This thesis focuses on empirical corporate finance by studying several entities' decision-making.

In the first chapter, we investigate how local governments in China borrow from banks and at the end drive up housing prices. The mechanism is that local government financing vehicles could purchase land parcels at cheaper prices from the local governments and inflate the collateral valuation to borrow from banks.

In the second chapter, we study whether negative sentiments shown in the IPO prospectus are related to the long-run returns of IPO firms. We find that there is a positive link and the impact of negative sentiments on retail investor attention could explain this relationship.

In the third chapter, I examine the role that female solidarity plays on internal resource allocation in the context of Chinese listed firms. The results show that the same-gender linkages between female corporate executives and female political leaders positively influence the location of production decisions for Chinese exports. Various heterogeneity analyses support the explanation that female connection mitigates information friction.