Using the unique institutional feature of government regulations in China, we provide robust evidence that firms with a larger employment size have significantly better access to bond credit.
This article reveals interesting insights into the effects and mechanisms of achievement rank when it becomes salient to students and their parents.
Chinese municipal bonds are considerably overpriced in the primary market, leading regulators to set a lower bound on the issuance yield spread. This paper investigates the underlying reasons for this overpricing and evaluates the effects of implementing restrictions on yield spreads. Our findings indicate that underwriters may inflate prices to receive undisclosed benefits from local governments, such as local treasury cash deposits. We further show that the lower bounds severely impede price discovery in the primary municipal bond market. Even bonds not restricted by the lower limit are priced at the reference spread, exacerbating overpricing of riskier bonds. Local governments exploit these fixed prices by increasing the bond issuance amount and extending bond maturity. Our findings suggest that regulatory interference in pricing can have unintended consequences for pricing efficiency and that attempts to rectify mispricing may result in even more severe mispricing.
The development of finance driven by Chinese local governments exacerbates the problem of resource misallocation, whereas market-driven finance significantly improves allocative efficiency. This highlights the policy implication that modern finance in China should prioritize the efficient utilization of resources rather than mere expansion in scale.
Our recent study provides evidence that Chinese mainland insiders tend to evade see-through surveillance by round-tripping via the Stock Connect program.