Business groups have played a vital role in the development of emerging markets. However, we share very limited understanding in the role of business group that act on affiliated firms’ CSR performance. Using manually sorted data on A-share listed companies and business groups in China from 2010–2017, we examine whether a company’s business group-affiliation affects its corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and the mediating mechanisms of this association. Our empirical models show that group companies bear a higher level of social responsibility compared to independent companies. This positive relationship between group-affiliation and social responsibility relies on resource allocation through internal capital markets, rent-seeking initiatives, and consideration of corporate reputation. Moreover, group affiliation benefits the firm’s CSR performance in employee’s responsibilities, consumers’ responsibilities and environmental responsibilities, while significantly lower the shareholders’ responsibilities. Our empirical valuation of group companies’ CSR levels can serve as a benchmark for emerging market companies implementing social responsibility policies.

We examine the impact of female directors' foreign experience on environmental and sustainable (ES) performance in Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2016. We find that female directors' foreign experience, especially work experience, significantly positively impacts firms' ES performance. The results are robust, and self-selection concerns are addressed using the Heckman two-step model and propensity score matching. Also, female directors' foreign experience impacts ES performance more significantly when female directors gain foreign experience from a Scandinavian law country or a civil law country. Overall, our results reveal that female directors with foreign experience transmit ES knowledge and practices to Chinese firms.

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According to the latest Taiwan’s energy plan, nuclear power that provides approximately 16% of total electricity will be replaced by renewable energy sources by 2025. Wind power is of particular interest because Taiwan’s maritime climate and constant monsoons make it a feasible alternative that potentially generate a considerable amount of electricity. To better understand how wind power can provide stable electricity output and sequester CO2 emissions, this study employs the Weibull distribution with a threshold regression model to estimate the electricity potential for 370 scheduled wind farm sites and refine electricity estimation according to observed data from all existing wind farms. The results show that, compared to the theoretical estimation models, our proposed refinement method can, in average, reduce estimating error by 87%. The results indicate that construction of all scheduled sites are not a cost-effective approach, and the government may focus on construction of stations that can generate electricity of more than 12 million kWh per year, if capital rationing do exist. Our insightful results thus convey constructive suggestions regarding sites selection, stability of wind speed, and electricity potential of each site, all of which can be helpful in decision making. It is also noteworthy to point out that unless future climate is far deviated from the observed data, wind power can be an effective substitute of nuclear power.

This research investigates how fiscal environmental expenditures impact corporate environmental investments and whether corporations act as free-riders. Using a sample of 1688 firm-year observations from 2008 to 2019 in the Chinese context, we observe that fiscal environmental expenditures have a significantly negative “crowding-out” effect on corporate green investments, which is mediated by the disclosure of pollution emissions. Additionally, a heterogeneity analysis reveals that this negative impact is more pronounced for non-heavily polluted and state-owned corporations and corporations located in three major agglomerations. This finding remains robust when employing an instrumental variable approach to address potential endogeneity. Our study contributes to the current literature by providing new insights regarding government environmental protection behaviors’ impacts on corporate green behaviors. The study also provides insights for policymakers to focus more on light-polluting corporations and state-owned corporations, because they have more chances to avoid environmental responsibilities.