Using a large sample of firms from 45 countries, we find that firms in countries with high-climate risk reduce their cash dividends but increasingly use share repurchases to make payouts. The evidence suggests that firms substitute dividends with repurchases to increase their payout flexibility in response to heightened climate risk. Operating volatility and financial constraints are two channels through which climate risk affects firms’ payout flexibility. Further analysis shows that the effect of climate risk on payout flexibility is more pronounced for firms that are more vulnerable to climate risk, and in countries where people are more concerned about climate risk and the national culture emphasizes uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation.

We conduct an international study on the effect of climate policy uncertainty on the systemic risk of banks from G20 countries. We find that climate policy uncertainty is associated with lower bank systemic risk. This relation is more pronounced in countries with high innovation capacity, climate readiness, more systemically important banks, and a more competitive banking system. Climate-related information disclosure and sustainable investments are critical economic channels through which the effect of climate policy uncertainty works. Our findings alleviate the concern that climate transition risk may contribute to financial instability and provide practical implications for regulators to design climate transition policies.

This paper explores the interplay between politics and law enforcement in China and its effects on firm financing decisions. By examining a sample of corporate lawsuits involving listed firms in China, we find that politically connected firms are less likely to be defendants, have higher win rates, and experience shorter litigation durations than non-connected firms. Additionally, we observe that firms with higher legal risk extend more accounts receivable and receive less accounts payable, but this relationship holds only for non-connected firms. Our findings support the financing advantage theory for politically connected firms and the legal risk compensation view for non-connected firms. Moreover, reforms in China's judicial system do not appear to mitigate the disadvantages faced by non-connected firms in terms of lawsuit outcomes and trade credit provision. Our findings suggest that well-functioned judicial independence might be still lacking in China, and that political connections continue to negatively impact law enforcement and corporate policies.

Access to firms’ innovation outputs determines the extent of knowledge spillover that poses risk to innovation appropriability. We provide plausibly causal evidence that processing costs of financial disclosures, which inform users of the economic value of innovation, play a key role in firms’ management of knowledge spillover. We exploit an exogenous, randomly assigned, and staggered policy shock by the SEC that reduces processing costs of mandatory financial disclosures. In response, firms reduce patenting rates, with the effect concentrated among firms in more competitive industries and with lower costs of capital. Firms also reduce their patent disclosure quality. Our results suggest firms rely more on trade secrecy as their innovation property protection mechanism. Lower processing costs of financial disclosures affect neither innovation inputs nor voluntary disclosure practices. Our results show that firms strategically manage access to their innovation outputs through financial disclosures, patent disclosures, and trade secrecy to curb knowledge spillover.