Using Chinese comment letters data, we investigate the impact of the disclosure of comment letters on the cost of debt financing. Empirical results show that when the comment letters are publicly disclosed, creditors charge borrowers significantly higher cost of debt financing. Furthermore, when...

This study examines the effect of foreign investment on firms’ information quality. We use a unique setting—the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect Program in China—that provides an exogenous shock to foreign investment and allows global investors to trade on stocks that were previously...

The cost of equity capital (ICC) is a crucial component of investment decisions and corporate performance evaluations. This study explores the effect of a region's religious atmosphere on ICC and finds that ICC tends to be lower when stronger religious atmosphere is created. We further use the...

We explore the relation between government integrity and firms' investment efficiency in the context of China's deepening reforms and its strengthening the social credit system. We find that government integrity is positively associated with the investment efficiency of listed companies in...

In contrast to the global average level, we find that service industry in China is underdeveloped. Its development level is rather low compared with not only developed countries at the same level of GDP per capita in the history, but also other similar developing countries at present. We define...

Online word-of-mouth (WOM) has attracted considerable attention from researchers due to its abundant information on customer perceptions that drive product and service improvement. This study develops a novel weighted service quality (WSQ) metric derived from online customer opinions, leveraging...

Humans are social animals but sometimes stay alone. The paper investigates the connection between an intraperson game and an interperson interaction. Motivated beliefs supplied from memory management due to present bias in the individual investment problem give rise to a positive spillover on...