Xiaolu Hu

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Lecturer at RMIT University

This study explores the influence of air pollution on the corporate bond market in China. An air pollution premium is documented, whereby bonds issued in more polluted areas are associated with higher offering yields at issue in the primary market and higher yield spreads in the secondary market. The statistically and economically significant air p...

Using a quasi-natural experiment that mandates a subset of debt security issuers to issue comprehensive credit rating reports to the public, this paper examines the information value of increased transparency in the credit rating industry in China. The mandate serves as a plausible exogenous shock that mainly affects information transparency throug...

Employing an event-study approach, we examine stock market reaction to the enactment of the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Disclosure Simplification Act of 2021 by the United States House of Representatives. The Act mandates disclosure of standardized ESG metrics among American public companies. A significantly negative reaction of -1.1...

This paper examines the performance of industries in the trade network in international stock markets during the onset of COVID-19. In general, the value of all industries in G20 countries declines significantly in the pandemic. Stock returns of industries in the central positions of global value chains exhibit remarkable resilience despite the eco...

In response to the global concern of the Evergrande debt crisis, we document several findings of the crisis's contagion effect. First, although most real estate companies have strong financial fundamentals, the high default risk among large firms sends an alarming signal. Second, the spillover effect to peer developers is stronger in the credit mar...

This paper explores the pricing implications of green bonds in the Chinese corporate bond market. We document a large greenium in the Chinese green bond market, whereby green bonds are issued at lower offering yield spreads in the primary market and traded at lower yields in the secondary market. The magnitude of the Chinese greenium is substantial...

We assess the impact of monthly and daily investor sentiment on stock market return and volatility connectedness during the U.S.-China trade war period. Our analyses focus on the connectedness between the two economies and their major trading partners. We also investigate the asymmetric impact of sentiment on volatility connectedness by exploring t...

Utilizing a recently developed measure of investor sentiment based on a large sample of news photos (i.e. Photo Pessimism), this paper examines the relation between investor sentiment and stock market returns around the world. We find that investor sentiment proxied by Photo Pessimism is negatively related to contemporaneous returns in 37 internati...

We investigate the intra‐industry spill‐over effect of defaults in the Chinese bond market by using a sample of public corporate debt securities for the period 2014–2018. We find that both industry portfolios and individual firms witness a strong contagion effect, which further spreads to the primary bond market, triggering a surge in the debt fina...

Using a sample of the G20 countries, we examine the impact of COVID-19 on stock return and volatility connectedness, and whether the connectedness measures behave differently for countries with SARS 2003 experience. We find that both stock return and volatility connectedness increase across the phases of the COVID-19 pandemic which is more pronounc...

We provide the first direct evidence on how issuers choose a credit rating agency (CRA). Using rating data from a leading CRA in China, we find that although in most cases the issuers publish more favourable ratings, in some cases issuers just select the ratings provided by CRAs they have business relationships with, especially when the more favour...

We investigate the informational roles of foreign ownership in local credit rating agencies (CRAs) in the Chinese onshore debt market, which was the world's largest emerging debt market from 2008 to 2017. We find a robust negative relationship between the bond offering yield and foreign ownership in local CRAs, which suggests that these ratings cer...

The public yield spreads of bonds vary widely between Chinese provinces/municipalities, with the average for the highest province double that of the lowest one. Although we find that these patterns are mainly attributable to economic and legal conditions, locational effects like geographic distance and public firm credit ratings also appear to be c...

We examine how the issuer-paid incumbent credit rating agencies (CRAs) in China adjust their rating strategies in response to the 2010 entry of an independent credit rating agency, China Bond Rating (CBR) between 2006 and 2015. The business model that CBR employs is a combination of the public utility model and the investor-paid model. We find that...

The paper examines the reputation effect of credit rating agencies (CRAs) in China. We find a negative association between CRAs’ reputation and public bonds’ offering yield spreads after controlling for endogeneity. Analyses of the correlation between CRA reputation and bond return volatility in the aftermarket and cross‐sectional variations of rep...

Hedging creates value only when the policy is near optimal but can be harmful otherwise. This paper takes the US airline industry as an example and derives the optimal fuel cost hedging ratio as a function of firm-specific revenue and cost sensitivities, as well as the relative composition of demand and supply shocks in the oil price movement. We c...