This study examines the role of Chinese state ownership in deterring takeovers. We document state ownership’s reduction in firms’ susceptibility to potential takeovers. Using staggered privatization of the state-owned shareholders of public firms, as shocks to the deterrent effect of the state, we find that state-owned shareholders can insulate their portfolio firms from potential takeovers. The deterrent effect of state ownership is concentrated in strategic industries and well-functioning assets, alleviating managerial short-termism.

This paper studies the heterogeneous effects of subjective macroeconomic expectations on the cross-section of equity returns. We argue that an upward revision in expectations of macroeconomic productivity might be accompanied by an excessive increase in investment and external financing, inflated current equity prices, and thus lowered subsequent returns, particularly for financially constrained firms. Thus, following upward revisions in expectations of macroeconomic productivity, subsequent returns are relatively low for small firms, value firms, low-investment firms, risky firms, unprofitable firms, low-quality firms, and financially distressed firms—all of which are more financially constrained. In sharp contrast, following downward revisions in expectations of macroeconomic productivity, these categories of firms earn relatively high subsequent returns. We find that revisions in subjective macroeconomic expectations induce strong predictable time variation in a large set of anomalies. In particular, favorable revisions in expectations of macroeconomic productivity predict significantly stronger profitability, quality, distress, and low-risk anomalies but weaker value, investment, and size anomalies.