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Using data from China Labour-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), we analyse the effects of beauty on migrant workers' sense of fairness. We find that beauty can significantly increase the sense of fairness for both male and female migrant workers. In addition, we propose three potential mechanisms for this beauty premium: employment quality, social interactions, and personality characteristics. Our results show gender differences in the mechanisms, which may be related to social preferences and family division of labour in traditional Chinese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes data from the China Land Economic Survey (CLES) to investigate the impact of rural cadre households on formal credit in Jiangsu Province, China. The findings demonstrate that rural cadre households are more likely to obtain formal credit compared to non-cadre households. This result is robust and supported by various mechanisms, including rural cadre households' superior financial knowledge, family assets, and social capital. The study highlights the significance of political status as a crucial factor influencing households' access to credit, thereby adding to the existing literature on household finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental innovation is an important practical exploration for enterprises to realize a win‐win situation between economic and environmental benefits. In order to explore the environmental innovation effect of enterprise digital transformation, we empirically examine the impact of enterprise digital transformation on environmental innovation based on the micro data of listed enterprises from 2009 to 2020. We find that enterprise digital transformation has a significantly positive effect on environmental innovation, and our finding still holds after considering various robustness tests. The mechanism test indicates that alleviating financing constraints and improving human capital structure serve as critical channels. In addition, the impact of firms' digital transformation on environmental innovation shows some variability with geographic location, industry factor intensity, and pollution level. Our findings provide new insights and policy implications for enterprises to balance development efficiency and environmental innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although previous studies have explored the effect of corporate environmental performance on the content of environmental disclosure, little research has investigated its impact on the textual characteristics of environmental disclosure, particularly readability. This study constructs three measures of corporate environmental disclosure (CED) readability and examines the effect of corporate environmental performance on it. Using panel data from Chinese listed firms in heavy pollution industries during the period from 2008 to 2019, we find a robust positive association between corporate environmental performance and CED readability. Furthermore, we find that this association is stronger in firms with worse earning performance, stricter regional environmental regulation, or more media attention. Our analyses also reveal a positive association between CED readability and stock price crash risk. Overall, our study contributes to the research on corporate environmental performance and environmental disclosure readability and has important implications for optimizing the regulations of environmental disclosure. Our study contributes to the literature on corporate environmental performance and environmental disclosure and also provides important theoretical and practical implications for improving corporate environmental disclosure regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth of leverage is one of the risk factors for China's economy. To explore social credit's impact on corporate leverage's growth rate, we conduct the staggered difference‐in‐difference (DID) approach based on a quasi‐natural experiment of the social credit system reform. Our findings indicate that social credit significantly suppresses the growth rate of corporate leverage, which remains robust after some robustness checks. In addition, this effect can be attributed to alleviating agency costs and information asymmetry. Finally, our analysis reveals that the above effects are significant only for firms with poor corporate governance, high bankruptcy risk, low investment efficiency, and a low proportion of tangible assets. In summary, our study provides micro‐level evidence on the economic consequences of social credit system reform in China and policy insights on how the government can effectively control the growth rate of corporate leverage to prevent risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study studies whether the Social Insurance Law implemented in 2011 affects the stock price crash risk. Using the data of Chinese listed companies from 2006 to 2018, this study uses the difference-in-difference method to show that the Social Insurance Law significantly reduces stock price crash risk, and when the tax department collects social insurance premiums, this inhibitory effect still exists, which depends on its taxation efforts. Mechanism analysis find that Social Insurance Law reduces agency costs and improves the transparency of enterprises, indicating that the behavior of enterprises to hide and hoard bad news is reduced. Finally, these effects are more pronounced for enterprises with poor corporate governance, enterprises in regions with poor marketization, and enterprises with lower media attention. Overall, this study provides new insights into reducing systemic financial risks and improving financial market stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital finance has a substantial effect on macroeconomics and plays an important role in corporate investment behaviour. However, few studies examine how digital finance affects corporate investment efficiency. We use the data of Chinese A-share listed companies for 2011–2017 and the provincial digital finance index developed by Peking University to document that digital finance significantly improves corporate investment efficiency. Our findings are supported by extensive robustness tests. In addition, we identify two mechanisms by which digital finance may affect corporate investment efficiency: by reducing financing constraints and stimulating corporate innovation. We find that digital finance has a more pronounced effect on non-state-owned enterprises, small firms, firms in the central and western regions of China, firms with fewer loans, and firms with a higher dependence on external financing, indicating that digital finance increases the inclusiveness of financial markets. Finally, our economic consequences test shows that digital finance increases the total factor productivity of firms. Overall, this study provides insights for developing countries. In particular, it suggests that digital finance can increase firms' resource allocation efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]