Green finance is critical for adjusting the industrial structure and promoting sustainable economic development; therefore, it is important to understand enterprise green investment and financing behavior. This study aims to investigate the peer effects of enterprise green financing behavior. Based on theoretical analysis, this study selected data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2020 as the research sample. In this study, the fixed effects model was used to examine the peer effects of enterprise green financing. Meanwhile, a moderating effect model was employed to explore the function of the economic policy uncertainty and corporate social responsibility commitment on peer effects of enterprise green financing. The results show that the enterprise’s green financing behavior increases significantly with its peer companies’ (i.e., other companies in the same industry or the same region) green financing behavior, and responds to peer companies’ characteristics in the same industry, indicating peer effects on green financing behavior. The peer effects of enterprise green financing are stronger when the economic policy uncertainty is higher, suggesting that the green financing behavior of peer companies reduces external uncertainty by providing comprehensive and useful information, thus enhancing the enterprise’s information environment and enabling it to make better green financing decisions. Moreover, peer effects are more pronounced when corporate social responsibility commitment is higher, indicating that peer companies’ higher performance in social responsibility can improve their information transparency and build good reputation, increasing the enterprise’s disclosure and reputation costs in the capital market. Therefore, our findings highlight the importance of peer effects in enterprise green financing behavior. To enhance the enterprises’ green financing behavior and promote green finance development, the government should focus on the industrial and regional situation to conduct green finance and promote the overall green financing behavior of enterprises by establishing typical enterprises or pilot cities.

Climate risks are increasingly shaping corporate strategies, raising important considerations for sustainability. This study explores the impact of climate risks on the shadow banking activities of non-financial firms, examining how these risks influence sustainable financial practices. Analyzing a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2022, this study finds that climate risks are negatively associated with shadow banking activities, reflecting a shift towards more sustainable financial management. This finding remains robust through various robustness checks and tests for endogeneity. Heterogeneity results indicate that the reduction in shadow activities due to climate risks is more pronounced in firms with higher dependence on external financing and weaker profitability. Mechanism results suggest that climate risks amplify cross-sectional risks for firms, increasing risk sources. Simultaneously, companies enhance their preference for holding cash to address potential risks. The combined effect of these factors leads to a decrease in shadow banking activities among non-financial firms, aligning with a shift towards sustainability. This study provides new insights into understanding how climate risks drive sustainable financial decision-making and enriches the research on the determinants of firm financialization.

Intelligent transformation plays a crucial role in advancing sustainable development in manufacturing while also enhancing the information environment. This study examines the role of intelligent transformation in China’s manufacturing sector, spanning theoretical and empirical dimensions and being anchored in the context of capital market information efficiency. The theoretical framework highlights how intelligent transformation mitigates information asymmetry, aligning a firm’s valuation with its intrinsic value, thereby elevating the information efficiency of capital markets. Leveraging annual reports from China’s A-share manufacturing firms, this study employs textual analysis to construct indicators assessing the extent of intelligent transformation across these entities. The empirical findings of this study harmonize with the theoretical constructs. Notably, intelligent transformation emerges as a pivotal driver in enhancing information efficiency in capital markets, substantiated by a negative correlation between intelligent transformation and stock price synchronicity within the manufacturing domain. This correlation withstands a battery of robustness tests and endogeneity treatment. The mechanism driving this transformative impact lies in intelligent transformation’s ability to enhance productivity and magnify market attention, thereby positively influencing capital market information efficiency. The insights not only provide empirical support but also offer practical guidance for improving real-world company operations and developing high-quality capital markets.

Underwriters play a pivotal role in the IPO process. Information entropy, a tool for measuring the uncertainty and complexity of information, has been widely applied to various issues in complex networks. Information entropy can quantify the uncertainty and complexity of nodes in the network, providing a unique analytical perspective and methodological support for this study. This paper employs a bipartite network analysis method to construct the relationship network between underwriters and accounting firms, using the centrality of underwriters in the network as a measure of their influence to explore the impact of underwriters’ influence on the distribution of interests and audit outcomes. The findings indicate that a more pronounced influence of underwriters significantly increases the ratio of underwriting fees to audit fees. Higher influence often accompanies an increase in abnormal underwriting fees. Further research reveals that companies underwritten by more influential underwriters experience a decline in audit quality. Finally, the study reveals that a well-structured audit committee governance and the rationalization of market sentiments can mitigate the negative impacts of underwriters’ influence. The innovation of this paper is that it enriches the content related to underwriters by constructing the relationship network between underwriters and accounting firms for the first time using a bipartite network through the lens of information entropy. This conclusion provides new directions for thinking about the motives and possibilities behind financial institutions’ cooperation, offering insights for market regulation and policy formulation.