spreads. The interaction between liquidity and credit risk plays a significant role in determining corporate bond spreads. In addition, the differences between the interbank market and the exchange market have a significant impact on corporate bond spreads in normal period, and the interaction between liquidity and credit risk has an enhanced impact on corporate bond spreads during financial crisis. We also find that the interaction between liquidity and credit risk will increase with the increase of liquidity risk and credit risk and it is a time-varying dynamic process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government bonds might provide reference entities that reduce corporate bond yields. We study China's 2017 issuance of two U.S. dollar (USD)-denominated sovereign bonds when there were (effectively) no outstanding USD sovereigns. We find that Chinese corporate USD bonds experienced a four- to nine-basis-point decline in yield spreads, whereas corporate renminbi (RMB) bonds did not. The effect was stronger for corporate bonds with maturities similar to those of the USD sovereigns. Further consistent with the reference effect, USD-denominated corporate bonds experienced declines in bid-ask spreads and volatility; corporate bond yield spread changes became more sensitive to sovereign yield innovations; and the less-informed foreign mutual funds significantly increased their holdings of offshore USD Chinese corporate bonds. Limited evidence indicates that new corporate bond maturities shifted toward the sovereign bonds' maturity after their issuance. This paper was accepted by Lukas Schmid, finance. Funding: B. Wang received financial support from Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research. C. Y. Hong received financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72003125]. Supplemental Material: The internet appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4499. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effects of implicit government guarantee (IGG) on Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). We find that SOEs reduce their investments by 2.4% of book assets, on average, relative to matched non-SOEs after the first SOE default in China's onshore bond markets in 2015. The investment reduction concentrates among SOEs that are financially constrained, yet SOEs financed by large state banks are hardly affected. Bondholders require more stringent default protection in newly issued SOE bonds. We also find that the investment reduction is more pronounced for SOEs with severe agency problems and that SOEs experienced more positive market reactions to acquisition announcements after 2015. Our results suggest that the reduction in IGG has confounding effects on Chinese firms. Although the weakening of IGG may help mitigate overinvestment, it exacerbates financial constraints of those with limited access to alternative sources of financing. This paper was accepted by Lucas Schmid, finance. Funding: Z. Zhang acknowledges the funding support by Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [Project 11503318]. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4483. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate bonds with large increases in implied volatility over the past month underperform those with large decreases in implied volatility by 0.6% per month. In contrast to existing studies that show implied volatility changes carry information about fundamental news, our evidence suggests that implied volatility changes contain information about uncertainty shocks to the firm. Our results are consistent with the notion that informed traders with new information about firm risk prefer to trade in the option market and the corporate bond market underreacts to this information. This paper was accepted by Haoxiang Zhu, finance. Funding: We thank the Canadian Derivatives Institute for financial support. J. Cao and X. Zhan acknowledge generous financial support of the Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [Grants GRF 14501720, 14500919]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4379. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although third-party certification has been widely regarded as an important means of controlling greenwash, an issue that hampers environmental sustainability and pollution control outcomes, third-party certification has limited effects on greenwash in Chinese green bond market. How to make third-party certification effectively prevent greenwash has become an urgent problem to solve under current context that third-party certification for green bond is not compulsory in China. We attempt to address this problem for the first time by applying two simple game models and two signalling game models through three stages. The equilibrium results show that (1) information transmission is crucial in preventing greenwash; (2) providing the incentive for issuers to undergo third-party certification is the key for third-party certification to effectively prevent greenwash in Chinese green bond market; (3) when there is the incentive for issuers to undergo third-party certification, third-party certification can function as an effective signal that separates non-greenwashing issuers from greenwashing ones, which is conducive to alleviating information asymmetry, thereby preventing greenwash effectively in green bond market. Also, the theoretical range of the incentive is determined, implying that the incentive should be within the theoretical range to play its role. This study further provides policy implications of establishing an incentive mechanism that the government should provide tax deductions and exemptions, offer financial subsidies, and grant priority approval privileges for the green bond issuers who actively adopt third-party certification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper selects weekly transaction data from the Shenzhen Exchange and Shanghai Exchange for 2012 to 2018 to investigate factors including corporate size, the ration of book-to-market, default risk, term and credit rating that influence the corporate bond spread. It can be concluded that small firms prefer to issue high yield spread bonds while large firms issue bonds with low yield spreads. High (low) book-to-market firms issue high (low) yield spread bonds. The most important factors influencing corporate bond spread yield are default risk, terms, and credit ratings. We suggest that China Securities Regulatory Commission should encourage small firms to issue corporate bonds and there should be more kinds of credit ratings bonds in China bond market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important information intermediary and external monitor, analysts have a serious impact on investors. In order to study the impact of analysts' attention and research reports' attention on corporate bond credit spreads, this paper selects non-financial companies issuing bonds in China A-share market from 2017 to 2020 as samples, establish a panel data regression model for empirical research. The research found that both analyst attention and research report attention have a significant impact on the credit spread of corporate bonds, and the higher the analyst attention and research report attention, the smaller the corporate bond credit spread, indicating that analysts play an effective role in supervising the default risk of listed companies. The research in this article expands the research on analysts' attention and research reports' attention, and the research on the factors affecting bond credit spreads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green bonds have developed rapidly, over a short period, in China's capital market, making it the world's largest green bond market. However, there is little empirical literature on China's green bond market growth drivers. This paper uses structural equation models to explain the driving factors and mechanism of the top-down development model of China's green bond market. The findings indicate that the local economy and environmental governance impacts growth more in the green bond market, followed by the institutional environment. In contrast, policy support impacts were small and statistically insignificant. Meanwhile, the effects of the local economy and environmental governance are direct, and the institutional environment indirectly promotes economic development. These results suggest that the local economy and institutional and environmental governance are the main driving factors for China's green bond market's rapid development and the reasons for unbalanced regional distribution. Overall, the findings have practical implications for further promoting the coordinated development of the green bond market and building a green financial system. [Display omitted] • This paper attempts to explain the driving factor of the top-down development model of China's green bond market using SEM. • Found that the local economy and environmental governance have stronger impacts on growth in the green bond market. • Local economy and environmental governance effects are direct, and institutional environment has an indirect impact on GVOL. • Suggest that the local economy, and environmental governance are the main driving factors for the China's green bond market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As climate change impacts energy consumption, investments in clean energy are now associated with increased levels of risk and uncertainty. Consequently, the management of risk for clean energy investors has garnered significant academic attention. This study was designed to explore the risk transfers among clean energy markets, how they respond to market volatility, and how exceptional events impact the risk spillover. This was performed by examining the risk spillover of and asymmetric connectedness between clean energy markets, green bonds, and other financial markets in China, in line with the connectedness framework and minimum spanning tree technique. The findings revealed that clean energy markets exhibit heterogeneity in terms of the direction and magnitude of net risk spillover, the types of hedging assets involved, and their response to market volatility. Exceptional events, such as the Russian–Ukrainian conflict and COVID-19 pandemic, have an impact on the spillover relationships. During stable market conditions, green bonds experience fewer spillovers from clean energy markets, whereas, in times of volatility, gold markets are subjected to fewer spillovers. In the time domain, the overall long-term spillover is stronger compared to the short and medium terms. In the frequency domain, there is a significant risk of low-frequency transmission. These findings hold practical implications for energy investors in portfolio construction and for policymakers in pursuing sustainability objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study utilizes the joint bond joint underwriting data of China's securities firms from 2011 to 2020 to systematically explore the evolutionary characteristics of China's collaborative bond joint underwriting networks from temporal, topological, and spatial dimensions. By employing social network analysis, Ucinet, and ArcGIS, we construct a longitudinal network panel data to quantitatively analyze the driving factors and their underlying mechanisms. The findings reveal that, in terms of topological structure, China's bond joint underwriting networks exhibit increasingly mature, active, balanced, and accessible features, with domestic securities firms such as China Securities Co., Ltd. emerging as the backbone and foreign-backed firms gradually fading. In the spatial dimension, urban collaboration presents a transformation from triangular to butterfly-shaped, quadrilateral, and ultimately multicore networks. At the regional scale, inter-regional collaboration is most extensive between the eastern regions, followed by eastern–central regions, with eastern–western and central–western regions relatively less engaged. At the urban scale, the central positions of Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai are gradually strengthening, and their external radiation scope is expanding annually. The underlying mechanism driving this evolution is the increasing opportunities for securities firms to establish and adjust their cooperative relationships due to the maturing and active bond joint underwriting networks in China. To compensate for the opportunity cost of bond joint underwriting and to maximize collaboration benefits, securities firms need to select potential partners with close geographical proximity, similar business domains, larger underwriting scales, "friends of friends," and "network star" status, thereby promoting the continuous evolution of China's bond joint underwriting syndicates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the broader national rural revitalization strategy, the bond market has embarked on a proactive journey, fostering the development of rural revitalization bonds through innovative practices. These bonds represent a novel capital mobilization mechanism emerging within China's capital market, designed to catalyze the expansion of agricultural and rural financing channels and elevate investments in the agricultural sector. However, the relative novelty and limited operational history of rural revitalization bonds within the capital market present unique challenges. With limited precedents and evolving maturity, the post-issuance implementation of rural bonds demands comprehensive examination and refinement. Drawing insights from existing rural revitalization bond cases, this research endeavors to chart a structured course for their successful implementation. To this end, a two-tier Public-Private Partnership (PPP) implementation model is established, providing a systematic framework for understanding the implementation pathway and assessing its feasibility. Through this model, we aim to unveil a transformative capital engine that propels rural revitalization, thus contributing to the broader goals of enhancing agricultural sustainability within the context of the rural revitalization strategy. This research invites us to explore innovative ways to fuel rural growth, ensuring that agriculture remains at the heart of our vision for a revitalized rural landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With growing global concern for mainstreaming of environmental protection measures, the promotion of climate change and sustainable development policies, the international community, represented by international organizations, research institutions, and world‐wide businesses, has focused on green finance. Existing research on green finance in the context of environmental trends has been reviewed in terms of the products and determinants of green finance. This study aims to assess the impact of green finance on the decarbonization of economies in the context of a review of current and potential problems and prospects. Based on the examples of the People's Republic of China, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America, the study suggests that today green finance has not yet demonstrated a tangible effect in these countries. Based on the results of the study, it can be argued that in the three countries, the main tool of green finance in the field of decarbonization is green bonds; other types of green finance are used to a limited extent. The progress of the United States and China is not so obvious, but based on the overall involvement of relevant government agencies and businesses in the green bond market, it can be assumed that the results will be observed in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green investment is a trending marketing strategy that has been endorsed as a prominent financial actor due to the growing environmental issues and business sustainability. With the introduction of green and climate bonds in the last decade, the investment in eco-friendly projects has been deemed a paradigm shift. China has been a pioneer in introducing green and climate bonds, setting a precedent for green investment in the global market. Following the green strategy, therefore, the main aim of this study is to examine the importance of green investment and green marketing for enhancing business performance. Besides, this study has also examined the critical mediating role of CSR. Data were collected from 619 respondents from Chinese manufacturing companies via questionnaires. This study employed the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique to test hypotheses in Smart PLS software. This study revealed that green marketing strategy and green investment positively complement the CSR of companies and their business performance. Moreover, results also showed that CSR plays a significant mediating rolein enhancing business performance positively by stimulating the targeted relationships. With the ascendency of being environment friendly, this study will also be a powerful magnet for practitioners and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2012, green bond markets have boomed worldwide, particularly in the European Union, the United States, and China. Under this background, the researchers use the methods of literature research, qualitative analysis, and descriptive research to compare the structure of Chinese and American green bond markets and analyze their differences from the perspective of historical evolution, issuance standards, and market operation characteristics. The researchers believe that China's bank-oriented financial structure and America's market-oriented financial structure are the main reasons for the difference between the two countries. The researchers then discuss the strengths and weaknesses of China's green bond market and conclude that the advantages of China's green bond market structure lie in low risk and close relationships between banks and enterprises, while the disadvantages lie in low financial efficiency and give relevant suggestions. This article makes up for the lack of cross-country comparison in the existing research on the green bond market and provides a qualitative research perspective. The suggestions put forward have specific policy significance for developing the green bond market in China and other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although China's bond market is expanding quickly and on a bigger scale than the stock market, it still faces a number of issues. One issue that restricts its long-term development is the relatively small scale of credit bonds. For the growth of credit bonds, it is necessary to boost the credit rating market first. In this study, it is assumed that the higher the credit rating of the bonds, the lower the issue cost will be. To prove this hypothesis, an empirical analysis has been made herein on the influence of credit ratings on the bond floatation market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes China's high-tech companies from 2010 to 2019 as a sample to explore the correlation between innovation investment and corporate performance and the moderating effect of external financing on innovation investment and corporate performance. The main research conclusions are as follows: (1) Investment in innovation has a positive impact on corporate performance. (2) Equity financing has a regulatory effect that is beneficial to both innovation input and corporate performance. (3) Debt financing has a negative regulatory impact on corporate performance and innovation input. The negative adjustment effects of debt financing from strong to weak are: bond financing, long-term borrowing, short-term borrowing, and commercial credit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stock market is an indicator of investor sentiment when it comes to new information or innovative firm-level products. Green bonds are both innovative and unique in terms of their higher information disclosures and understanding the impact of sustainable finance on investor outlook for a company's stock. Using the comparative case of Mainland China and Hong Kong's stock market, we examine whether green bond announcements from 2016 to 2019 can create significant investor reactions. By employing the event study methodology, we confirm that both markets react in a positive way toward green bond announcements. This reinforces the reputational and financial benefits of green bonds. We find that issuers that are non-banks, environmentally friendly firms as well as those issuing non-general bonds, create a more positive reaction, whereas ownership aspects do not matter as much for investors. However, even among those issuers listed in both markets, certain institutional dynamics like strategic framing and source credibility tend to reinforce a firm's institutional legitimacy and are seen as being more prominent for investor reaction. The policy implications of our study show that the stock market reaction among two connected economies, where previously varying institutional contexts have resulted in regional differences, are now equally supportive of sustainable financial markets like the green bond. As seen with the positive stock market sentiment, governments and listed issuers can now better align their policies and internal strategies, allowing the low-carbon transition to be a financially attractive opportunity for all investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates whether bond markets reflect firms' exposure to air pollution through an increased cost of debt financing; and, if so, whether firms can mitigate this air pollution penalty via effective governance and active monitoring. Using 1067 bonds issued by Chinese firms, we document a positive association between air pollution and the cost of debt financing, and this association is robust and economically meaningful. Specifically, with a one standard deviation increase in air pollution severity, a firm's bond yield spread increases approximately 16% relative to an average bond. Additional analysis suggests that credit risk and financial uncertainty are the transmission channels. Our results also confirm that strengthened corporate governance, active board and external monitoring, and a stabilized economic environment further enhance the impact of air pollution on a firm's cost of debt. Overall, air pollution has a material change in a firm's business strategy in using debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the factors impacting the price difference between the interbank market and the exchange market for the same bond using a large transaction dataset from July 2006 to June 2016 in China. We find that market liquidity and macrofactors mainly affect the price difference between the two markets for the same bond. And individual bond liquidity explains only a small part of the price difference. We also find that the interaction between liquidity and credit risk is an important factor affecting the price difference, and the effect is greater during financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]