ABSTRACT This article leverages a credit-easing policy in Shanghai’s housing market as a quasi-natural experiment to investigate market dynamics. Our findings reveal that, following the policy implementation, property sellers significantly reduce listing prices by approximately 2.1% to 2.5%. Meanwhile, buyers adopt a more cautious ‘wait-and-see’ approach, reflected in lengthened decision-making periods and increased online or offline property viewings. Further analysis indicates that the credit-easing policy also pushes landlords to significantly reduce rental prices by about 2.8% to 3.6%. These unintended consequences may stem from the fact that during a downturn in the housing market, credit-easing policies are instead interpreted by the public as a signal of market weakness, thereby producing the opposite of the intended policy effect. Consequently, sellers reduce asking prices to accelerate transactions or rentals, while buyers delay their purchase decisions. This study yields novel insights into the unintended consequences of policy interventions during housing market downturns.

Purpose Extant research has generally confirmed the positive impact of cross-listing on corporate social responsibility (CSR), but most studies treat CSR as a holistic concept. This study disaggregates CSR into internal (towards employee) and external (towards societal and environmental) dimensions to investigate a critical question: Does cross-listing lead firms to prioritize external stakeholders at the expense of internal commitments, thereby creating a CSR imbalance, or does it foster a higher-order balance across both dimensions? Specifically, we investigate the effects of cross-listing on both internal and external CSR, as well as the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on data for Chinese A-share listed firms from 2008 to 2022, this study leverages the A + H cross-listing arrangement as a quasi-natural experiment. We employ a difference-in-differences model with multi-way fixed effects, based on 38,908 firm-year observations from 4,721 companies. Findings The results show that cross-listing does not induce a trade-off between internal and external CSR. Instead, it significantly enhances both dimensions, guiding firms toward a higher level of balance. A mechanism analysis further reveals that cross-listing provides resource empowerment by alleviating financing constraints and achieves governance optimization through the appointment of directors with foreign experience. These two pathways jointly ensure the parallel development of internal and external CSR. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive impact is stronger when the signaling value of CSR is more prominent (e.g. for firms with non-award-winning executives or under weak institutional supervision). The effect is also more significant when the long-term strategic value of CSR is fully activated (e.g. for firms led by internal successors or those classified as high-tech firms). Practical implications For managers, this study underscores the importance of developing CSR strategies that integrate both internal and external dimensions to avoid the risk of organizational hypocrisy. For policymakers, the findings suggest moving beyond one-size-fits-all incentives toward more differentiated and targeted policy instruments that can guide and support firms' internal and external CSR practices separately, thereby enhancing the sustainable competitiveness of Chinese firms in global capital markets. Originality/value This study offers novel systematic evidence that cross-listing fosters the synergistic development of internal and external CSR, addressing long-standing concerns about CSR imbalance. It further identifies resource empowerment and governance optimization as two critical transmission mechanisms. Finally, by uncovering contextual contingencies, this study provides a more nuanced perspective on CSR decision-making, thereby advancing both theoretical debates and managerial practice.

As a critical form of proactive behaviors, taking charge plays a central role in facilitating hospitals' improvement and development. Although prior research has extensively examined how to encourage nurses to engage in taking charge, the relationship between the concept of "spirit at work" and taking charge remains insufficiently understood. This study was designed to examine the impact of spiritual leadership on the nurses' taking charge and its internal mechanism. Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, we developed a moderated mediation model to elucidate how spiritual leadership fosters nurses' taking charge through spiritual well-being, and how this effect is contingent on nurses' pay-for-performance perceptions. We conducted a field study in China to test our theoretical model, with data collected from 353 nurses and 88 head nurses across three different time points. Data analysis was run using descriptive statistics and confirmatory factor analyses. And regression analyses were used to examine the hypotheses. The regression results revealed that spiritual leadership was positively associated with nurses' taking charge. Spiritual well-being significantly mediated the relationship between spiritual leadership and nurses' taking charge. Moreover, we observed that the indirect effect of spiritual leadership on taking charge through spiritual well-being was stronger for nurses who perceived higher levels of pay-for-performance than for those with lower perceptions. These findings highlight the essential role of spiritual leadership in promoting nurses' positive psychological states and proactive behaviors. Hospital administrators may consider strengthening head nurses' spiritual leadership to enhance nurses' spiritual well-being and their propensity to take charge. Additionally, implementing performance-based compensation practices can cultivate a climate that reinforces distributive fairness and further encourages proactive behavior. Not applicable.

ABSTRACT We document that firms held by mutual fund managers who have public accounting experience earlier in their careers exhibit higher‐quality financial reporting, as evidenced by a lower likelihood of financial statement restatements. Additional evidence shows that fund managers with public accounting experience are more likely to conduct site visits to their portfolio firms and discuss accounting policy–related topics during those visits. Moreover, the restatement likelihood falls after fund managers' site visits, particularly when they raise accounting policy–related issues during their visits. In cross‐sectional results consistent with expectations, we find that the role that fund manager public accounting experience plays is amplified when the firm suffers more severe agency problems, firm information asymmetry is worse, fund managers are more risk averse, fund managers have prior work experience at larger accounting firms, fund managers hold a larger proportion of the firm's shares, or there is coordination among mutual funds. Collectively, our evidence suggests that fund managers with public accounting experience impose stricter external monitoring on their portfolio firms' financial reporting choices.

This study examines the systematic development and philosophical “finalization” of śamatha (止 tranquility) and vipaśyanā (觀 insight) within the foundational texts of the Yogācāra tradition. Central to the transmission of Buddhism to East Asia was the categorization of practice (修行 caryā) through the lenses of concentration (三摩地 samādhi) and wisdom (般若 prajñā). This paper focuses on two pivotal canons: the Śrāvakabhūmi 聲聞地 section of the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra 瑜伽師地論 and the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra 解深密經. In the Śrāvakabhūmi, Śamatha is presented as a rigorous, self-contained psychological system. The text outlines a cognitive progression from “worldly common paths”—including impurities meditation (不淨觀 aśubhabhāvanā) and the eight liberations (八解脫 aṣṭau vimokṣāḥ)—to the sophisticated “nine stages of mental abiding” (九住心 navākārā citta-sthitiḥ). This research analyzes the psychological mechanisms of these stages, illustrating how they facilitate a metacognitive transition from distraction (散亂 vikṣepa) to absorption (禪那 dhyāna), culminating in the eradication of afflictions (煩惱 kleśa). Furthermore, the paper explores how the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra provides the ultimate philosophical synthesis of these practices. By framing śamatha and vipaśyanā within the Consciousness-Only (唯識 vijñaptimātratā) framework, the sūtra finalizes the meaning of Adhicitta-śikṣā (增上心學 training in higher mind). By bridging the technical rigor of the Śrāvakabhūmi with the Mahāyāna ontological depth of the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, this study clarifies the evolution of buddhist bhāvanā.

ABSTRACT This study explores the impact of digital inclusive finance (DIF) on regional artificial intelligence innovation capacity (AIIC) and its underlying mechanisms, using Chinese city-level panel data for empirical analysis. The results indicate that DIF significantly boosts regional AI innovation, with this positive effect remaining valid after multiple robustness tests. Mechanism tests reveal that stimulating entrepreneurial vitality and advancing industrial structure upgrading are the two key channels through which DIF exerts its influence. Further analysis shows that DIF and traditional financial development exhibit a significant synergistic complementary effect, and the innovation-promoting effect of DIF is more pronounced in cities with stronger intellectual property protection and in central cities. Additionally, the impact of DIF on AI innovation presents non-linear characteristics: beyond a specific development threshold, its marginal promoting effect is further enhanced. Notably, DIF facilitates the coordinated development of regional ambidextrous AI innovation, contributing to a balanced innovation ecosystem. This research enriches the literature on digital finance and technological innovation, and provides actionable policy insights for constructing a financial system that supports high-quality AI innovation.

We address the joint assortment and inventory optimization problem for an online retailer facing a set of N substitutable products. The retailer must determine both the assortment and inventories of these products before the start of the selling season to maximize the expected profit. We consider a setting with dynamic SOBS, where consumers’ choices follow the Markov chain choice model. This is a challenging problem, and even computing the expected profit for a given assortment and inventory solution requires solving an intractable dynamic program. We present a sample average approximation-based algorithm for the problem that achieves a regret of [Formula: see text] with respect to an linear program (LP) upper bound. Our algorithm first selects an assortment by balancing the expected revenue (from a single consumer) and the inventory cost. We do this by identifying a subset of products that can pool demand from the universe of substitutable products without significantly cannibalizing the revenue in the presence of dynamic substitution behavior of consumers. We then use a sample average approximation-based LP to decide on the inventory level for each item in the selected assortment. We numerically show that our algorithm considerably improves the performance over standard approaches from the literature on a wide range of instances of the Markov chain choice model and demonstrate that it carefully handles the inventory of products in the long tail (i.e., products with small mean total demand). This paper was accepted by Chung Piaw Teo, optimization. Funding: This work was supported by Amazon [Research Award (V. Goyal and O. El Housni)] and the National Science Foundation [Grants CMMI 1636046 (V. Goyal) and 2226900 (O. El Housni)]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01322 .

ABSTRACT Using the issuance of a new regulation on economic responsibility audits in China in 2019 as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper investigates the role of economic responsibility audit in determining green innovation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). By employing a difference-in-differences model, we analyse the 20,471 firm-year observations of Chinese listed companies over the period from 2016 to 2021. We find that SOEs enhance their level of green innovation by 12.87% more than non-SOEs in response to this policy intervention. The mechanism test results show that reducing agency cost and improving internal control quality are two potential pathways through which the economic responsibility audit promote SOEs’ green innovation. Moreover, cross-sectional analysis indicates that this positive effect is more pronounced in enterprises with high government innovation subsidies, high capital market attention, and large scale. Our results emphasize significant implications for facilitating green innovation and green development in SOEs.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the influence of clan culture on gender diversity within the top management teams of Chinese firms. Design/methodology/approach This paper analyzes data from Chinese companies listed on the A-share markets from 2003 to 2022. Findings We find that stronger clan culture is associated with lower female representation in leadership roles, including positions on the board of directors, supervisory boards and among senior executives. Cross-sectional tests reveal that this negative relationship is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises compared to non-state-owned enterprises. Additionally, we identify mitigating factors: regions with higher economic development and greater foreign cultural influence are less likely to hinder female advancement into top management. Lastly, our analysis of the mechanisms by which clan culture perpetuates gender inequality perceptions underscores its harmful effects on both the demand for and supply of female labor in executive roles. Originality/value In recent years, the topic of gender diversity within corporate boardrooms, executive ranks and the workforce at large has garnered considerable attention. Despite extensive research on the determinants of gender diversity and its impact on firm outcomes, the influence of informal institutions, such as culture, on gender diversity within organizations remains an understudied area. This gap is especially pronounced in the context of China, where cultural norms and values deeply influence gender roles and dynamics. Our paper aims to enrich the discourse on gender diversity by exploring the impact of clan culture, a fundamental element of Chinese culture, on the gender diversity of top management teams in Chinese firms.