Topic: Ideology and Corporate Policies
Speaker: Hao Liang, Assistant Professor of Finance, Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University
Date: October 10, 2019 (Thursday)
Time: 10:00am-11:30am
Location: 4-102, Building 4
Language: English
Abstract:
Historically, economic activities are organized around certain ideology. We investigate the impact of politicians’ ideology on corporate policies by exploring a unique setting of ideological change in China from Mao to Deng around the economic reform in 1978 in a regression discontinuity framework. We find that the age discontinuity of politicians around 18 years old in 1978 who already joined or would shortly join the Communist Party of China (CPC), and later became municipal paramount leaders, has a long-lasting effect of contemporary firm- and city-level policies. Specially, firms in cities with mayors joining CPC under the ideological regime of Mao have more social contributions, lower within-firm pay inequality, and less internationalization than those under Deng’s regime. These effects are stronger in firms with political connections, in non-state-owned enterprises, and in regions that are more market-oriented and were not “revolutionary bases”. We also find evidence that ideology-induced corporate policy biases have some impact on firm performance.
About the speaker:
Dr. Hao LIANG is an assistant professor of finance and DBS Sustainability Fellow at Singapore Management University’s (SMU) Lee Kong Chian School of Business. He is also a research member of European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). He obtained his PhD in finance from Tilburg University, and received the Best PhD Dissertation of the entire university in 2015. He was a Visiting Researcher at Harvard University and a fellow of Harvard Law School’s Program on Corporate Governance. His research interests include sustainable finance (corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investing, impact investing), corporate finance and governance, entrepreneurial finance, and international business. He has published his research on Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of International Business Studies, Management Science, Organization Science, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, among other journals. His research on CSR has won several internationally recognized awards, including the Moskowitz Prize of Socially Responsible Investing, Sustainable Finance Geneva Prize, FIR-PRI Finance and Sustainability Award, Zephyr Prize for Best Corporate Finance Paper, among others. At SMU, Dr. Hao LIANG teaches a broad range of courses on Sustainable Finance, Entrepreneurial Finance, and Corporate Finance at undergraduate-, Master-, PhD- and DBA-levels. He was a nominee for Most Promising Teaching Award at SMU and a frequent recipient of the Dean’s Teaching Honour List (Top 20 Faculty) Award. He has also written several teaching cases on sustainable and inclusive finance, and conducted field studies in China. He has co-organized the Inaugural Sustainable Finance Forum (Shenzhen, July 2019) and the Sim Kee Boon Institute-TBLI Group Joint Conference on Sustainable Finance (Singapore, November 2019). He is a frequent contributor to Harvard Law School Forum of Corporate Governance and Financial Regulations, Oxford Business Law Blog, Tsinghua Finance Review (清华金融评论), among many other media.
