Environmental regulations, particularly tax-based measures, significantly impact firm productivity and corporate behavior. This study uses China's Environmental Protection Tax (EPT) law as a quasi-natural experiment to explore whether and how such tax-based environmental regulations influence...

Social trust helps to reduce information asymmetry and agency conflicts between insiders and investors, and thus alleviates the pressure on firms to pay cash dividends. Consistent with this view, we find that Chinese firms in low-trust regions make higher dividend payouts than those in...