Using the financial data of listed Chinese companies, we study the impact of COVID-19 on corporate performance. We show that COVID-19 has a negative impact on firm performance. The negative impact of COVID-19 on firm performance is more pronounced when a firm's investment scale or sales revenue is smaller. We show, in an additional analysis, that the negative impact of COVID-19 on firm performance is more pronounced in serious-impact areas and industries. These findings are among the first empirical evidence of the association between pandemic and firm performance.

COVID-19 has had a major impact on the global economy and the energy sector has also been significantly affected by the pandemic.. This paper studies the impact of COVID-19 on corporate performance in the energy industry and finds that COVID-19 has had a significant negative effect on the performance of energy companies. When goodwill impairment was introduced as a moderating variable, companies with goodwill impairment were more strongly affected by the pandemic. Therefore, decision makers at all levels should pay more attention to the impact of COVID-19 on energy companies and take countermeasures in order to mitigate the effects on the energy industry.

The COVID-19 outbreak seriously affected all economies, especially the operations of listed companies, around the world. This article studies the impact of COVID-19 on firm-level cash holdings using the difference-in-differences method. It finds that COVID-19 has a significant positive impact on cash holdings in serious-impact industries. Goodwill and goodwill impairment can weaken this positive impact, which may be related to higher business risks in these firms. Therefore, managers should raise firms' cash holding level during the pandemic to protect firms against contingencies. Managers should also be aware of financing constraints due to risks.

As one of the largest energy consumers and the greatest emitter of CO2 in the world, China now confronts the dual challenge of reducing energy use while continuing to foster economic growth. To overcome this issue, there is a need of comprehensive economic, financial, and energy policy reforms to promote sustainable development. The objective of this paper is to examine the effects of economic growth, financial development and energy consumption on carbon dioxide emission (CO2) in China from 1982 to 2017. The study applies Johansen cointegration test and vector error correction model (VECM) to investigate the long-term equilibrium and short-term causality relationship among the four variables. The causality is also checked by using the innovative accounting approach (IAA). The empirical results show the long-term cointegration relationship between them. Evidence shows that a unidirectional Granger causality running from energy consumption to financial development. Financial development and energy consumption have a statistically significant positive impact on CO2 emissions. In the long run, economic growth can curb CO2 emissions. Hence, financial innovation should be encouraged in the country to meet the demand of sustainable development. Nevertheless, optimizing energy structure and increasing the efficiency of energy utilization can never be left out from the process of development. We add light to policy makers with the construction of carbon trading to effectively address greenhouse effects in China.

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Under the background that environmental tax has increasingly become the main means of environmental governance in various countries, it is particularly important to study the effect of environmental tax on reducing pollutants and then put forward suggestions for building a scientific and rational environmental tax system. The novelty of this paper is the investigation of the pollutant emission reduction effects of environmental taxes in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and Chinese provinces at the same time, and further comparison of the pollutant emission reduction effects of environmental taxes in OECD and China under different environmental tax collection scales, industrial added value levels, and economic development conditions based on Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag Modelling Approach (ARDL). The data are derived from environmental taxes and pollutants of OECD countries from 1994 to 2016 and Chinese provinces from 2004 to 2016. The results show that from the overall regression results, environmental taxes really help to reduce pollutant emissions, both in OECD countries and China. From the grouping regression results, the OECD countries and Chinese inland provinces with small-scale or medium-level of environmental tax revenue and higher level of economic growth all show better emission reduction effects, while OECD countries with low industrial added value and Chinese inland provinces with high industrial added value have more significant effects on pollutant emission reduction via environmental taxes.

The COVID-19 outbreak seriously affected all economies, especially the operations of listed companies, around the world. This article studies the impact of COVID-19 on firm-level cash holdings using the difference-in-differences method. It finds that COVID-19 has a significant positive impact on cash holdings in serious-impact industries. Goodwill and goodwill impairment can weaken this positive impact, which may be related to higher business risks in these firms. Therefore, managers should raise firms' cash holding level during the pandemic to protect firms against contingencies. Managers should also be aware of financing constraints due to risks.