Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting最新文献

This study investigates the relationship between the Internal capital market (ICM) and firm-level total factor productivity (TFP), addressing a gap in the literature regarding the ICM's role in labor value creation, technological innovation, and capital allocation. Using hand-collected ICM data on Chinese-listed firms from 2007 to 2018, we find that the ICM significantly enhances firm-level TFP. Further analysis reveals that financial constraints and innovation serve as the primary channels through which the ICM influences TFP. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the strength of this effect varies with monetary policies, factor market maturity, and the firm's labor capital intensity. These findings highlight the ICM's potential to improve economic efficiency and offer policy implications for fostering sustainable development.

This paper investigates the impact of FinTech firms on the performance of traditional financial institutions (FIs). The existing literature reveals an ongoing debate on whether new FinTech firms act as complements or substitutes for traditional FIs. We examine this by utilizing a database that includes over 10,000 FIs and data on digital finance activities across 57 countries. Our findings support the substitution hypothesis, showing that FinTech presence reduces the profitability of incumbent FIs due to reduced interest margins and elevated costs. In response, banks attempt to adapt by extending loans and boosting noninterest income; however, these efforts are insufficient to fully offset the decline in profits. Our study also reveals that various FinTech business models, such as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Balance Sheet lending, have varying effects on cooperative versus large commercial banks, with the latter benefiting more from the evolving competitive landscape. The findings also suggest that FinTech presence has a greater adverse effect on FIs in countries with more inclusive, competitive, profitable, and developed financial systems. Interestingly, however, traditional FIs in countries with stronger regulatory frameworks appear to benefit from the expanding influence of FinTech firms.

We use a sample of banking institutions across 57 countries to investigate the relationship between country-level perceptions of corporate ethical behavior and the cost of bank equity. We find evidence that banks operate with lower costs of equity in countries with higher corporate ethical behavior ratings. This finding is robust to the inclusion of several bank-level and country-level control variables in the regressions, the use of alternative calculations for the cost of bank equity and endogeneity concerns, and the use of alternative regression techniques. Further analysis reveals that ethical behavior decreases the cost of equity more in countries with weak investor protection. This finding suggests that ethical behavior becomes more important in environments where investors are weakly protected against managerial opportunism through formal institutions.

Clinical trial registration: Our research does not involve clinical trial registration. This is not applicable to our case

Facing regulatory pressure while balancing the demand for market guidance, analysts must weigh the risk of noncompliance to fulfill stakeholders' interests. Literature suggests that analysts strategically adjust the presentation of information in their research reports to meet competing demands. This study analyzes a sample of 76,922 Chinese analysts' research reports from 2018 to 2021 and examines how the 2020 Standards and Norms in China influenced analysts' earnings forecast revisions and textual tones. The findings exhibit a significant reduction in the magnitude of earnings forecast revisions postpolicy, particularly among analysts who rely heavily on private information, as well as increased optimism in textual tone. Policy details and penalties enhance compliance, whereas reputation incentives (e.g., star analyst titles) strengthen regulatory effects. However, manipulative incentives (e.g., shared provincial ties, high institutional ownership, or “walk-down” forecast patterns) weaken these effects. This study enhances the understanding of analysts' forecast behaviors and their interrelationships while contributing new insights into the limitations of current regulatory effectiveness.

The impact of digital transformation on export product quality is a critical issue in the context of the rapidly advancing global digital economy. Although prior studies have examined the relationship between digitalization and firm performance, limited attention has been paid to its specific effect on export product quality. Using data from 6184 Chinese manufacturing firms over the period from 2007 to 2015, this study investigates the link between digital transformation and export product quality. We find a U-shaped relationship where the initial stages of digitalization lead to a decline in quality due to high transformation costs, but as digitalization progresses, firms experience significant improvements in product quality. Our findings highlight two key mechanisms: improved production efficiency and the alleviation of financing constraints. This study underscores the importance of digital transformation in enhancing international competitiveness, with particularly strong effects in foreign-owned firms, capital-intensive industries, and coastal regions.

Tone, as a key linguistic feature of corporate narrative disclosures, plays a crucial role in shaping information users' evaluation of firm performance. However, whether and how the tone in ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reports influences rating agencies' assessments of firms' ESG performance remains underexplored. Using data from Chinese listed firms between 2018 and 2022, we explore the impact of ESG report tone on ESG rating divergence. Our findings indicate that positive expressions in ESG reports worsen the divergence in ESG ratings, particularly in the environmental ratings. Conversely, negative expressions in ESG reports enhance consistency in rating outcomes. Heterogeneity tests reveal that greater positive expressions in ESG reports exacerbate rating divergence only when firms' ESG reports exhibit low credibility, as indicated by mandatory disclosure, low readability, and high media pressure. In contrast, the impact of negative statements in ESG reports on consistency in rating outcomes is unaffected by the credibility of ESG reports. Our study contributes to the existing literature on the relationship between ESG report textual quality and ESG rating divergence in emerging markets.

Climate change can significantly impact firms' employment decisions. Prior literature mainly focuses on this issue from the perspective of regional or industry-level climate change exposure. This paper adopts a text-based method to measure firm-level exposure to climate change and investigates its impact on employment. Using a sample of 1958 publicly traded Chinese firms between 2006 and 2020, we find consistent evidence of a negative correlation between climate change exposure and corporate employment levels. This adverse impact is more pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises, firms with a lower corporate social responsibility performance, entities entrenched in highly competitive industries, and larger corporations. Our mechanism analyses show that climate change exposure exacerbates financing constraints for firms, compelling them toward an increased commitment to green innovation initiatives and thereby reducing their labor demand. Overall, the results demonstrate the importance of climate change exposure to shaping corporate employment strategies, providing substantive insights for policymakers and business leaders navigating the complexities of environmental sustainability and labor dynamics.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) have gradually become important indicators for investors to evaluate enterprises. Researchers have begun to pay attention to the role of board secretaries in enterprise development. This study uses data from A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2013 to 2022 to examine the relationship between board secretaries' educational background and corporate ESG performance. The results show that highly educated board secretaries play a significant role in promoting ESG performance by improving green innovation cooperation, reputation, and information disclosure. In addition, the academic background of board secretaries enhances their capacity to interpret and communicate information effectively, while holding additional positions enables them to access greater information and exert broader influence. These factors—academic experience or holding supplementary roles—further reinforce the positive association between board secretaries' educational qualifications and ESG performance. This study expands the research on the economic consequences of board secretaries' educational characteristics, which further enriches the application of the upper echelons theory and the literature on factors influencing ESG development. This provides important practical implications for the selection of enterprises' board secretaries and can inform policies related to board secretaries to improve ESG performance.

This study examines the impact of China's State Capital Investing and Operating Company (SCIOC) reform on the financialization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). While previous studies have explored the influence of institutional innovations on SOEs' investment efficiency, less attention has been paid to the impact of SCIOC reform on SOEs' financial investment. Using data from a sample of 13,294 observations of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2008 to 2022 and a difference-in-differences model, we find that SCIOC reform can significantly suppress SOEs' financialization. Mechanism tests confirm that reducing agency costs, enhancing board governance participation motivation, and strengthening internal control quality are core approaches. Heterogeneity analyses demonstrate that the negative effect of the reform on financialization is more pronounced in central SOEs and those in eastern China. Further discussion reveals that the reform can spur the operational capacity of SOEs. These findings have pivotal implications for continually optimizing SCIOC reform in China, clarifying its micro-governance effect, and restricting SOEs' financialization.

This study examines the impact of institutional investors' site visits (IISVs) on corporate greenwashing. Using listed companies' data from 2012 to 2020 in China, we find that the IISVs decrease corporate greenwashing, and the effect is more notable among subsamples with substantial tangible assets enterprises, weak governance environment firms, non-SOEs, operating within highly competitive industries, and situated in regions with poor environmental regulations. Moreover, mechanism analysis reveals that IISVs mitigate corporate greenwashing by improving information acquisition, reducing financing constraints, and attracting media attention. Overall, this study enriches the research on the governance factors of greenwashing at the firm level and the consequences of IISVs.