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This paper focuses on firms in which insiders pledge their shares as collateral for loans. By investigating a natural experiment—China's enactment of provisions on share reductions that restrict pledge creditors' cashing-out behavior—we find that pledging firms exhibited more conservative financial reporting after the implementation than non-pledging firms. This effect was pronounced in firms with a higher ratio of pledged shares, a longer maturation period of the pledged shares, and more concentrated pledge creditors. Additionally, we show that pledging firms increased their accounting conservatism after the shock, leading to a lower risk of margin calls and stock price crashes. The effect on accounting conservatism was stronger in firms with controlling pledgers or when the pledge creditors were banks. Our results remained consistent after we performed several robustness tests. These behaviors are economically logical because the provisions heighten creditors' liquidity risk and the potential losses of loan default. Pledging shareholders embrace more accounting conservatism to mitigate creditors' concerns about agency costs and avoid triggering margin calls. Our findings provide direct support that creditors have a real demand for accounting conservatism and highlight the impact of shareholder-creditor conflicts on the financial reporting policies of pledging firms. [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]

Green credit is an important manifestation of commercial banks' environmental responsibility, but few studies have examined the impact of green credit policies on the financial performance of commercial banks. Based on the panel data of 62 commercial banks in China from 2013 to 2020, this paper investigates the changes in financial performance due to the implementation of green credit policies in 2016 using the difference-in-differences (DID) method and explores the mediating mechanism of green credit affecting commercial banks' profit. The sample was divided into a treatment and a control group. The treatment group disclosed total green credit data during the sample period, while the control group did not. The findings of this paper are as follows: (1) the implementation of the green credit policy increases the profits of commercial banks. (2) The green credit policy improves the profits of commercial banks by increasing their noninterest income and reducing their nonperforming loan ratios. (3) The green credit policy does not improve commercial banks' profit by reducing their cost-to-income ratios. (4) The implementation of the green credit policy significantly improves the profits of banks with low (vs. high) nonperforming loan ratios. (5) Compared to large national banks, regional urban and agricultural commercial banks' profits improve more significantly after executing the green credit policy. The research contribution of this paper provides a quantitative basis for Chinese commercial banks to improve their financial performance through the implementation of green credit in recent years and for the government to further improve green credit policies to motivate banks to implement green credit and achieve sustainable development. Then, we further discuss the implications for the prominent theoretical and managerial policies, study's limitations, and future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the entropy method to estimate China's green financial development from four aspects, namely, green credit, green securities, green insurance, and green investment, based on the provincial-level panel data from 2008 to 2019. The spatial Durbin model (SDM) is adopted to estimate the spatial effect of green finance on carbon emissions. We then compare the heterogeneous effect in the South and North of China. The results show that China's green financial development can significantly reduce carbon emissions, and regional heterogeneities are obvious. In the South of China, this effect from local and adjacent regions is not significant, while on the whole, green finance can significantly reduce carbon emissions; but for Northern China, this effect is not significant; nationally, the development of green finance and carbon emissions in adjacent areas showed an inverted U-shaped relationship. China's green financial development and carbon emissions also showed an inverted U-shaped relationship. These results suggest that the effect of green finance development on carbon emissions exhibits substantial regional heterogeneity in China. Our paper provides some concrete empirical evidence for policymakers to formulate green financial policies to achieve the double carbon goal in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon neutrality is an important policy in the current global response to climate change and has been widely recognized by various industries. In the process of promoting carbon neutrality, new energy plays a pivotal role. In this study, the definition and connotation of new energy and its role and specific operation in the energy transition of carbon neutrality are firstly explained. Promoting new energy development requires significant green and low-carbon investments. Taking China as an example, this paper analyzes the opportunities brought by the carbon neutral process to the field of green finance and analyzes the main features and development trends of green finance in China at present. Then this paper proposes policy recommendations to strengthen the development of green finance in China in terms of improving the green financial policy system, enhancing the supply capacity of green financial services, and optimizing the supporting environment for green financial development. Finally, this paper analyzes the measures and experiences of the United States in promoting low-carbon development and proposes countermeasures for China's low-carbon development on the basis of the five major relationships that need attention in China's carbon-neutral process. That is, strengthen the top-level design and improve the regulatory policy system; optimize the energy structure and increase the proportion of clean energy; optimize the industrial structure and reduce energy consumption in key industries; build a complete low-carbon technology system and promote low-carbon technology research and development and demonstration applications, and encourage local conditions to explore low-carbon development paths. The development of green finance can contribute to the advancement of new energy technologies, thus contributing to the achievement of carbon neutrality goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies quantitative and narrative approaches to fiscal and financial policies of Chinese small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in order to study the support effect of macro policies on micro enterprises. As the first researchers to focus on the firm heterogeneity of SMEs' policy effects, we show that the "flood irrigation" supportive policies for SMEs have not achieved the expected "help the weaker" effect. Non-state-owned SMEs and small(micro) enterprises have a low sense of policy gain, which is contrary to some "positive" research conclusions from China. The mechanism study found that "ownership" and "scale" discrimination suffered by non-state-owned and small(micro) enterprises in the financing process are key. We suggest the supportive policies for SMEs should shift from "flood" to "precise drip" irrigation. The policy benefits of non-state-owned, small and micro enterprises need to be emphasized. More targeted policies need to be studied and provided. Our findings shed new light on the formulation of supportive policies for SMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carrying out early warning of systemic financial risk is a prerequisite for timely adjustment of monetary policy and macroprudential policy to effectively prevent and resolve systemic financial risks. This paper constructs a systemic financial risk monitoring and early warning system for China's banking industry based on isolated forest anomaly detection and neural network with autocorrelation mechanism and uses low-frequency data with high credibility to effectively identify the ten factors that have the greatest impact on systemic financial risk in China's banking industry, improving the prospective and accuracy of risk early warning. The conclusions can help regulators to adjust their policies prospectively to curb the rise of systemic financial risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between financial development and economic growth has become a hot topic in recent years and for China, which is undergoing financial liberalisation and policy reform, the efficiency of the use of digital finance and the deepening of the balance between quality and quantity in financial development are particularly important for economic growth. This paper investigates the utility of digital finance and financial development on total factor productivity in China using interprovincial panel data decomposing financial development into financial scale and financial efficiency; an interprovincial panel data model is used to explore the utility of digital finance on total factor productivity. This involves the collection and preprocessing of financial data, including feature engineering, and the development of an optimised predictive model. We preprocess the original dataset to remove anomalous information and improve data quality. This work uses feature engineering to select relevant features for fitting and training the model. In this process, the random forest algorithm is used to effectively avoid overfitting problems and to facilitate the dimensionality reduction of the relevant features. In determining the model to be used, the random forest regression model was chosen for training. The empirical results show that digital finance has contributed to productivity growth but is not efficiently utilised; China should give high priority to improving financial efficiency while promoting financial expansion; rapid expansion of finance without a focus on financial efficiency will not be conducive to productivity growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon emission policy aims to restrict carbon emissions from energy-intensive companies. It encourages target companies to take green innovation but brings fulfillment pressure. Policy prospects for a low-carbon economy are widely discussed in current studies while insufficient attention has been paid to the effect of the policy on the operating activities of target companies. Using the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2020, this paper explores the effect of carbon emission policy on the financial performance of target companies. The main empirical results prove the significant positive effect of the policy on the financial performance of target companies and reject the interference of earnings management and survivor bias. Further analysis indicates that target companies significantly reduce the selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses and non-operating expenses. The trade of carbon quotas between target companies is allowed and it is regarded as non-operating activity. Results of non-operating revenues and expenses prove that target companies tend to actively reduce carbon emissions but the action does not exceed the policy expectation. The increasing efficiency of asset utilization represents that target companies have taken relevant measures to deal with overcapacity. This paper confirms the positive policy responses of target companies. Policy implications are proposed from the perspective of coverage expansion and market incentive mechanisms to realize the full potential of target companies for carbon emission reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degree of matching between supply and demand for financial support policies is a key factor for policy effectiveness. In this paper, we use policy text computing method that integrates topic mining, text classification, and training set predictions to study the supply and demand matching of China's financial support policies for private enterprises. We find that supply and demand match for policies on diversified financing channels. However, there is mismatch in financial service facilitation policies and local subsidy policies. Our research implies that China's development of a multiple-layer financial market has promoted the diversification of financing channels, which has improved the financing conditions for private enterprises. However, financial service network is still not convenient to facilitate private enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pei, Y.; Li, D.; Xue, W.; Shi, C., and Wang, M., 2020. Cultivation of innovative and entrepreneurial ability: An empirical study in East China coastal regions. In: Gong, D.; Zhang, M., and Liu, R. (eds.), Advances in Coastal Research: Engineering, Industry, Economy, and Sustainable Development. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 106, pp. 177–181. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Innovative and entrepreneurial talents are the core force of economic development of coastal regions in China. We aim to determine whether universities with or without policy and financial support in East China coastal regions strengthen the cultivation of postgraduates' innovative and entrepreneurial ability. This paper constructs a dynamic evolutionary game model and discusses the stable state of both sides of the game. The results show that the university with policy and financial support adopts the nonblock strategy, and the university without policy and financial support adopts the strategy of strengthening the cultivation; and the strategy of combination of the nonblock strategy and the strategy of strengthening the cultivation of both sides of the game is conducive to the stable state of the cultivation of innovative and entrepreneurial talents for postgraduates of all universities. This paper provides the theoretical basis for strategy selection and policy formulation in universities in East China coastal regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provide policymakers with a different perspective on reducing PM 2.5 concentrations, this paper not only identifies the economic driving factors of PM 2.5 concentrations in China but also investigates its spatial heterogeneity with special consideration of financial deepening. A random effect eigenvector spatial filtering (RE-ESF) approach with and without non-spatially varying coefficients (SNVC) is performed by using the provincial panel dataset over the period 2002–2016. The main findings are as follows: First, compared with the non-spatial pooled regression model, the RE-ESF and RE-ESF-SNVC models have increased the goodness-of-fit from 0.8854 to 0.9778 and 0.9834, respectively, indicating that the RE-ESF approach produces a better fit to the data. Second, the global results of the RE-ESF model show that a 1% increase in financial deepening will bring about 0.152% decrease in PM 2.5 concentrations. Third, the local results of the RE-ESF-SNVC model indicate that the spatially varying coefficient of financial deepening ranges from −0.3215 to 0.101 with the median value of −0.1315, reflecting significant spatial heterogeneity of PM 2.5 concentrations driven by financial deepening. These findings contribute to PM 2.5 concentration reduction by identifying financial deepening as a significant economic driving factor, investigating its global and local impacts on PM 2.5 concentrations, and providing policymakers with implications for developing appropriate financial policies, such as a more flexible province-specific reserve requirement policy supplemented by higher deposit rates and a cross-provincial allocation of bank credits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green production and pollution control matter a great deal for resource conservation and sustainable growth. Today, Chinese firms are facing the challenge of upgrading the modes of production of industries with high energy consumption and high pollution to align with green initiatives. Financial systems can be designed to intervene in modes of production to control firms' pollution emissions, but the degree of impact and design mechanism are not clearly understood up to now. Thus, evaluating the policy impact of such transactions related to firm production is indeed an important contribution to existing knowledge about these topics. Using novel firm-level data with pollution and financial variables, we exploit the causal effect of bank loans on firms' abatement performance by using a natural experimental of a green loan policy shock in China. The results show that green loan policy has the positive effect of pollution abatement by state-owned and private-owned firms. This paper also investigates how green loan policy may promote green production through strengthening financial constraint and decreasing fixed and intangible investments. Furthermore, we find that political ties transfer financial burdens from firms with strong political ties to firms with weak political ties. In closing, we articulate the implications of our study of a green financing system for sustainable growth and cleaner production. Image 1 • Green loan policy significantly decreases high polluting manufacturing firms' pollution emission. • Green loan policy significantly facilitates high polluting manufacturing firms' pollution abatement. • Green loan policy performs well in state-owned and private owned firms, but not for foreign firms. • The policy increases the financial constraints and substitutes the fixed and intangible investments. • Political tie transits financial burden to those firms with less political tie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]