Chenhao Liu

We examine how enforcement credibility is associated with corporate green innovation investment. Exploiting China's 2016 Environmental Vertical Management Reform, which centralized environmental regulator appointments and created variation in regulatory credibility, our results suggest that enhanced enforcement credibility is associated with a 21.1% increase in green patent grants using Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimation. Mechanism analysis reveals that firms respond through coordinated reallocation of financial and human capital: increasing R&D intensity, shifting hiring toward green-specialized personnel, and expanding their pools of green inventors. These input expansions are accompanied by improved innovation efficiency, treated firms generate more green patents per unit of R&D spending and reorient their patent portfolios toward environmental technologies, without deterioration in accounting performance or market valuation. This pattern is more consistent with strategic capability-building than with pure compliance costs, though we cannot directly estimate terminal net present value from a 10-year panel. Effects are significantly attenuated for financially constrained firms, directly linking the regulatory channel to capital allocation mechanisms, and amplified where local governments signal stronger environmental commitment. Our findings contribute to the corporate finance literature on how external governance shapes internal resource allocation and investment efficiency under regulatory pressure.

We examine the impact of environmental regulations in export destinations on firms’ pollution emissions. Leveraging the passage of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) by the United States – which eliminated tariff policy uncertainty for Chinese exports – we provide evidence that 1% increase of exports to highly regulated markets reduces smoke, SO2, and waste gas emissions by 0.267%, 0.239%, and 0.026%, and water and coal usage by 0.185% and 0.242%, respectively. Our mechanism analysis reveals that firms adapt their environmental practices to comply with foreign regulations due to compliance costs, reputational concerns, and future growth opportunities.

This paper examines the impacts of the centralization of authority in the appointment of civil servants on the effectiveness of regulatory enforcement efforts. We exploit a unique personnel reform in China’s Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs), which shifts the power to appoint local EPB directors from municipal governments to the provincial level. Based on detailed personnel records and administrative punishment data, we find that local EPB directors under centralized personnel authority increase the number of punishments and the total amount of fines by 13.0% and 19.0%, respectively. The impact on environmental enforcement remains of comparable magnitude even after 3 years, resulting in improved environmental quality. We identify three possible mechanisms driving this positive effect: the reduction of distorted incentives, the enforcement of objectives with interjurisdictional externalities, and the selection of more qualified appointees. Our analysis contributes to the understanding of the consequences of the recent trend toward “reverse decentralization” in institutional settings.

This study investigates the distortion of government disclosure on air pollution and further explores underlying political incentives that drive such distortion. We introduce a newly developed method, that is, bunching estimation based on notch points, to identify the distortion in the air pollution index disclosed by local governments. Results show that the magnitudes of distortion are significant and vary across cities. We present evidence that local politicians' promotion incentives substantially drive the distortion of environmental information. Importantly, we find that high-frequency disclosure requirements effectively discipline the behaviors of local governments because of increased manipulation costs. Overall, we contribute to the literature by identifying the distortion of government information disclosure, investigating the underlying causes, and examining the validity of new disclosure policies in shaping government behaviors.

This paper investigates the causal effects of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC)’s inspection on firm's government subsidies using a randomized inspection policy in the context of China. Our difference-in-differences estimation shows that inspections of regulators significantly reduce firm's subsidies by around [10.24%, 26.03%]. Plausible mechanisms are the reduction of government-firm connection, information asymmetry, and rent-seeking. Our findings are more pronounced among firms with poor corporate governance, fewer policy burdens, and higher financial risks. We also find a significant industrial and regional spillover effect and a promotion in firm performance. Overall, this paper evaluates the effects of external regulation on government subsidies and emphasizes the importance of supervision in correcting the helping hand of local governments, thus providing timely implications for policymakers.

企业创新是实现高质量发展的关键，但关于企业出口如何作用于企业创新的经验研究相对有限。本文使用聚束估计方法，基于中国工业企业、中国海关、专利数据及全球知识产权数据的匹配样本，评估了国际贸易权如何影响企业创新活动。研究发现：第一，企业会显著调整其注册资本超过政策门槛，以获得国际贸易权；第二，企业在获得贸易权后，其参与国际贸易比例提升14.6%；第三，从广延边际看，从事自主研发的企业增加了14%；从集约边际看，受政策影响的企业专利数量增加了2.65倍。第四，驱动企业创新质量提升的主要机制是学习效应，即企业通过学习国外先进知识，在不断积累过程中提升创新能力和产出。此外，我们还评估了主要结果的企业和行业异质性分布以及潜在错配问题。本文使用新的估计方法，深入刻画了企业参与国际贸易影响创新的内在机制，为中国步入高质量发展阶段提供了政策启示。

1899年，凡勃仑在《有闲阶级论》中首次用炫耀型消费刻画经济个体的行为。虽然这一理论对人类消费行为提供了直觉上的解释力，但囿于数据，相关的经验研究依然较少。本文利用上海某大型汽车公司提供的汽车按揭交易微观数据，实证检验了流动人口身份对炫耀型消费的影响。我们发现，流动人口的炫耀型消费支出显著高于本地居民，平均而言流动人口比本地居民的汽车消费支出高2.3%。利用参考人群平均收入与炫耀型消费行为的理论关系，本文验证了炫耀型消费的信号作用，即用来显性展示个人收入和资产等财富信息的社会地位的寻求机制。进一步的福利分析发现，炫耀型消费显著增加了流动人口的信贷负担，流动人口购置车辆的信贷负担的平均净现值比本地居民高2533.28元。此外，汽车市场的炫耀型消费还增加了高油耗车辆的购买，从而导致流动人口购置车型的百公里油耗增加，相当于每辆车寿命期间内二氧化碳排放量增加1.226吨。整体上，本文的发现对于理解流动人口消费行为、减少个人金融风险以及促进绿色消费具有明晰的现实含义。