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The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of capital market liberalization on audit reporting and pricing. The authors use the announcement of the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect program in China as a shock to capital market liberalization.

The authors use the difference-in-differences method to study the difference in changes in the frequency of modified audit opinions and audit fees between the treatment group and the control group.

This study finds that capital market liberalization increases reputational and litigation risks for auditors and leads to more conservative audit reports. In addition, capital market liberalization stimulates the management of eligible firms to improve the information environment, helps to reduce information asymmetry and decreases audit fees. Specifically, the authors identify the channels of active foreign institutional investors as a new governance mechanism through which capital market liberalization impacts eligible firm and auditor decisions.

This study complements the literature by showing that capital market liberalization may bring a new and strong governance mechanism for eligible firms and auditors.

This study may provide new references for active foreign institutional shareholders as a new and strong governance mechanism in weak institutional regimes such as China, auditors’ optimization decisions when litigation risks increase and management’s improvements in the information environment under the monitoring of foreign institutional shareholders.

Overall, this study contributes to the literature by showing that capital market liberalization can bring a new governance mechanism for the management of eligible firms and auditors in a weak institutional environment. Foreign institutional shareholders may be superior to the domestic market forces and other corporate governance in the role of monitoring the management of eligible firms and auditors.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an ambitious plan led by the Chinese government aiming to reach a close integration between countries, is reshaping the global institutional landscape. Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) play a leading role in the BRI and they usually follow an unconventional behavior derived from the institutional influence of their home government. Prior research reports that institutional distance between home and host countries has an impact on multinational enterprises’ (MNEs’) ownership level in their foreign subsidiaries. Therefore, our aim is to investigate how institutional distance, the BRI and state ownership affect Chinese tourism MNEs' ownership level in their cross-border acquisitions.

Drawing on the institutional theory, this study develops several hypotheses that are tested using a sample of Chinese MNEs from accommodation, travel agencies, transport and leisure/entertainment industries.

The results show that the idiosyncratic characteristics of being an emerging-market MNE belonging to a soft-service industry is associated with a positive relationship between institutional distance and a high ownership level in cross-border acquisitions. They also indicate that targeting a country included in the BRI and being an SOE negatively moderates that relationship.

This study extends institutional theory in the case of tourism firms from an emerging economy. It also addresses an under-research topic in the literature, namely, how the BRI is leading Chinese tourism MNEs to redesign their international strategies.

With increasing environmental issue and problems, this study aims to explore how the female directors' foreign experience and corporate green commitment in emerging economics like China from 2008 to 2020.

The authors draw data of all ‘A’ share listed firms listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2008 to 2020 from the renowned Chinese database China Stock Market and Accounting Research (CSMAR). The study's data collection start from 2008, because data about green commitment are not available on CSMAR before 2008 and final year is 2020 because data about green commitment is available at the time of data collection. After dropping observations with missing data, the study's final sample contains 20,255 firm year-observations. Finally, in accordance with prior studies, the authors classified enterprises according to the “China Securities and Regulatory Commission” (2012) to categorize firms.

The authors find that female directors' foreign experience enhances the green commitment in Chinese listed companies. In additional analysis, the authors find this relationship is more pronounced when one or more foreign directors. The study's findings are robustness to different economic techniques and alternative measure of dependent variables and endogeneity concerns. Overall, the study's findings show that female directors with foreign experience transmit environmental and sustainable knowledge and practices to Chinese companies.

First, the authors believe that this is the first study to analyze the impact of the overseas experience of female directors on corporate green commitment. Most previous studies have examined the influence of the presence of female directors or different attributes such as age, education and independence of female directors on board decisions, in order to protect the interests of multiple stakeholders (Elmagrhi et al., 2019; He and Jiang, 2019; McGuinness et al., 2017). This study finds that, in addition to other different attributes, the foreign experience of female directors also has a significant role in promoting corporate green commitment. By pushing corporate green commitment, these women directors leverage their experience in advanced economies abroad to add to the Chinese government's environmental and sustainability goal of achieving net zero carbon by 2060. As such, this is one of the first studies to highlight the experiences of female directors in transferring environmental and sustainability practices to Chinese companies. Second, the authors add to the literature by integrating two important board perspectives, such as gender diversity and the impact of foreign experience on corporate green commitment. Previous research has explored the presence or absence of female directors on board or foreign experience. However, this study adds to the literature by introducing important attributes of the influence of female directors' foreign experience on decision making. Third, this study provides evidence on the impact of foreign independent directors on the board. The authors document foreign independent directors enhance the relationship between female directors' foreign experience and corporate green commitment. The study's findings complement previous research by Liang and Renneboog (2017), showing that female directors with foreign experience transfer advanced levels of environmental and sustainable practice knowledge to Chinese companies.