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How Do Firms Withstand Global Economic Shocks: Evidence from Within-Firm Responses

Xiao Cen, Vyacheslav Fos, Wei Jiang, Oct 16, 2024

The article discusses that the adaptation strategies of American firms against the backdrop of China's industrial policies are as follows: Firstly, they carry out strategic shifts within the American market, avoiding direct competition and turning to upstream and downstream areas of the supply chain; secondly, they redistribute production across national borders by directly establishing production bases in China to fully leverage China's policy advantages. These strategies demonstrate the strategic flexibility and strong adaptability of American firms in the face of global economic shocks.

E vs. G: Environmental Policy and Earnings Management in China

Darwin Choi, Feifei Lai, Mar 12, 2025

We examine the conflict between environmental and governance issues arising from China’s automatic air pollutant monitoring system, introduced in 2012. Our findings suggest that polluting firms engage in downward earnings management to potentially minimize regulatory attention, with factors such as firm size, profitability, and market conditions influencing the extent of this behavior. This study highlights the unintended consequences of environmental policies.

Free Education's Impact on Schooling Outcomes: Direct Effects and Intra-household Spillovers

Naijia Guo, Shuangxin Wang, Junsen Zhang, Mar 05, 2025

This study estimates the direct and spillover effects of a free education program on educational outcomes in rural China. We find that although the program encourages more eligible children to attend secondary school, it also leads to a decrease in high school enrollment among ineligible girls with eligible siblings, as they are more likely to choose work instead. In the long run, males exposed to free education have more years of schooling than their non-exposed counterparts. However, such effect is not found among females. This disparity suggests that a gender-neutral policy may have an asymmetric effect between males and females because of spillover effects through intra-household resource allocation.

Beyond the Fundamentals: How Media-Driven Narratives Influence Cross-Border Capital Flows

Isha Agarwal, Wentong Chen, Eswar Prasad, Apr 02, 2025

We provide the first empirical evidence on how media-driven narratives influence cross-border institutional investment flows. Applying natural language processing techniques to 1.5 million newspaper articles, we document substantial cross-country variation in sentiment and risk indices constructed from domestic media narratives about China in 15 countries. These narratives significantly affect portfolio flows, even after controlling for macroeconomic and financial fundamentals. This impact is smaller for investors with greater familiarity or private information about China and larger during periods of heightened uncertainty. Political and environmental narratives are as influential as economic narratives. Investors react more sharply to negative narratives than positive ones.

Firm-to-Firm Referrals

Jing Cai, Wei Lin, Adam Szeidl, Dec 25, 2024

Referring suppliers to clients reshaped the supplier-client network and improved business performance.