We conduct a large-scale, nondeceptive field experiment to elicit preferences for government participation in China's venture capital and private equity market. Our main result is that the average firm dislikes investors with government ties. We show that such dislike is not present with government-owned firms and that this dislike is highest with best-performing firms. Additional results and surveys suggest that political interference in decision-making is the leading reason why government investors are unattractive to private firms. Overall, our findings point to the limits of a model of “state capitalism” that strongly relies on the complementarity between private firms and government capital to drive high-growth entrepreneurship and innovation.

This paper examines the impact of geographic proximity on suppliers' decisions to provide trade credit to their customers. To establish a causal relationship, we utilize the implementation of high-speed rail (HSR) services in China as a quasi-natural experiment. Our findings reveal a significant increase in trade credit received by firms after introducing HSR services. We propose and test three mechanisms to elucidate the influence of proximity on trade credit provision: the enhanced convenience for acquiring soft information, heightened competition among suppliers, and the potential development of social trust. Empirical evidence strongly supports the first two mechanisms, underscoring their importance in shaping trade credit decisions. However, limited evidence is found regarding the role of social trust. These findings contribute to understanding the complex interplay between geographic proximity, trade credit, and supplier decision-making processes.

Exploiting mergers between lenders and shareholders of the same firm as an exogenous shock to shareholder–creditor conflicts, we examine the causal effect of these conflicts on firms' ex ante expected stock price crash risk evident in the options implied volatility smirk. The decrease in conflicts of interest between lenders and shareholders induces dual holders to encourage the disclosure of more information to alleviate costly information asymmetry with other investors and better execute their oversight role in constraining managers' bad news suppression. Consistent with expectations, we find that a firm's ex ante expected crash risk declines after a shareholder–creditor merger. We also report strong, robust evidence that the negative impact of mergers on firms' expected crash risk increases when institutional investors or lenders have a greater stake in the treatment firms or when shareholder–creditor conflicts are apt to be exacerbated. Additionally, we document that firms issue management earnings forecasts (especially bad news forecasts) more frequently after these mergers. Finally, we find that expected crash risk decreases more after mergers in firms suffering worse information asymmetry and with weak monitoring mechanisms. Our evidence suggests that option market participants value the dual holder's role in deterring managers' bad news hoarding.

Recent reform in China has made a subset of Chinese stocks available to foreign investors, partially opening up China's stock market. Our difference-in-differences analysis shows that this liberalization reform boosts investments in investable firms relative to noninvestable ones, with results robust to various sensitivity analyses. Besides capital inflows and risk sharing, a potential but underexplored channel is improved corporate governance due to direct and indirect pressures from foreign investors, which lowers the cost of capital and improves capital allocation efficiency. Consistent with this corporate governance channel, we find that the liberalization reform reduces investable firms’ agency costs, increases their investment efficiency and total factor productivity, and improves their operating performance. Further analysis finds that the positive investment effect from the liberalization reform is stronger among firms that were poorly governed before the reform.

During the 2015 stock market crisis, the Chinese government used hundreds of billions of dollars to purchase shares directly in the secondary market. We find that compared with non-rescued firms, rescued firms have significantly lower liquidity after being rescued. Policy uncertainty regarding subsequent interventions better explains the reduction in liquidity than the liquidity dry-up and bad firm signaling hypotheses. Inconsistent with the potential moral hazards associated with government bailouts, the investment policies of rescued firms become more conservative after being rescued. Our evidence warns of the unintended consequences of direct purchase rescue programs.