As a city–county consolidation with Chinese characteristics,China’s countyto-district(CtD)reform transfers a county’s autonomy to a city,thereby strengthening the administrative,decision-making,fiscal and other pow...As a city–county consolidation with Chinese characteristics,China’s countyto-district(CtD)reform transfers a county’s autonomy to a city,thereby strengthening the administrative,decision-making,fiscal and other powers of the prefecture-level municipal government,which effectively enables the centralization of local governments.Based on this exogenous quasi-natural experiment,we use a difference-in-differences(DID)approach to empirically examine the impact of prefecture-level municipal government centralization on companies’ESG performance.The results show that municipal government centralization can significantly promote corporate ESG performance,which represents environmental protection,social responsibility and corporate governance behavior.The mechanism analysis also shows that the CtD reform can address market segmentation,alleviate policy uncertainty and reduce rentseeking,which further improves ESG performance.展开更多
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.T2293773 and No.T2293770).
文摘As a city–county consolidation with Chinese characteristics,China’s countyto-district(CtD)reform transfers a county’s autonomy to a city,thereby strengthening the administrative,decision-making,fiscal and other powers of the prefecture-level municipal government,which effectively enables the centralization of local governments.Based on this exogenous quasi-natural experiment,we use a difference-in-differences(DID)approach to empirically examine the impact of prefecture-level municipal government centralization on companies’ESG performance.The results show that municipal government centralization can significantly promote corporate ESG performance,which represents environmental protection,social responsibility and corporate governance behavior.The mechanism analysis also shows that the CtD reform can address market segmentation,alleviate policy uncertainty and reduce rentseeking,which further improves ESG performance.
