Search Results (11)

This study develops a dynamical systems framework for analyzing the co-evolution of port–industry–city (PIC) systems, with particular attention to the data-limited contexts often encountered in developing coastal regions. The model integrates time-delay differential equations and stochastic disturbances to capture nonlinear behaviors such as investment cycles, policy lags, and external shocks. By introducing dimensionless indicators and dynamic parameter adjustment, the framework reduces dependence on extensive datasets and enhances cross-regional applicability. The Kribi Deep Seaport in Cameroon serves as an illustrative case, demonstrating how the approach can reveal emergent trajectories under alternative development regimes. Simulation results identify three distinct pathways: capital-driven expansion with risks of premature overinvestment, industrial clustering modes requiring coordinated urban services, and policy-led strategies constrained by ecological thresholds and institutional inertia. Compared with conventional static or equilibrium-based models, this approach provides a mathematically rigorous tool for examining delay-driven, nonlinear interactions in complex socio-ecological systems. The framework highlights the value of dynamical systems analysis for scenario exploration, policy design, and sustainable governance in resource-constrained environments. Full article

In the context of China’s economy being in transition, with the arrival of the digital economy era, it is of great significance to explore the issue of corporate sustainable development from the perspective of digital transformation. This study empirically examines the impact of digital transformation on corporate sustainable development and its mechanism of action with a sample of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2004 to 2021. The findings show that corporate digital transformation can significantly improve their sustainable development and is heterogeneous. Specifically, enterprise digital transformation promotes the sustainable development level of underinvested enterprises more than that of overinvested enterprises and promotes the sustainable development of non-state-owned enterprises more than that of state-owned enterprises; enterprise digital transformation promotes the sustainable development of non-manufacturing enterprises more than that of manufacturing enterprises; and the higher the degree of marketization of an enterprise, the greater the impact of enterprise digital transformation on its sustainable development. Meanwhile, through a series of robustness test candidates such as endogeneity test, alternative explanatory variables, and explanatory variables, and adding macroeconomic characteristics, the research conclusions still hold. In addition, through the analysis of the mechanism of action, it is found that enterprise digital transformation can enhance the sustainable development of enterprises by reducing the short-sighted behavior of managers, reducing the cost of financing and leverage, and then enhancing the level of sustainable development of enterprises. Full article

This paper investigates a supply chain setting in which a retailer exhibiting overconfidence invests in demand forecasting. Specifically, the retailer overestimates both the precision of the forecasting signal and the productivity of the investment. We analytically characterize the retailer’s investment behavior and show that overconfidence can lead to overinvestment in forecast accuracy. Beyond the investment decision itself, we examine how overconfidence influences the performance of both supply chain members and the system as a whole. When the retailer withholds forecast information from the supplier, overconfidence tends to harm both the retailer and the overall supply chain. However, under information-sharing arrangements, overconfidence can become beneficial—improving outcomes for the supplier and the system. Notably, when the retailer shares forecast with a sophisticated (strategically responsive) supplier, overconfidence may lead to a win–win outcome, where both parties gain from the retailer’s elevated investment in demand forecasting. These findings offer valuable insights into the conditions under which overconfidence shifts from being a liability to a strategic advantage, enriching our understanding of behavioral factors in supply chain decision-making. Full article

This study examines the impact of executives implicated in fraud on firms’ investment decisions using publicly disclosed Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs) of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), aiming to address the underexplored aspect of rationalization within the fraud triangle. AAERs summarize enforcement actions subject to civil lawsuits brought by the SEC in federal court. Executives implicated in fraud often display abnormal attitudes to justify accounting irregularities, prompting an investigation into how abnormal investment decisions are used for rationalizing fraud, given their critical role in a firm’s long-term sustainability. We utilize bootstrap analysis to address the non-normality of fraud firms in our sample, and to acquire multiple bootstrap samples that represent the fraud population, thereby bolstering the reliability of our statistical analysis. Analysis of AAERs spanning from 1981 to 2013 reveals that implicated executives, particularly CEOs and CFOs, tend to make abnormal investment decisions, and that collusive fraud exacerbates this behavior. Notably, such executives lean towards overinvestment, particularly in R&D expenditure, to hide or justify fraud; the duration of fraud amplifies its impact on investment decisions. By shedding light on the rationalization aspect of the fraud triangle, this research contributes valuable insights for investors, regulators, and academia, emphasizing the significance of public disclosure of fraud by regulators to enhance transparency in capital markets and to alert capital market participants. Furthermore, this study underscores the importance of ethics-focused education in accounting to prevent corporate fraud. Full article

This study examines the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on labor investment efficiency utilizing a sample of China’s listed companies. The empirical results demonstrate that CSR improves labor investment efficiency, and the effect is significant in terms of both overinvestment and underinvestment. Findings from cross-sectional tests indicate that CSR has a more significant effect on labor investment efficiency in non-state-owned firms and firms with more financing constraints or higher labor adjustment costs. The conclusion is robust after utilizing a 2SLS regression, replacing indicators for labor investment efficiency and accounting for the impact of non-labor investment. In general, the results support stakeholder theory and confirm that CSR can enhance external monitoring and improve firms’ investment behavior. Full article

Effectively addressing overcapacity is the main task of China’s deepening supply-side reform and represents an intrinsic requirement for achieving sustainable economic development. Green finance policy, as a kind of environmental regulation policy that influences the behavior of polluting enterprises, can not only effectively facilitate the green transformation of production methods but also have a significant effect on the capacity utilization rate of enterprises. We use the promulgation of the Guidance on Building a Green Financial System in 2016 as a quasinatural experiment and the differences-in-differences (DID) method to study the effect of green finance policies on the capacity utilization rates of polluting enterprises based on data from 2012 to 2020 on A-share listed companies on the Shanghai Stock Exchanges (SSE) and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges (SZSE). We obtained the following results: (1) The implementation of green finance policies markedly improved polluting enterprises’ capacity utilization rate, which was supported by a sequence of robustness tests; (2) The mechanism test revealed that green finance policies serve to rectify information asymmetry and constrain improper government interventions through credit resource allocation mechanisms, thereby inhibiting overinvestments in polluting enterprises and ultimately increasing the capacity utilization rate. Additionally, green finance policies can improve product quality and diversity by incentivizing polluting enterprises’ technological innovation, enabling products to better meet market demand, and ultimately improving the capacity utilization rate; (3) The results of the heterogeneity analysis indicate that, for state-owned and large-scale polluting enterprises, green finance policies play a stronger role in increasing the capacity utilization rate. We have enriched the research related to the policy effects of green finance and the impact of environmental regulation on the capacity utilization rate, thus providing a useful reference for China to utilize green finance policies to address overcapacity, promote the transition to a more environmentally sustainable economic society, and achieve sustainable development. Full article

In 2012, China issued the “Green Credit Guidelines” policy to guide the green transformation of companies, and at the same time, the investment and financing behaviors of heavy polluters during the green transition have received widespread attention. In the view of the investment and financing maturity structure, we take China’s A-share listed enterprises from 2009 to 2021 assamples, and construct a difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the implication of the green credit policy on the short-term financing for long-term investment (SFLI) of heavy polluters. We found that: (1) green credit policy can reduce the level of SFLI of heavy polluters; (2) the size of short-term debt and the level of over-investment can play a mediating effect, and government subsidies can weaken the relationship between green credit policy and SFLI; (3) this effect is more significant when directors, supervisors, or senior executives have a financial institution background. (4) this effect is not significant in enterprises with bank-firm shareholding relationships and a stronger innovation intensity; (5) the effect is more significant in areas with stronger environmental regulations. This paper argues that heavily polluting enterprises should reduce short-term debt financing and over-investment, so, to solve the problem of investment and financing term mismatch under the credit risk; banks should prevent the credit rent-seeking problem caused by the equity association between banks and enterprises, and promote the consistency of green credit standards. The government can provide subsidies to enterprises in green transformation and strengthen the construction of regional environmental regulations in order to guide the smooth innovation and upgrading of heavy polluters. Our research expands the study of the micro-economic consequences of green credit policy, providing references for how to reduce maturity mismatch risk and guide the smooth transformation of heavy polluters from the multi-perspective of the government, banks, and enterprises, thus helping to promote companies’ smooth transit. Full article

Using A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2015 to 2021 as the research sample, a fixed-effects model was used to examine the effect of the reduction of corporate tax burden on investment efficiency under the tax reduction policy, as well as the role of tax avoidance and financing constraints in the mechanism. The results of the study show that the reduction of tax burden can effectively improve the efficiency of corporate investment, and this positive effect is reflected in the alleviation of corporate under-investment and discouragement of over-investment. The paper also analyses the mechanism through which tax burden affects the efficiency of corporate investment, and finds that tax reduction can discourage inefficient investment by reducing corporate tax avoidance and alleviating corporate financing constraints. In further analysis, it is found that the effect of tax cuts on investment efficiency is more significant in the sample of non-state enterprises, low corporate governance and low marketisation. The findings of the study support the positive significance of the current tax reduction policy. We provide a reference of tax reduction benefits to curb tax avoidance behavior, and provide a basis for relevant policy departments to further accelerate the implementation of tax reduction policies. Full article

External conditions such as capital market maturity, investor protection levels, and government control over individual firms vary among countries. We posit that such environmental differences could cause differences in corporate environmental responsibility (CER) activities between countries. However, previous studies have mainly focused on developed countries, while studies conducted in emerging countries are limited. We examine the relationship between CER activities and investment inefficiency in firms listed on the Korea Exchange. Specifically, we analyze the incentive of managers’ ex-ante behavior on CERs and further analyze the relationship between these incentives and external evaluations. Using firm-year panel data, we conducted the pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis and found the following results. First, the relationship between CERs and investment inefficiency is significantly positive, especially those based on managers’ incentives for overinvestments. Second, the positive relationship between CERs and investment inefficiency is prominent in the subsamples with large free cash flows or low asset efficiency. Third, active CERs reduced corporate value in the overinvestment subsample. Unlike existing literature that focuses on developed countries, our results imply that CERs may have negative effects due to agency problems in emerging countries with immature capital markets. From this arises the academic implication that the evaluation of CERs should be changed according to different capital market environments. Full article

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between corporate environmental responsibility (CER) activities and investment efficiency as measured by overinvestment, and whether the industry-level competition affects this association. We investigate a sample of 2285 non-financial firms with fiscal year-end in December listed in the Korea Stock Exchange Market for the period of 2013–2018, measuring the investment efficiency by overinvestment model. Using environmental scores from the Korea Corporate Governance Service to measure CER activities, we show that, on average, firms can decrease overinvestment behavior through CER activities in South Korea. Moreover, in firms in a highly competitive market, the negative association between CER activities and overinvestment is pronounced, indicating that strong product market competition are effective in monitoring managerial opportunistic behavior. These results are robust, even after controlling for different setting and alternative CER. These findings also suggest that the relationship between CER and overinvestment appears to be benefit firms that are sound and sustainable and honestly present their financial information. Full article

This paper explores the influence of institutional investors’ external monitoring on CEOs’ overconfidence. We particularly examine institutional monitoring’s influence on overinvestments by overconfident CEOs and the likelihood of appointing these overconfident CEOs to firms. The results indicate that firms with overconfident CEOs have more overinvestment, as the CEOs tend to be overly optimistic about investment opportunities and are more likely to act on them. The findings, more importantly, show that institutional monitoring mechanisms attenuate overconfident CEOs’ overinvestment. However, we find that institutional monitoring is only significant when long-term and/or large institutional investors hold the firms’ shares. We also discover that investors’ institutional monitoring not only actively reduces a CEO’s overinvestments, but also negatively influences the appointment of overconfident CEOs. Overall, our study provides insights into institutional monitoring’s role in corporate governance as an effective means of preventing value-destroying behaviors by an overconfident leader and cultivating an ethical business philosophy. Full article