Qingqing Wan’s research while affiliated with Dongbei University of Finance and Economics and other places

Purpose Based on the textual-analyzed data covering 2148 IPO firms in China’s stock market during the 2007–2018 period, the authors’ purpose is to examine the influence of anti-takeover provision (ATP) adoption on initial public offerings (IPO) underpricing and identify the reducing effect of the former. Design/methodology/approach The authors examine the sample consisting of Chinese A-share listed IPO firms between 2007 and 2018 from China Stock Market Accounting Research and Chinese Research Data Services, with ATP data collected from the IPO firm chapters. Specifically, the authors use text analysis to identify whether there are ATPs in the IPO firm chapters, as well as the number of ATPs. H1: IPO underpricing is less severe for firms adopting ATPs. H2: The effect of ATP adoption on IPO underpricing is more salient for firms in worse information environments. Findings The authors examine the influence of ATP adoption on IPO underpricing and identify the reducing effect of the former. This effect can be explained by the fact that adopting ATPs in IPO firm chapters can reduce information asymmetry to a large extent by helping external investors obtain more private information, which alleviates IPO underpricing. The authors also find that the reducing effect is more significant in the worsened information environment. Furthermore, the authors explore the influence of adopting ATPs on other IPO characteristics and find positive effects on IPO over-subscription, funds raised and trading activity and negative effects on listing fees. Originality/value This study mainly contributes to the literature from the following two aspects. First, the study enriches the literature about the influencing factors of IPO underpricing. Second, the study also enriches the literature about the economic consequences of ATP adoption. This study also has important policy implications. With the coming of the era of decentralized ownership in China’s capital market, ATP adoption has become more important and attracted more attention. Also, investors focus more on pricing efficiency. The findings in this paper provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between ATP adoption and IPO underpricing.

Made in China 2025 (MIC 2025), an industrial policy, aims to position China among the global leading manufacturing powers. Different from other industrial policies in China, MIC 2025 is implemented by policy experimentation of pilot cities, which gives priority to the local governments. However, whether MIC 2025 pilot cities promote firm innovation is unclear in current literature. Using MIC 2025 pilot cities as a quasi-natural experiment, this study analyzes the effect and the mechanism of MIC 2025 on firm innovation. The sample consists of 4422 firm-year observations of Chinese listed manufacturing firms in 2012–2022. The result indicates that focal firm located in MIC 2025 pilot cities facilitates its innovation. Mechanism analysis show that MIC 2025 promotes firm innovation through tax incentives, public subsidies, convenient financing, academic collaboration and talent incentives. This study extends industrial policy literature with regard to how place-based policy experimentation promote the implementation of China’s industrial policies. Local governments’ participations and their interaction with the central government are vital for a successful policy experimentation.

We examine how religion influences corporate environmental responsibility (CER). With the existing literature, we analyse how Buddhism and Taoism, the most traditional and influential religion of the Chinese, could act on individual and organizational behaviours and corporate culture, and then improve CER. Taking Chinese listed companies that disclose environmental governance information from 2007 to 2016 as our sample, we find that religion contributes to the improvement of CER on corporate environmental governance, and the effect is still significant after controlling for endogenous problems and robustness tests. Furthermore, we find that religion can enhance the positive role of CER by reducing unit energy consumption and promoting local pollution prevention.