Since 2007, a novel debt type, green bonds, has emerged as a popular instrument to raise and direct capital toward projects that curb climate change risk. Corporations, government agencies, supranational entities, and municipalities issue these bonds mainly in the US, China, and Europe. Annual green bond issuance has experienced exponential growth from $37.1 in 2014… Read More »
The history of lending discrimination is well-documented in the United States, and the federal government employs a variety of legal mechanisms to fight its effects and promote lending equity. One such tool is the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which Congress passed in 1977. The CRA was designed to encourage banks to lend in the geographic… Read More »
Can ChatGPT with Explainable AI interpret explain black box models to non-financial professionals? If the answer is yes, the following question arises: Is it necessary to maintain our protective financial regulatory regime if these robo-advisors can effectively translate complicated financial knowledge to the public? Under the current regulatory framework, only accredited investors, defined as those… Read More »
In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, there was a heated public debate about the causes of the crisis and what policies should be adopted to ensure that history would not repeat itself. Many people and policymakers pointed their fingers at the lax accounting standards that seemingly allowed financial institutions to take… Read More »
Corporate bankruptcy law is a tool to resolve the financial distress of corporations. Unviable corporations are liquidated and the proceeds distributed to the creditors. Viable corporations are restructured and put on a new financial footing. Following the model of Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code, many jurisdictions worldwide have strengthened or introduced such restructuring… Read More »
A corporation is a nexus of incomplete contracts that gives a demand for control right allocations. Whether firms should centralize or decentralize control rights depends on local information and coordination. This study uses the audit industry in China as a laboratory to shed light on to what extent control right allocation within an organization affects… Read More »
Technological innovation is crucial to a firm’s sustainable competitiveness and a country’s long-term economic growth. Prior academic work identifies two properties of firm disclosures, although they may have opposing effects on innovation. In one direction, the completeness of disclosures is beneficial for innovation by making external capital providers more receptive to providing financing, reducing the… Read More »
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been in the spotlight for several years now following a trading frenzy and spectacular returns. An NFT is a digital record of ownership, created and stored on a blockchain, and thus tamper-proof and auditable. Blockchains are decentralized ledgers of transactions that are designed to run perpetually, hence providing the basis for… Read More »
Insiders are continually implementing new illegal trading strategies to avoid detection by regulators. Conventional illegal insider trading takes place in stocks. However, these strategies are evolving and also include trading using family member accounts or other securities such as options. In 2021, in the first case of its kind, the SEC charged an employee of… Read More »
The dominance of large chains in the retail landscape is hard to ignore. Casual observation of every city in North America, large or small, often has an eerily similar configuration of clothing, convenience, food, and general-purpose vendors. As The Economist aptly pointed out, there is often “an overwhelming sense of déjà vu” when navigating a… Read More »