IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijfss/v9y2021i2p22-d536634.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Short-Selling and Financial Performance of SMEs in China: The Mediating Role of CSR Performance

Author

Listed:
  • Wenzhen Mai

    (Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia)

  • Nik Intan Norhan binti Abdul Hamid

    (Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of short-selling deregulation on the financial performance of SMEs in China. The external governance role of short-selling is also tested by adopting corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance as the mediating effect. This study investigates a panel data analysis with a sample of 5038 firm-years of SMEs listed in Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2019. The PSM-DID method is adopted in this study to alleviate self-selection and endogenous problems to observe the comparable pure effect of short-selling deregulation, while the mediation test is conducted based on Baron and Kenny’s model. The finding of this study showed that the existence of short-selling could enhance firm financial performance and the mediating effect of CSR performance position in their relationship. In addition, the further analysis revealed that the mediating effect of CSR is more pronounced for family businesses and firms with high real short-selling threats. The robust test of alternative measurements is conducted and valid. This study provides insights for policymakers to consider further short-selling ban lifting and corporate executives to practice more CSR activities to improve the financial performance. Limitations and further implications of this study are also discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Wenzhen Mai & Nik Intan Norhan binti Abdul Hamid, 2021. "Short-Selling and Financial Performance of SMEs in China: The Mediating Role of CSR Performance," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-16, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijfss:v:9:y:2021:i:2:p:22-:d:536634
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/9/2/22/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/9/2/22/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Meng, Qingbin & Li, Ying & Jiang, Xuanyu & Chan, Kam C., 2017. "Informed or speculative trading? Evidence from short selling before star and non-star analysts’ downgrade announcements in an emerging market," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 240-255.
    2. Yuanyuan Hu & Shouming Chen & Yuexin Shao & Su Gao, 2018. "CSR and Firm Value: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-18, December.
    3. Marco Caliendo & Sabine Kopeinig, 2008. "Some Practical Guidance For The Implementation Of Propensity Score Matching," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 31-72, February.
    4. Giuliana Birindelli & Paola Ferretti & Mariantonietta Intonti & Antonia Iannuzzi, 2015. "On the drivers of corporate social responsibility in banks: evidence from an ethical rating model," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 19(2), pages 303-340, May.
    5. Rui Li & Jiahui Li & Jinjian Yuan, 2017. "Short-sale prohibitions, firm characteristics and stock returns: evidence from Chinese market," China Finance Review International, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 7(4), pages 407-428, September.
    6. R. Rajesh & Chandrasekharan Rajendran, 2020. "Relating Environmental, Social, and Governance scores and sustainability performances of firms: An empirical analysis," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 1247-1267, March.
    7. Vivian W. Fang & Allen H. Huang & Jonathan M. Karpoff, 2016. "Short Selling and Earnings Management: A Controlled Experiment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(3), pages 1251-1294, June.
    8. Waris Ali & Jedrzej George Frynas & Zeeshan Mahmood, 2017. "Determinants of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Disclosure in Developed and Developing Countries: A Literature Review," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(4), pages 273-294, July.
    9. Brockman, Paul & Luo, Juan & Xu, Limin, 2020. "The impact of short-selling pressure on corporate employee relations," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    10. Huili Chen & Ying Chen & Bin Lin & Yanchao Wang, 2019. "Can short selling improve internal control? An empirical study based on the difference‐in‐differences model," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 58(5), pages 1233-1259, March.
    11. Massimo Massa & Bohui Zhang & Hong Zhang, 2015. "The Invisible Hand of Short Selling: Does Short Selling Discipline Earnings Management?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(6), pages 1701-1736.
    12. Deng, Xiaohu & Gao, Lei, 2018. "The monitoring of short selling: Evidence from China," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 68-78.
    13. Erhemjamts, Otgontsetseg & Huang, Kershen, 2019. "Institutional ownership horizon, corporate social responsibility and shareholder value," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 61-79.
    14. Luo, Jinbo & Ni, Xiaoran & Tian, Gary Gang, 2020. "Short selling and corporate tax avoidance: Insights from a financial constraint view," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    15. Xiang Deng & Xiang Cheng, 2019. "Can ESG Indices Improve the Enterprises’ Stock Market Performance?—An Empirical Study from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(17), pages 1-13, September.
    16. Miller, Edward M, 1977. "Risk, Uncertainty, and Divergence of Opinion," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(4), pages 1151-1168, September.
    17. Jan Endrikat, 2016. "Market Reactions to Corporate Environmental Performance Related Events: A Meta-analytic Consolidation of the Empirical Evidence," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 535-548, October.
    18. Takuya Kiriu & Masatoshi Nozaki, 2020. "A Text Mining Model to Evaluate Firms’ ESG Activities: An Application for Japanese Firms," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 27(4), pages 621-632, December.
    19. KoEun Park, 2017. "Earnings quality and short selling: Evidence from real earnings management in the United States," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(9-10), pages 1214-1240, October.
    20. Cheng, Shijun & Felix, Robert & Zhao, Yijiang, 2019. "Board interlock networks and informed short sales," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 198-211.
    21. Ali Alshehhi & Haitham Nobanee & Nilesh Khare, 2018. "The Impact of Sustainability Practices on Corporate Financial Performance: Literature Trends and Future Research Potential," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-25, February.
    22. Hou, Deshuai & Meng, Qingbin & Zhang, Kai & Chan, Kam C., 2019. "Motives for corporate philanthropy propensity: Does short selling matter?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 24-36.
    23. Ni, Xiaoran & Yin, Sirui, 2020. "The unintended real effects of short selling in an emerging market," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yanan Li, 2022. "The Influence of Family Governance on the Value of Chinese Family Businesses: Signal Transmission Effect of Financial Performance," Economies, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-22, March.
    2. Sha, Yezhou & Shah, Syed Ghulam Meran & Sarfraz, Muddassar, 2023. "Short selling and SME irregular CEO succession: Witnessing the moderating role of earnings management," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 163-173.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wenzhen Mai & Nik Intan Norhan Binti Abdul Hamid, 2021. "The Moderating Effect of Family Business Ownership on the Relationship between Short-Selling Mechanism and Firm Value for Listed Companies in China," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-20, May.
    2. Sha, Yezhou & Shah, Syed Ghulam Meran & Sarfraz, Muddassar, 2023. "Short selling and SME irregular CEO succession: Witnessing the moderating role of earnings management," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 163-173.
    3. He, Meng & Bai, Xuelian & Zhang, Junrui, 2024. "Does short selling reduce classification shifting?—— Exploration of market-oriented governance mechanism," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    4. Meng, Qingbin & Huang, Haozheng & Li, Xinyu & Wang, Song, 2023. "Short-selling and corporate default risk: Evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 398-417.
    5. Zhou, Yankun & Tang, Taijie & Luo, Le, 2023. "Is corporate environmental investment a strategic risk management tool? Evidence from short selling threats," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    6. Jie He & Kam C. Chan, 2023. "Does short sales deregulation affect qualitative information disclosure?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(S1), pages 1351-1380, April.
    7. Ge-zhi Wu & Da-ming You, 2021. "Margin trading, short selling and corporate green innovation," Papers 2107.11255, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2021.
    8. Juwon Jang & Eunju Lee, 2024. "CEO confidence matters: the real effects of short sale constraints revisited," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 62(2), pages 603-636, February.
    9. Xufeng Liu & Die Wan, 2022. "Does short‐selling affect mutual fund shareholdings? Evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(S1), pages 1887-1923, April.
    10. Meng, Qingbin & Li, Xinyu & Chan, Kam C. & Gao, Shenghao, 2020. "Does short selling affect a firm's financial constraints?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    11. Hui Ding & Xiaoran Ni & Hongmei Xu, 2021. "Short selling and labor investment efficiency: evidence from the Chinese stock market," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(S1), pages 2451-2476, April.
    12. Stephie Tsai, Hsin-Ju & Wu, Yuliang & Xu, Bin, 2021. "Does capital market drive corporate investment efficiency? Evidence from equity lending supply," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    13. Hu, Ting & Chi, Yanzhe, 2019. "Can short selling activity predict the future returns of non-shortable peer firms?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 165-185.
    14. GuoHua Cao & WenJun Geng & Jing Zhang & Qi Li, 2023. "Financial constraints, short selling and corporate fraud: Evidence from China," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(2), pages 297-320, June.
    15. repec:mth:ijafr8:v:9:y:2019:i:1:p:135-151 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Zhang, Yongshen & Zhang, Qing & Yu, Xiaoliang & Ma, Qiushu, 2023. "Equity overvaluation, insider trading activity, and M&A premium: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    17. Xiong Xiong & Ya Gao & Xu Feng, 2017. "Successive short‐selling ban lifts and gradual price efficiency: evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 57(5), pages 1557-1604, December.
    18. Haiyan Jiang & Gary Tian & Donghua Zhou, 2021. "The influence of the deregulation of short‐selling on related‐party transactions: Evidence from China," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(5-6), pages 1022-1056, May.
    19. Tianyu Cai & Lixiong Guo & Yongxian Tan, 2024. "Short seller monitoring and real earnings management," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 59(1), pages 203-225, February.
    20. Jiang, Jiaoliang, 2022. "Short selling and corporate diversification in emerging markets: Insights from controlling shareholder tunneling," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    21. Chen, Shenglan & Lin, Bingxuan & Lu, Rui & Ma, Hui, 2018. "The disciplinary effects of short sales on controlling shareholders," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 56-76.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijfss:v:9:y:2021:i:2:p:22-:d:536634. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.