Theme: Media Competition, Media Capture, and Pollution in China

Guest Speaker: Hua Cheng (Zhongnan University of Economics and Law)

Time:  15:30-17:00, December 2, 2024 (Monday)

Venue: 218, School of Business Building

Organizer: Department of Economics

Guest Bio:

  Hua Cheng is currently a professor and doctoral director at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, a Distinguished Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and a former Associate Professor at Nankai University. His undergraduate and doctoral degrees are from Peking University and the University of Texas at Austin, respectively, and his research areas involve development economics, digital economy, legal economics, operations management, corporate finance, etc. His research results have been published in the Journal of Law His research results have been published in the Journal of Law and Economics (cover article), Production and Operations Management, Journal of Development Economics and other top academic journals at home and abroad, and a number of papers have been published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Production and Operations Management, and the Journal of Financial Economics. Quantitative Analysis, Production and Operations Management, The Accounting Review, Management World and other top journals in China and abroad, and has been awarded the Best Paper Award of the Strategic Management Society, the Best Paper Award of the China Society for Information Economics and other awards.

Synopsis：

  This paper examines the impacts of media market competition on firms' pollution in the context of media capture, where firms try to Exploiting a media reform that forced a large number of newspapers to exit the market in China, we find that polluting firms emitted less pollution and the remaining newspapers were more likely to be polluted. Exploiting a media reform that forced a large number of newspapers to exit the market in China, we find that polluting firms emitted less pollution and the remaining newspapers reported more pollution-related issues following the newspaper exits. challenges the conventional belief that a more competitive media market serves as a better watchdog, it aligns with a model suggesting that the deadweight loss from imperfect media competition is not as great as it could be. While this finding challenges the conventional belief that a more competitive media market serves as a better watchdog, it aligns with a model suggesting that the deadweight loss from imperfect media competition can be offset by the negative externality of pollution.