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This paper examines whether and how executives’ political connections affect their incentives to withhold bad news, measured by the stock price crash risk. We find that political connections are ne...

This study investigates how firms’ social capital affects their access to informal finance. We argue that social capital helps reduce information asymmetry, increase trust between related parties and enforce lending contracts, so it has positive effects on firms’ access to informal finance. Using novel survey data of Chinese private firms, we find that firms with more social capital have more access to informal finance with lower costs. Further tests show that the effect of social capital is more significant when firms are located in regions with less developed market and lower community’s social capital and during the 2008 financial crisis.

While previous research has explored the social and academic experiences of international students when studying abroad, limited attention has been paid to local students and their adaptation to the internationalization of higher education. To fill this gap, the present study, adopting identity as an analytic lens, examined a group of Chinese university students’ perceptions and experiences in an internationalized curriculum in China. The findings show that the participants tried to interpret, construct, and refine their individual, academic, and cultural identities on a daily basis. In particular, they encountered and negotiated with three identity paradoxes, i.e., between “dedicated learners” and “disoriented bees”, between “global citizens” and “proud Chinese”, and between “team players” and “independent fighters”. The study provides useful implications for university management, teachers, and students in response to the ongoing trend of internationalization of higher education.

The study examined international and home students’ perceptions of intercultural collaborative learning in an English as a medium of instruction (EMI) environment in a Chinese university. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews, the findings showed that international students held a positive view, reporting gains from the cultural, subject knowledge and language learning dimensions but also hurdles which impeded intercultural communication and content learning in the EMI curriculum. The Chinese students were less positive, viewing such a mode of learning somewhat as a ‘burden’ due primarily to the differences in their and international students’ academic goals and expectations. In response to the negative experiences, the Chinese students demonstrated resilience and ingenuity in devising strategies for achieving their own academic goals. This article concludes with practical implications for EMI teachers and curriculum designers regarding how to improve EMI instruction and intercultural learning in higher education.

This study investigates the association between trade credit financing and stock price crash risk within China's context. We find that firms using more trade credit financing have significantly lower future stock price crash risk. This negative association is more pronounced for firms with greater information asymmetry and for firms located in less developed financial markets. This finding is robust to the endogeneity concern, alternative measures of stock price crash risk, and the inclusion of other factors identified in prior studies that might affect stock price crash risk. Further evidence suggests that both the monitoring mechanism and the disclosure mechanism drive the documented relation. Our study suggests that access to trade credit can significantly reduce the likelihood of crash risk in a country like China with less developed formal bank financing. Our study also suggests that investors can effectively avoid stock price crash risk by using the trade credit information disclosed in financial statements.

This paper investigates the association between dividend payouts and earnings quality for Chinese listed firms. The results show that dividend payouts are associated with more persistent earnings, higher accrual quality, and greater earnings informativeness, confirming the hypothesis on information content of dividends for Chinese firms. Further analyses show that the relationship between dividends and earnings could change with factors influencing the incentives to pay dividends. We find that the positive impact of dividend payouts on earnings quality is reduced for firms conducting equity refinancing. We also find evidence that the state ownership can reduce the information-conveying role of dividends.

This article investigates the effect of heterogeneous beliefs on firms’ mergers and acquisitions (M&A) decisions. Using data of China’s financial market, which is featured with great heterogeneity of belief, we find that heterogeneous beliefs are positively associated with the occurrence of M&A transactions, and firms with greater heterogeneous beliefs are more likely to pay the transactions with stock. Moreover, we show that government intervention, measured by state ownership, weakens the effect of heterogeneous beliefs on firms’ M&A decisions.

This paper examines how government intervention affects firms' investment and investment efficiency, focusing on the world's largest economic stimulus package (ESP) during the 2008 global financial crisis period. The RMB four trillion ESP aimed to restore the economy by promoting investment in priority areas. Thus it provided an exogenous shock to firms' investment environment and exacerbated the impact of government intervention on firms' investment and investment efficiency. We use propensity score matching to match government-intervened firms with their controls to reduce the endogeneity issue of government intervention. Our difference-in-differences analysis shows that government-intervened firms invested more than control firms. Further analysis shows that the source of funding for investment was mainly from bank loans rather than internal cash flows. However, the post-investment performance was poor. We find that the investment efficiency of government-intervened firms decreased and government-intervened firms overinvested after the ESP. Our results are robust to alternative model specifications and placebo tests. The findings suggest that government intervention can play a negative role in government-intervened firms.

Subgroup J avian leukosis virus (ALV-J), a typical retrovirus, is characterized of existence of a cloud of diverse variants and considerable genetic diversity. Previous studies describing the evolutionary dynamics of ALV-J genetic variants mainly focused on the early infection period or few randomly selected clones. Here, we inoculated 30 specific-pathogen-free chickens with the same founder ALV-J stock of known genetic background. Six (three antibody positive and three antibody negative) chickens were selected among 15 chickens with viremia. Viruses were serially isolated in 36 weeks and then sequenced using MiSeq high-throughput sequencing platform. This produced the largest ALV-J dataset to date, composed of more than three million clean reads. Our results showed that host humoral immunity could greatly enhance the genetic diversity of ALV-J genetic variants. In particular, selection pressures promoted a dynamic proportional changes in ALV-J genetic variants frequency. Cross-neutralization experiment showed that along with the change of the dominant variant, the antibody titers specific to infectious clones corresponding to the most dominant variants in weeks 12 and 28 have also changed significantly in sera collected in weeks 16 and 32. In contrast, no shift of dominant variant was observed in antibody-negative chickens. Moreover, we identified a novel hypervariable region in the gp85 gene. Our study reveals the interaction between ALV-J and the host, which could facilitate the development of vaccines and antiviral drugs.

Over the last two decades, much attention has been paid to MDV-vectored recombinant vaccines. Many factors have influenced their protective efficacy, and insertion site has been among the main influential factors for the expression of foreign genes in recombinant Marek's disease virus (rMDV). To compare the transcriptional activity of different sites of rMDV, an H9N2 avian influenza virus hemagglutinin gene (AIV-H9N2-HA) expression cassette that used the bi-directional promoter of serotype 1 MDV (MDV1) in the 1.8kb RNA transcript direction (p1.8kb) as a promoter was inserted into 4 different regions of MDV using the bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) vector and FLP/FRT recombination technique. The insertion regions included 3 of its own sites (US2, US10 and one of Meq genes) in the MDV genome and a foreign site (gpt gene) in the BAC vector. Quantitative PCR and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) were used to analyze and compare the H9N2-HA expression levels of these different rMDVs both at the mRNA level and at the protein level. The results indicated that among the four tested insertion regions, the HA expression cassette in the US2 region demonstrated the highest activity, followed by that in the Meq region, which was almost equal to that of US10. Further, the expression cassette had the lowest activity in the foreign region gpt gene. The above data could be useful for choosing proper recombinant insertion regions in the construction of rMDV to express different foreign genes, and it is a prerequisite for developing effective MDV-vectored recombinant vaccines.

To study the antiviral effects of lamivudine on avian leukosis virus subgroup J (ALV-J) and its inhibitory effect on the growth of fibrosarcomas caused by acute transforming avian leukosis virus, a series of experiments were performed in chicken embryo fibroblast cultures and 1-day-old chickens inoculated with an acutely transforming viral stock Fu-J (SDAU1005). This stock was prepared from an acutely fibrosarcoma of field cases in chicken farms and contained both the replication-defective virus Fu-J carrying v-fps oncogene and its helper virus ALV-J strain SDAU1005. The results from three different assays in cell cultures demonstrated the significant inhibitory effect of lamivudine on the replication of both SDAU1005 and Fu-J viruses. Furthermore, the effect was dose dependent in the concentration range of 1–4 μg/ml. In chicken experiments, lamivudine could decrease the viral loads of SDAU1005 and Fu-J in the plasma of inoculated chickens, delay the appearance of acute sarcomas, and decrease chicken mortality in the early stage. This model may be used to directly evaluate the inhibitory effects of lamivudine on such tumors and to understand the relationship between the replication-defective virus and its helper virus while also assessing tumor processes.

We used a meq-deleted attenuated MDV-I strain GX0101Δmeq as a vector to construct a recombinant virus expressing the exogenous gene NDV-F. The ORF of exogenous gene NDV-F was inserted into the eukaryotic expression vector pcDNA3.1(-). Then, the expression cassette of NDV-F which contains the CMV promoter was amplified. Simultaneously, we amplified the selected gene Kan+ expression cassette and inserted them into the PMD18-T vector. Tandem expression cassettes were amplified using primers containing the 50-bp homologous arm of MDV-US2. The PCR product was electroporated into EL250 host bacteria containing GX0101Δmeq. Then, the Kan+ expression cassette was deleted from the recombinant virus genome using 1% arabinose. The plasmid of the positive clone which the Kan+ expression cassette was deleted was extracted and transfected into CEFs to rescue the recombinant virus. The recombinant virus was injected into chickens to observe its growth and replication. The recombinant virus rMDV-F containing the exogenous gene NDV-F was rescued successfully. The recombinant virus could duplicate and express well in CEFs, and grow and replicate well in chickens. Using GX0101Δmeq as a vector, combined with a recombinant system of Red E/T and FLP/FRT, we constructed a recombinant virus that expressed the exogenous gene NDV-F. This study could lay the foundation for further study of recombinant viruses.

To evaluate and compare the immunoprotection between a meq-deleted Marek's disease virus (MDV) and CVI988/Rispens against MDV very virulent strain GX0101.In total 120 one-day-old SPF chickens were divided into 4 groups (30 each) and kept in 5 isolators with positive pressure-filtered air. At 1 day of age, 2000 PFU of SC9-1 was inoculated subcutaneously into each bird in group 1; 2000 PFU of commercial vaccine CVI988/ Rispens was inoculated subcutaneously into each bird in group 2. No viral challenge was made in group 3 and 4 as controls. Five days later chickens in group 1, 2, 3 were challenged intra-abdominally with 2000 PFU of very virulent MDV strain GX0101. During 90 days after challenge, all dead birds were recorded and checked for necropsy. The tumor-suspected tissues were examined by histopathological biopsy. The antibody titers induced by AIV and NDV vaccination and propagation dynamics of MDV GX0101 were detected. At the same time, parallel tests were performed on Hy-Line Brown chickens containing MDV maternal antibody.SC9-1 stain provided 100% protective efficiency against very virulent GX0101 challenge in SPF and Hy-Line Brown chickens. CVI988/Rispens provided 86. 7% protective efficiency against very virulent GX0101 challenge in SPF chickens and 93% in Hy-Line Brown chickens. Challenge with GX0101 caused 53.3% mortality and 16.7% of birds with gross tumors in SPF chickens while there was 36.7% mortality and 16.7% of birds with gross tumors in Hy-Line Brown chickens, and there was no tumor lesion in histopathological biopsy in control group. The results of qPCR demonstrated that the copies of GX0101 viral genomes in SC9-1 vaccinated chickens was lower than CVI988/Rispens vaccinated chickens in lymphocyte and feather follicle DNA. The results of hemagglutination inhibition test demonstrated that antibody titers of AIV and NDV was higher in SC9-1 vaccinated chickens than that in CVI988/Rispens vaccinated chickens.SC9-1 stain's immunoprotection against MDV is more effective than CVI988/Rispens strain's both in SPF chickens and commercial Hy-Line Brown chickens containing maternal antibody.

The emerging research on CEO political ideology is predominantly conducted in capitalist, democratic countries such as the United States. However, it is unclear whether the findings can be readily ...

This paper investigates the relationship between economic development, marketisation and energy consumption. We hypothesise that both economic development and marketisation can affect energy consumption and that marketisation plays a more fundamental role. Empirical results from single-factor regressions show that both economic development and marketisation have negative associations with energy consumption. Results from two-stage regressions and variance decomposition demonstrate that marketisation has a more determinative effect on energy consumption than economic development does. The policy implication of our research is that, to reduce energy consumption, policy-makers should make better use of the role of markets in resource allocation.

We use China as a laboratory to test the effect of government quality on cash holdings. We build on, and extend, the existing literature on government expropriation and its interaction with firm-level agency problems by proposing a financial constraint mitigation argument. We find that firms hold less cash when local government quality is high, which is not consistent with the state expropriation argument, but supports the financial constraint mitigation argument. A good government lowers the investment sensitivity to cash flows and cash sensitivity to cash flows, decreases cash holdings more significantly in private firms, and improves access to bank and trade credit financing. We also test and find support for Stulz’s (2005) model on the interaction between government and firm agency problems.

To develop a recombinant Marek's disease virus (rMDV1) co-expressing the hemagglutinin gene (HA) and neuramidinase gene (NA) from a low pathogenic avian influenza virus (LPAIV) H9N2 strain and lacking the meq oncogene that shares homology with the Jun/Fos family of transcriptional factors, a wild strain of MDV GX0101 was used as parental virus, the HA and NA genes co-expression cassette under control of the CMV and SV40 early promoters was inserted at two meq sites of GX0101 to form a new meq knock-out mutant MDV (MZC12HA/NA) through homologous recombination. MZC12HA/NA was reconstituted by transfection of recombinant BAC–MDV DNA into the secondary chicken embryo fibroblast (CEF) cells. Highly purified MZC12HA/NA was obtained after four rounds of plaque purification and proliferation. In vitro growth properties of recombinant virus were also inspected and concluded that the MZC12HA/NA had the same growth kinetics in CEF cultures as its parental wild type virus GX0101. Southern blot indicated that co-expression cassette was successfully inserted at two copies sites of meq gene, so two meq genes were knocked-out completely. RT-qPCR showed transcription and expression levels of the HA and NA genes were both significantly higher than that of GX0101 own pp38 gene. Indirect fluorescence antibody (IFA) test, and Western blot analyses indicated that HA and NA genes were co-expressed simultaneously under control of the different promoters but meq genes were not. These results herald a new and effective recombinant meq-deleted MDV-based AIV-H9N2 vaccine may be useful in protecting chickens from very virulent MDV and H9N2 challenges.

We use China as a laboratory to test the effect of government quality on cash holdings. We build on, and extend, the existing literature on government expropriation and its interaction with firm-level agency problems by proposing a financial constraint mitigation argument. Wefind that firms hold less cash when local government quality is high, which is not consistent with the state expropriation argument, but supports the financial constraint mitigation argument. A good government lowers the investment sensitivity to cash flows and cash sensitivity to cash flows, decreases cash holdings more significantly in private firms, and improves access to bankand trade credit financing. We also test and find support for Stulz’s (2005) model on theinteraction between government and firm agency problems.