Ziqiao Wang

“For us moderns, rhetoric means artificiality, insincerity, decadence”. Henri-Irénée Marrou’s opinion resonates with the Platonic claim that rhetoric is cookery in Gorgias. However, in Phaedrus, Plato states that rhetoric is medicine. So, is rhetoric cookery or medicine? This paper asserts that the determinants of rhetoric to be cookery or medicine are its methods and purposes – rhetoric is cookery when used as a trick and rhetoric is medicine when used as an art. First, the definitions of art and trick in Gorgias and Phaedrus are cross-examined. Second, the purposes of art and trick in both Platonic texts are comparatively studied. Third, the different natures of rhetoric dominated in each dialogue are analyzed. For rhetoric, based on false knowledge, is aimed at pleasure, it is a trick, rhetoric is cookery. While for rhetoric based on the true knowledge and kairos is used for persuasion, it is an art, and rhetoric is a medicine.

This paper investigates the impact of changes in formal institutional infrastructure on corporate unethical decision-making. Using the establishment of circuit courts as a quasi-exogenous shock to China’s local judiciary, we find that improved judicial independence and impartiality significantly reduce corporate misconduct. This reduction is primarily observed in misconduct cases related to information disclosure and operational practices. Further analysis reveals that the establishment of circuit courts enhances external disciplinary pressure and fosters corporate ethical self-discipline. Cross-sectional heterogeneity tests show that this impact is more pronounced among firms with stronger political ties, higher information asymmetry, greater operational uncertainty, and weaker local ethical constraints. This study highlights that strengthening formal institutional infrastructure can deter unethical corporate behavior by restoring the flows of regulation and ideology from the external parties to firms, thereby realigning them with societal value.

We examine the impact of a government-initiated CSR project on corporate misconduct using the unique setting of China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) program. The difference-in-differences estimates show that firms participating in the TPA program engage in fewer misconduct activities than do their counterparts. This finding is robust to the parallel trends test, the placebo test, alternative regression specifications, alternative research designs, the reverse causality analysis, and the bivariate probit model with partial observability. Further analysis shows that TPA participation enhances the ability of external financial professionals to monitor performance by stimulating the dissemination of TPA-related incremental information, thereby contributing to the decline in corporate misconduct. The cross-sectional heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of TPA participation on corporate misconduct is more pronounced in firms with higher information asymmetry, with weaker political connections, and with weaker internal governance. Furthermore, we find evidence that TPA participation improves corporate financial performance but does not deteriorate information transparency.