This research examines whether intra-family leadership succession in Chinese family firms influences the decision to allocate more financial assets, the factors that influence second-generation successors in making such decisions, and their impacts on firm performance. The study collected firm and CEO data in which second-generation CEOs’ characteristics were captured, and the findings suggest second-generational involvement is a critical factor in the financialization of assets. Furthermore, the study finds that second-generation CEOs’ characteristics, market competition, and financing constraints have significant effects on second-generation successors when making asset-allocating decisions, and this is particularly true for financing constraints due to capital reserve motivations. The study finds no significant relationship between the financialization of assets in second-generation family firms and the family firms’ performance. This implies that firm innovation does not mean to neglect primary operating business. The results are robust after considering possible endogeneity issues and to various specifications of variables.

In 2009, China launched a new health care reform as it endeavoured to develop a tiered system of disease diagnosis and treatment to promote the integration of medical resources. This was important for improving service capacity and building medical alliances that would eventually lead to improved health service utilisation efficiency. However, while the 2009 reform aimed to provide universal health insurance coverage to all citizens, its overall effect on health service utilisation efficiency remains unclear. We aimed to examine the new health care reform’s mixed effect by applying a longitudinal study using China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data and the difference-in-difference (DID) method to estimate the health reform’s impact on health insurance coverage rate. Then, we studied whether the increase in health insurance coverage rate affected health service utilisation efficiency in China. Our results showed that the increase in insurance coverage rate has indeed made expensive medical services available to low-income individuals. However, it also increased the likelihood of use of hospitals rather than primary care facilities, since there is more insurance cover for outpatient visits, which has led to an increased demand for quality services. This effect has generated a negative impact on health care utilisation which directly pertains to systemic inefficiency. This study thus indicates that China’s latest health reform requires further policies to improve its overall efficiency.

Geopolitical uncertainty imposes a significant impact on stock prices in the stock market. We construct dynamic estimations of geopolitical risk exposure of individual stocks listed in China and examine the relationship between individual geopolitical risk and future stock price crash risk. Our results show that geopolitical risk is a more prominent macro factor than economic policy uncertainty measure that affects stock price crash risk. Investigating the underlying mechanism, we find that firms with highly synchronized stock prices, low analyst coverage ratio, low institutional holdings, and large investor heterogeneity tend to be affected more by geopolitical shocks, leading to future stock price crashes. This study shows the importance of promoting efficient information transmission system and improving corporate governance.