My research primarily focuses on corporate finance, viewed through three interdisciplinary lenses: labour economics, sustainable finance, and political economy. Specifically, I study how firms manage risks arising from internal and external pressures, thereby improving their competitiveness in capital markets and product markets. On the labour side, I focus on employee governance and human-capital management, with particular interest in settings characterised by labour-market frictions.
Publications
The bright side of labor unions: evidence from working capital management, 2025. British Journal of Management, Forthcoming.(with Z. Bu, Z. Wang, and W. Zhang)
Managerial job security and firm diversification, 2025. Journal of Empirical Finance, 84, 101646. (with Z. Bu, and R. Xiao)
Financing Sustainability: Sustainable Institutional Investors and Bank Loan Access, 2025. Journal of International Money and Finance, 157, 103387.(with L. Qiao, Z. Wang, B. Ren)
Political freedom and financial inclusion: Unraveling social trust and political rent-seeking, 2024. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 220.(with Y. Ma, Y, Ding, and Z. Bu)
Peer performance and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings recognition, 2023. International Review of Financial Analysis, 85, 102427.(with Z. Fu, Y. Ma, and L. Qiao)
Political freedom and earnings management, 2021. Journal of Financial Markets, Institutions, and Money, 75, 101443.(with Z. Bu, L. Qiao, and Y. Sha)
Working in progress
R&D tax credit, import tariff policies, and firms’ passive zero-leverage decisions, 2025 (with M. Chen, X. Li, and R. Matousek). R&R1 at Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4710197
Biodiversity risk and informal financing: Evidence from trade credit in supply chains (with B. Ren and Y. Sha), 2025, Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5503559
Labor union and automation technologies (with B. Ren and Z, Wang), 2025
Cross-ownership and debt structure (with X. Li), 2023. 2022 American Finance Association Poster Annual Meeting, Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4280568
Conferences
2025 Conference on International Exchange of Professionals
2024 International Finance and Banking Society Conference
2023 1st Annual Conference of Financial Analytics Research Society
2022 China Finance Annual Meeting
2022 American Finance Association Poster Annual Meeting
Research grants
National Natural Science Foundation of China (72302238)
Guangdong Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (GD23YYJ30)
Birmingham Business School Research Funding
Leeds Business School Small Research Grant