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AbstractIn recent years, with the increasing attention paid to climate risks, the changes in climate policies are also more full of uncertainties, which have brought tremendous impact to economic entities, including companies. Using the dynamic threshold model, this study investigates the nonlinear and the asymmetric effect of climate policy uncertainty on Chinese firm investment decisions with panel data of 128 Chinese energy-related companies from 2007 to 2019. The empirical findings indicate that the influence of climate policy uncertainty on firm investment is significantly nonlinear. Overall, climate policy uncertainty is not apparently related to corporate investments in the high-level range, while it negatively affects the investments in the low-level range. In addition, to be more specific, the negative impact of climate policy uncertainty on the mining industry is tremendous, while the influence on the production and supply of electricity, heat, gas, and water sector is remarkably positive. The results of this study could help the company managers and policymakers to arrange appropriate related strategies under different climate policy conditions.

This paper is designed to provide comprehensive details on the carbon markets across the major Asian economies and with specific attention to the Chinese carbon market. We particularly discuss the carbon markets across the major northeast (the People's Republic of China [PRC], Japan, and the Republic of Korea) Asian economies. Further, we empirically explore the interrelationship between the Shanghai and Shenzhen carbon emission markets, using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model with daily high-frequency data from 3 January 2017 to 9 October 2018. The evidence from the analysis confirms unidirectional influence from the Shanghai carbon emission market on the Shenzhen carbon emission market. Our findings shed light on the carbon emission markets' policy formulation for the Chinese government to achieve sustainable economic growth and meet carbon reduction targets in the PRC. Finally, we provide numerous policy and practical implications for the Asian economies with respect to the issues of climate change policies.

This paper uses a panel of 224,604 Chinese firms over the period 2004–2009 linked with a set of unique city-level financial development data to examine how financial development affects the way corporate inventory investment is financed. We find that financial development enhances the use of interest-bearing loans and discourages the use of trade credit in financing inventory investment. These effects are more pronounced after the 2007 property rights reform, as well as for privately-owned firms, small firms, firms with no political connections, and firms located in coastal regions. Our results are robust to using a variety of different specifications, as well as different measures of financial development and estimation methods.

Using detailed natural disaster data and a sample of Chinese listed firms over the period 2011–2019, we examine the link between natural disasters and firms' corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. We find that both the presence of a severe natural disaster and the number of disaster categories are significantly associated with higher CSR activities in the affected area. Next, we explore why firms are motivated to increase their CSR engagement in the disaster area. Our empirical evidence shows that state ownership, political connections, and institutional ownership are the main driving forces that spur CSR activities in the disaster area. Moreover, large firms and firms with high financial constraints are more motivated to increase their immediate CSR activities following natural disasters. We also find that CSR activities during the disaster period reward firms with better future accounting and stock market performance than those in the non-disaster period. Overall, our findings suggest that state ownership, political connections, institutional ownership, and future firm performance create incentives for firms to enhance CSR investments following natural disasters.

This study investigates some determinants of carbon intensity in 28 countries in the European Union (EU), including non-fossil energy, economic growth, energy consumption, and oil price. A panel quantile regression method, which considers both individual heterogeneity and distributional heterogeneity, is applied in this paper. The empirical results imply that the influences of these determinants on carbon intensity are heterogeneous and asymmetric across different quantiles. Specifically, non-fossil energy can significantly decrease carbon intensity, but shows a U-shaped relationship. Economic growth has a negative impact on carbon intensity, especially for medium-emission and high-emission countries. The effects of heating degree days on carbon intensity are positive, although the coefficients are not significant at low quantiles, they become significant from medium quantiles. Besides, we find an inverse U-shaped relationship between crude oil price and carbon intensity. Finally, several relevant policy recommendations are proposed based on the empirical results.