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This dissertation studies how financial frictions and regulatory costs affect mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The first conclusion is that financial distress drives firms to make diversifying acquisitions. Acquisitions made by distressed firms in recent years are economically important. Exploiting a natural experiment, this thesis identifies the causal link between financial distres

This paper investigates how political elites make policy choices that have bearing on an authoritarian regime's economy, from the perspective of factional politics. A local leader makes policies primarily to secure his political survival, which is contingent on the support from either his higher-level patrons or his local grassroots constituents. Using a simple model, we show that a local politician with close factional ties to high-level patrons will invest more in sending loyalty signals to the latter to receive their protections, while a poorly-connected politician will make more effort to spur a broad-based economic growth that economically benefits his local constituents. Using a unique county level data on the factional politics of Zhejiang Province, China, we find that counties with weaker (closer) factional ties have lower (higher) tax burdens per capita, while spending more (less) on local public goods provision. The results are stable after various robustness tests.

The development of factor markets has opened Chinese agriculture for the penetration of capitalism. This new round of rural transformation—China's agrarian transition— raises the agrarian question in the Chinese context. This study investigates how capitalist forms and relations of production transform agricultural production and the peasantry class in rural China. The authors identify six forms of nonpeasant agricultural production, compare the labor regimes and direct producers' socioeconomic statuses across these forms, and evaluate the role of China's land-rights institution in shaping these forms. The empirical investigation presents three main findings: (1) Peasant differentiation : capitalist forms of agricultural production differentiate peasants into a variety of new class positions. (2) Market-based stratification: producers in capitalist agriculture are primarily stratified by their positions in labor and land markets; their socioeconomic statuses are linked with their varying degrees of proletarianization. (3) Institutional mediation: rural China's dual-track land system plays a crucial role in shaping the diverse and unique forms of capitalist production.

The development of factor markets has opened Chinese agriculture for the penetration of capitalism. This new round of rural transformation-China's agrarian transition- raises the agrarian question in the Chinese context. This study investigates how capitalist forms and relations of production transform agricultural production and the peasantry class in rural China. The authors identify six forms of nonpeasant agricultural production, compare the labor regimes and direct producers' socioeconomic statuses across these forms, and evaluate the role of China's land-rights institution in shaping these forms. The empirical investigation presents three main findings: (1) Peasant differentiation : capitalist forms of agricultural production differentiate peasants into a variety of new class positions. (2) Market-based stratification: producers in capitalist agriculture are primarily stratified by their positions in labor and land markets; their socioeconomic statuses are linked with their varying degrees of proletarianization. (3) Institutional mediation: rural China's dual-track land system plays a crucial role in shaping the diverse and unique forms of capitalist production. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

Immediately after Xi Jinping assumed the position of party secretary general (PSG), he launched a large-scale top-down antiwaste campaign amongst the Chinese cadre corps. Compared with similar policies announced by Xi's predecessors, this campaign has distinct features that entail substantial political risk for the PSG. Why did Xi choose this politically risky strategy? Drawing on recent literature on authoritarian regimes, we argue that, amongst all possible objectives, an authoritarian leader such as Xi can use this type of policy campaign to demonstrate his power. In particular, the inherent importance of informal politics, the recent developments in Chinese politics, and Xi's personal background have increased his incentive and capacity to signal power by implementing such a campaign. A comparison with Xi's two predecessors, interviews, and statistical analyses support this argument. Our theoretical framework also sheds light on the literature on the power sharing of authoritarian political elites. ; postprint

Purpose: The role of energy or emission intensive firms face contradictory demands from advancing economic development and environmental improvement and protection and thus require appropriate policy interventions to balance the two needs. China's "Green Credit" policy that restricts loans to energy or emission intensive firms provides an example to study the impact of these kinds of policy intervention. Design/methodology/approach: Using the data of all A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, our paper empirically analyzes the impact of the Green Credit Policy on performance of these energy or emission intensive firms. Findings: (1) Using difference-in-difference (DID) and propensity score matching (PSM)-DID method and the dynamic effect method, we found that from 2012 to 2015, the Green Credit Policy had an inhibiting effect on the performance of energy or emission intensive firms. This inhibiting effect was gradually weakened in 2016, and it turned into a positive promoting effect in 2017; (2) The performance's change of these firms around 2015 showed that Green Credit promoted the green transformation and upgrading of these firms; (3) Loans were helpful to the performance of energy or emission intensive firms to some extent, but government subsidies were not significant. Originality/value: The results suggest that the government, banks and other institutions should dynamically assess the implementation results of the Green Credit Policy on energy or emission intensive firms.