Journal of International Financial Markets Institutions & Money最新文献

This study examines how politically connected CEOs moderate the relationship between ESG and financial performance in Chinese A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2022. The results demonstrate that companies with strong ESG performance tend to have better financial performance. The connection between ESG performance and financial performance is influenced by the political ties of the CEO. Specifically, companies led by highly politically connected CEOs exhibit a weaker link between ESG practices and financial performance when compared with less politically affiliated firms. Our heterogeneity tests demonstrate that companies with low technology and cross-listing, along with companies audited by firms outside the Big 4 and led by highly politically connected CEOs, show a more significant impact of ESG practices on their financial performance compared to those with fewer political connections. Further examination reveals that political connections exacerbate the adverse effect of the environmental aspect on financial performance. This study contributes to the ongoing discussions surrounding ESG issues, especially in the context of Net-Zero and climate change actions following the international Climate Change Conferences (COPs). Overall, this study contributes valuable insights and policy implications into the multifaceted dynamics of ESG factors and their impact on corporate financial decisions.

This study investigates whether state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are more responsible for carbon neutrality in the context of a country that produces the most carbon dioxide. It examines listed firms’ market reactions to carbon neutrality commitment for China that was announced first time on 22 September 2020. Using the event study method and based on 2,792 listed firms, we find that overall market reactions to the carbon neutrality commitment is significantly negative, suggesting that firms are expected to exert genuine efforts towards attaining the national goal of carbon neutrality. Furthermore, our results indicate that SOEs encounter more substantial negative market reactions compared to non-SOEs, indicative of higher expectations placed on them for realizing the carbon neutrality commitment. Further analysis reveals that negative market reactions are particularly pronounced for central SOEs as opposed to local SOEs, as the former are perceived to bear a heavier responsibility in achieving national goals. Additionally, SOEs with higher corporate social responsibility scores experience stronger negative market reactions in comparison to those with lower scores. Further analysis based on a difference-in-differences method and a firm-year sample shows that SOEs reduce firm value and carbon emissions intensity more than non-SOEs after the carbon neutrality commitment. Overall, our study supports the argument that SOEs take more responsibility than non-SOEs in achieving carbon neutrality.

Focusing on the most liquid segment of the European CDS market, this paper studies the impact of a key standardization reform, known as the CDS Small Bang. We document that the reform provided unexpected long-term consequences. Particularly, we show that the introduction of an upfront fee to standardize the cash flow of CDS contracts created an initial capital cost for traders, which acts as a friction that increases CDS prices. This relation holds after accounting for well-known determinants of spreads, suggesting a separate funding channel driven by the greater capital intensity of trading. This effect grows in magnitude for several years following the implementation of the reform, becomes stronger when dealers are likely to bear the initial capital cost and is present across all industries, except for swaps written on financials shortly after the reform was introduced.

This paper investigates the effect of secrecy culture on the relationship between corporate investments and stock prices. We argue that managers from secretive cultures are more likely to rely on stock prices as an additional source of information, thereby leading to greater sensitivity of their investments to stock prices. Consistent with our arguments, we show that firms headquartered in countries with higher levels of secrecy culture exhibit stronger sensitivity of corporate investments to stock prices. Our results hold across various estimation strategies, in different sub-samples and for alternative proxies of secrecy culture and corporate investments. Furthermore, we show that investments exhibit greater sensitivity to stock prices of peer firms in countries that score high on secrecy.

This paper aims to examine whether and to what extent global climate policy uncertainty can impact financial markets. We first construct a novel index of global climate policy uncertainty by performing textual analysis of two million news articles over the period 2013–2021. We then use a time–frequency spillover and network analysis to show how the impacts of shocks from global climate policy uncertainty on five key international financial markets evolve over time and to characterize the underlying risk transmission channels. We find significant spillovers from global climate policy uncertainty to the financial markets, while the impacts of global climate policy uncertainty are heterogenous across financial markets and more profound in the bond market. Our results also show that spillovers from global climate policy uncertainty to the financial markets are mostly concentrated in the short term, underscoring the need for investors to adjust strategies and regulators to implement measures mitigating short-term market reactions to climate policy shocks.

A growing number of jurisdictions have adopted bankruptcy law reforms to facilitate debt restructuring. Using a difference-in-differences model based on bankruptcy law reforms in six economically advanced jurisdictions, we discover that firms adopt more diversified debt instruments following the reforms. Importantly, firms that are more vulnerable to a tightening of credit supply are more adversely affected by the legal changes, and they also decrease overall debt borrowing and investment. Moreover, firms affected by the reforms use secured debt less frequently, aligning with the idea that these legal changes diminish the protection afforded to secured creditors. In addition, borrowing costs rise after the reforms, implying that creditors may adjust the terms of debt contracts to counterbalance the decreased legal protection.

Based on a wide sample of banks headquartered in 27 European countries over the period 2005–2022, this paper tests the influence that microeconomic and macroeconomic variables have on the probability of small banks exiting the market, evaluating the predictive power of the explanatory models employed. Our approach to the determinants of small banks’ exit proves that even the macroeconomic and socio-demographic reference context can have a predictive effectiveness similar to that of the accounting variables, especially when contagion effects at the local level are taken into account.

We investigate the impact of green innovation on default risk for the period 2003–2020. Using 15,015 firm-year observations from 2301 unique U.S. firms and a firm-fixed effects regression model, we find that firms with higher green-innovation experience lower default risk as measured by the distance-to-default, probability of default, and CDS spreads. We find robust evidence addressing potential endogeneity in the association between green innovation and default risk by applying three different approaches: the propensity score matching approach, the instrumental variable approach, and the difference-in-differences technique. Our channel analysis results show that high green innovation reduces cashflow volatility and managerial risk-taking, which translates into lower default risk. The influence of green innovation on default risks is contingent on various firm characteristics. It is more pronounced in firms with greater institutional ownership, a younger age, and more carbon-intensive operations.

This paper explores the impact of climate risk on the systemic risk of banks around the world and examines its influence channels. Our findings indicate that a country’s exposure to climate risk can significantly increase the systemic risk level of its banks. Moreover, we find that the increased bank systemic risk due to higher climate risk is mostly driven by worsened credit quality rather than the depreciation of the bank’s investment portfolio. The adverse impact of climate risk is mitigated when banks have higher profitability or capital adequacy. Cross-sectionally, this effect is particularly significant for banks with extensive branch networks, high importance in the domestic credit market, a lack of dividend payments, and those classified as commercial banks. We also find that banks located in countries with higher loan interest rates, worse regulatory quality, and higher carbon emission intensity are more impacted by climate risk.

We investigate the existence of a term structure in cross-currency swap bases, a measure for CIP violations, to identify limits to arbitrage in foreign exchange swap markets. Based on estimates from a multivariate model of USD cross-currency bases for G10 currencies that caters for a number of known intermediary constraints as well as linkages between currency pairs our findings highlight the importance of two-tiered arbitrage, risk aversion, regulation, and policy in explaining this term structure of CIP violations.