An Institutional Perspective of Selective ESG Engagement
Institutional contexts shape selective ESG engagement in REITs across regions; strategies enhance profitability in the U.S. but reduce it in Europe.
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portfolio
Belief to Behavior: The Role of Community and Institutional Trust in Driving Entrepreneurial Green Innovation
This paper explores how community and institutional trust influence entrepreneurial decisions to adopt green innovation practices.
Can fintech enhance household climate resilience? Evidence from P2P lending platform
This study examines how fintech platforms can enhance household resilience to climate shocks through P2P lending mechanisms.
Climate Lobbying under uncertainty: Corporate Strategies and consequences
This study examines corporate climate lobbying strategies under policy uncertainty and their consequences for investment decisions and environmental outcomes.
Climate Risk and Green Transformation in Real Estate Sector
This paper analyzes how climate risk exposure drives green transformation strategies in the global real estate industry.
Developer’s ESG Reputation Concern and Green Building Development
This study examines how developers’ ESG reputation concerns influence their green building development decisions.
ESG Arbitrage and Environmental Outcomes in REITs
This study examines environmental materiality in REIT ESG strategies, finding selective ESG practices associated with better growth and profitability, but adverse environmental consequences.
Environmental Regulatory Independence and Corporate Environmental Performance
Environmental verticalization reform increased regulator independence and improved local SOEs’ environmental performance without harming profitability or valuation.
Judicial independence and audit costs
Manuscript in progress.
Leverage constraints and financial manipulation in the real estate sector
This study examines how leverage constraints affect financial manipulation practices in the real estate sector.
Lobbying and Fossil Fuel Investment
Lobbying increases fossil fuel investments and improves financial performance without reducing political risks; raises emissions at plant level.
Performance Measurability and Air Pollution Control: Evidence from a Quasi-experiment in China
This study examines the impact of performance measurability on the effectiveness of local governments in mitigating air pollution. Utilizing a difference-in-differences approach leveraging the 2013 Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan in China, the reduction in PM2.5 is more pronounced with stronger career concern incentives and higher reliance on financial transfers.
Property presale and extra-budgetary revenue
Data cleaning in progress.
Regulatory Arbitrage by Governments and Land Conveyance
Local governments strategically respond to geographically imbalanced regulations, manipulating land conveyance prices to attract polluting industries, with implications for growth and air pollution.
Rewriting the Contract: How Bureaucratic Incentives Ended China’s Race-to-the-Bottom
Integrating environmental criteria in cadre evaluation reduces race-to-the-bottom land pricing; monitoring pressure lessens low-price conveyance.
Saving planet earth or maximizing financial gains: A global analysis of environmental performance positioning as an ESG strategy
This study examines environmental performance positioning as an ESG strategy in a global context, analyzing the trade-off between environmental commitment and financial objectives.
The Patient Capital Catalyst: Government Support and Global Green Real Estate Projects
This study investigates how government support mechanisms facilitate patient capital investment in sustainable real estate development.
The Price of Pandemic Fear in the Residential Rental Market: Evidence from Hong Kong
This study examines how pandemic fear affects rental prices in Hong Kong’s residential market.
The Twin Transition: Does Intelligent Manufacturing Crowd Out or Catalyze Green Innovation?
This study examines the relationship between intelligent manufacturing adoption and green innovation, analyzing whether digitalization supports or hinders environmental innovation efforts.
The Unintended Socioeconomic Consequences of Housing Demand Shock: Evidence from the Home-purchase Restriction Policy in China
This study examines the unintended socioeconomic consequences of housing demand shocks induced by China’s home-purchase restriction policy.
Unfinished buildings and loan suspension
Data cleaning in progress.
publications
Did real estate professionals anticipate the 2007-2008 financial crisis? Evidence from insider trading in the REITs
Published in The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2021
Real estate professionals in REITs anticipated the 2007-2008 financial crisis by significantly selling their holdings as early as 2004, which refutes the competing “biased belief hypothesis” that they were over-optimistic. Unlike many experts in the broader financial industry, these sophisticated real estate insiders successfully foresaw the systemic risk in the housing market, suggesting their trading patterns can act as an early warning signal for sector-wide bubbles.
The beta anomaly in the REIT market
Published in The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2021
The beta anomaly in the REIT market and providing evidence that it is driven by the preference of institutional investors for high-beta assets, which supports the leverage constraints hypothesis over alternative explanations. This institutional demand inflates the prices of high-beta REITs, causing their subsequent risk-adjusted underperformance and creating profitable opportunities for strategies that bet against beta.
ESG components and equity returns: Evidence from real estate investment trusts
Published in International Review of Financial Analysis, 2024
For US Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), this study finds that higher environmental performance negatively impacts future stock returns and firm fundamentals, while social and governance performance are positively associated with both. These contrasting effects stem from the high costs of environmental investments versus the benefits of social and governance practices, underscoring that influence of ESG on equity returns is component-specific.
The valuation effect and consequences of clawback adoption in real estate investment trusts
Published in The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2024
Clawback provisions are a value-relevant corporate governance mechanism even in the highly regulated REIT market, as investors positively value the adoption of strong policies, particularly in firms with higher prior financial restatement risk and disclosure opacity. Adopting such policies tangibly improves REIT governance by reducing the likelihood of financial restatements, enhancing the quality of financial disclosures, and curbing aggressive investment.
The value of sustainable property management in real estate: Evidence from Hong Kong
Published in Journal of Real Estate Research, 2024
ESG performance of property management companies is capitalized into housing prices, with the value premium driven by a reduction in perceived risk and a higher rental growth rate rather than by higher gross rents. Management firms can directly enhance property values by improving ESG practices, and investors should incorporate this non-physical attribute into their valuations.
Why high-speed rail causes heterogeneous spatial patterns in firm innovation: Perspectives from intensive and extensive margins
Published in PloS one, 2024
This paper decompose the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on firm innovation into extensive (more firms innovating) and intensive (firms innovating more) margins, revealing that the net positive effect is a trade-off between beneficial knowledge spillovers and a detrimental “brain drain” from peripheral counties to urban centers. While HSR boosts overall innovation, it can exacerbate regional inequality, necessitating targeted policies to support innovation in peripheral areas and mitigate the brain drain effect.
Performance measurability, local government’s incentives, and regional air pollution reduction
Published in World Development, 2025
Enhanced environmental performance measurability leads to improved environmental quality, particularly when local leaders possess strong career incentives and their financial support is directly contingent on successful environmental protection outcomes.
talks
The Valuation Effect and Consequences of Clawback Adoption in Real Estate Investment Trusts
Published:
Presented by Kwok Yuen Fan, with co-authors Daoju Peng, Jianfu Shen, Simon Yu Kit Fung and Eddie C.M. Hui.
ESG components and equity returns: Evidence from real estate investment trusts
Published:
Presented by Kwok Yuen Fan, with co-authors Jianfu Shen, Eddie C.M. Hui and Louis T.W. Cheng.
Does integrating environmental protection in cadre evaluation system mitigate the race-to-the-bottom competition? Evidence from industrial land conveyance in China
Published:
Presented by Kwok Yuen Fan, with co-authors Jianfu Shen and Eddie C.M. Hui.
The Value of Sustainable Property Management in Real Estate: Evidence from Hong Kong
Published:
Presented by Jianfu Shen, with co-authors Kwok Yuen Fan, Eddie C.M. Hui and Sik Man Ho.
Environmental Materiality in ESG Strategy: A REIT Perspective
Published:
Keynote speech presented by Kalok Chan, with co-authors Kwok Yuen Fan, Jianfu Shen, Louis T.W. Cheng and Eddie C.M. Hui.
Developer’s ESG Reputation Concern and Green Building Development
Published:
Presented by Jianfu Shen, with co-authors Kwok Yuen Fan, Eddie C.M. Hui and Yan Yee Hung.
Does integrating environmental protection in cadre evaluation system mitigate the race-to-the-bottom competition? Evidence from industrial land conveyance in China
Published:
Presented by Kwok Yuen Fan, with co-authors Jianfu Shen and Eddie C.M. Hui.
Environmental Regulatory Independence and Corporate Environmental Performance
Published:
Presented by Kwok Yuen Fan, with co-authors Xin Chang, Jianfu Shen and Eddie C.M. Hui.
Regulatory Arbitrage by Governments and Land Conveyance
Published:
Presented by Kwok Yuen Fan, with co-authors Eddie C.M. Hui, Lulu Pan and Jianfu Shen.
The Price of Pandemic Fear in the Residential Rental Market: Evidence from Hong Kong
Published:
Presented by Kwok Yuen Fan, with co-authors Jianfu Shen and Eddie C.M. Hui.
An Institutional Perspective of Selective ESG Engagement
Published:
Presented by Lu Yang, with co-authors Weicheng Lu, Jianfu Shen, Louis T.W. Cheng and Kwok Yuen Fan.
Does integrating environmental protection in cadre evaluation system mitigate the race-to-the-bottom competition? Evidence from industrial land conveyance in China
Published:
Presented by Kwok Yuen Fan, with co-authors Jianfu Shen and Eddie C.M. Hui.
Saving Planet Earth or Maximizing Financial Gains: A Global Analysis of Carbon Emissions
Published:
Presented by Kwok Yuen Fan, with co-authors Jianfu Shen and Louis T.W. Cheng.
teaching
Business Valuation and Accounts
Tutorial, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2022
Tutor for undergraduate course.
Construction Economics
Tutorial, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2023
Tutor for undergraduate course.
Multinational Finance
Undergraduate course, Beijing Normal - Hong Kong Baptist University, 2023
Teaching evaluation: 4.93/5.00
Corporate Finance
Undergraduate course, Beijing Normal - Hong Kong Baptist University, 2024
Teaching evaluation: 4.76/5.00
Financial Management
Undergraduate course, Beijing Normal - Hong Kong Baptist University, 2024
Teaching evaluation: 4.96/5.00
Business Research Method
Undergraduate course, Beijing Normal - Hong Kong Baptist University, 2024
Teaching evaluation: 4.89/5.00
Financial Forecasting
Undergraduate course, Beijing Normal - Hong Kong Baptist University, 2025
Teaching evaluation: 4.97/5.00