Temperature and corporate risk taking in China

This article estimates how temperature change affects corporate risk-taking by using data gathered on Chinese non-financial listed enterprises during 2007 and 2019. We find that temperature significantly hinders risk-taking behaviors, and such a negative effect persists after a series of robustness tests. Moreover, heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that this negative relationship between temperature and risk-taking is more significant for non-state-owned enterprises, small enterprises, and labor-intensive enterprises than other enterprises. The mechanism analysis reveals that the attenuation effects of temperature change on risk taking is mediated by corporate financing constraints.