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This paper examines the digital economy's impact on rural household consumption upgrading. Existing studies remain mainly at the level of rural consumption scale and rarely address the consumption structure. The specific impact of the development of the digital economy on rural consumption upgrading and its mechanisms of action deserves in-depth study and consideration. We analyzed the related content using the fixed-effect model, the instrumental variable method (IV), the mediation effect model, and three-year panel data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). This study found that, at the scale level, the digital economy contributes to expanding rural household consumption. At the structural level, the digital economy significantly increases the share of enjoyment-oriented household consumption but has no significant effect on development-oriented consumption. Income is an important transmission mechanism for the digital economy to improve rural household consumption. Besides, the impact of the digital economy on the upgrading of rural consumption varies according to income level and age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The superiority of BWM over other weighting methods for obtaining the weight values of the attributes is that it achieves high-confidence results with a reasonable number of pairwise comparisons. Although the best-worst method (BWM) is a well-known multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method that has been successfully utilized in almost all scientific areas to solve challenging real-life problems, no research has comprehensively examined the state-of-the-art in this regard. The present study depicts a detailed overview of publications concerned with BWM during the period 2015–2022. Based on the information obtained from the Scopus database, this work presents a big picture of current research on BWM. In other words, this paper analyzes the existing literature about BWM and identifies thematic contexts, application areas, emerging trends, and remaining research gaps to shed light on future research agendas aligning with those gaps. Further, the most recent BWM research is analyzed in the top ten scientific areas, from engineering to materials science. “Engineering”, “computer science”, and “business, management, and accounting” are the hottest fields of BWM research. China is the most active country regarding “engineering” and “computer science”, whereas India is the leader in “business, management, and accounting”. The study also reveals that there are still many research gaps in BWM research. The big picture taken in this study will not only showcase the current situation of BWM research but will also positively impact the direction and quality of new research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's constantly rapid economic growth accompanying by a low overall inflation has long been mysterious in macroeconomics. The core purpose of this paper is to solve this puzzle. Therefore, we integrate overdetermined set of equations into a MUCSVO model to explore the volatility mechanism of the overall inflation from a sectoral perspective. Our key findings include: 1) the hedging effect of sectoral inflation fluctuations principally accounts for China's long-run stable overall inflation; 2) the main contradiction of China's inflation has been shifting from high price levels in the traditional food and residence categories to rising prices in the health care category; 3) as the proportions of inflation in the food and residence categories fall steadily, sectoral inflation weights become more evenly distributed. In conclusion, China's overall inflation and deflation will be much less likely to occur, while inflation is still of sectoral imbalance. Unusual price fluctuations in the food and health care categories, which are highly relevant to basic living standards of the low-income group, deserve close attention in particular. Overall, besides solving the puzzle of China's low inflation, our model is applicable to economies that do not publish inflation weights, which is a useful extension of core inflation measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-quality innovation is an inevitable requirement for high-quality economic development, and an accurate grasp of the regional distribution characteristics of the level of highquality innovation development (HQID) can better understand and simulate high-quality innovation. This paper constructs a dataset of high-value inventions based on the Chinese patent database using textual analysis methods and the criteria for High-Quality Inventions proposed by the State Intellectual Property Office, and explores inter-provincial variability and convergence by using the Theil index, α convergence, and β convergence. This paper finds that High-Quality Inventions are significantly and positively correlated with various indicators measuring the quality and value of patents. In general, the overall level of HQID is on an upward trend with clear differences among provinces, which shows a regional unbalanced but overall rapid development. From the regional differences of HQID, the regional differences of HQID have been narrowed, mainly within the region. In terms of the convergence of HQID, α convergence, absolute β convergence, conditional β convergence, and club convergence exist nationally and within each region, which indicates that the gap between the national and regional levels of HQID has been narrowing over time. HQID has a positive promotion effect on the relationship between HQID and economic growth, economic growth rate, and total factor productivity. High-quality innovation can improve the quality of input factors, cultivate new dynamic energy for economic development, and then promote high-quality economic development. In the context of the shift of IP work from pursuing quantity to improving quality, the scientific understanding of high-quality innovation, the development status, and the differences of regional innovation high-quality development is of great significance for improving innovation quality and efficiency, and effectively supporting high-quality economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fintech is driving the revolution of finance and profoundly affecting the development of the financial sector. However, few studies examined how commercial banks' fintech innovation affects total factor productivity (TFP). To build up the fintech index of commercial banks, we use web crawler technology to accumulate news related to the fintech innovation of commercial banks in Baidu news. We use the panel data of 72 banks in China from 2010 to 2020 to explore the impacts and mechanisms of fintech on commercial banks' TFP. The results show that fintech innovation effectively improves TFP after a series of robustness tests. Further, we find that fintech innovation can improve commercial banks' TFP by promoting innovations of financial products, increasing risk control capability, reducing cost, and improving profit. Also, the utility of fintech is more significant in banks with more assets, facilities, and human capital, which means that fintech innovation creates a "bigger is better" mindset. Meanwhile, the result of quantile regression shows that the higher the fintech innovation, the more significant the increase in TFP, which further reveals that there is 'too big to fail' among commercial banks under digitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, sustainable economic performance (SEP) has been the foremost requirement due to uncertainty of the economy and environment. This issue needs best practices and governance and also needs researchers' focus. Thereby, the paper aims to assess green supply chain (SC) practices, green SC governance and their role in the achievement of SEP in the manufacturing sector of China. The paper also attempts to explore the moderating effect of organizational support in proposed framework. PLS-SEM model was employed to test model's reliability and validity. The very same method has applied to test the linkage among outlined constructs. Obtained results confirms the moderating impact of organizational support among traditional governance, relational governance and the achievement of SEP in the manufacturing industry in China. This article provides guidelines to the regulators in developing policies related to the achievement of SEP using green SC practices and governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social sustainability is a global necessity because of environmental and economic uncertainty. This issue needs the foremost solution, and for this purpose, researchers' and policymakers' emphasis is required. Thereby, the present paper investigates sustainable energy technologies such as solar and hydroelectric, eco-innovation and EG and their impact on social sustainability in China. The study also used industrialization and inflation as the control variables in the time span of 1981 to 2020. The present study also applied the Dynamic Auto-regressive Distributed Lags (DARDL) model to evaluate the association between the outlined variables. The results indicated that sustainable energy technologies such as solar and hydroelectric, eco-innovation, economic growth, industrialization and inflation are significantly associated with social sustainability in China. The present paper offers standard policies to regulators in making regulations related to maintaining social sustainability by using effective sustainable energy technologies and eco-innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the policy package pilot implemented in Hubei Province, China, in April 2020 as a natural experiment, we use the synthetic control (SC) and synthetic difference in differences (SDID) methods to estimate the impact of the Chinese government's support policy on the economic resilience and to analyze the mechanisms by which it impacts. This study finds that the policy package has contributed to the growth of economic resilience in the pilot provinces, with the policy package increasing the average economic resilience of the pilot provinces by 0.062 compared to their potential resilience. The validity and robustness of the above conclusions are objectively confirmed by multidimensional quantitative outcomes such as placebo tests, ranking tests, and replacements in calculating resilience. The mechanism analysis shows that the investment in real estate development, the stimulus for consumption, and the core industry development are virtual channels for the policy package to promote economic resilience growth in the pilot provinces. Moreover, traditional investment in transportation fixed assets plays a minor role. This paper quantitatively corroborates the academic idea that government governance capacity affects regional economic resilience (RER), and research can provide empirical support for regional economic recovery and policy support under a major crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological efficiency (EE) provides much reference for formulating appropriate regional economic, social and environmental policies to promote sustainable development. Interactive subsystems of economy, society and environment within EE system have been considered in this paper. By innovatively integrating the merits of two advanced economic research methods (global super efficiency network data envelopment analysis (GSE-NDEA) and panel vector autoregression (PVAR) and updating the EE evaluation indicator system by following the new features of sustainable development in the recent China, this paper comprehensively evaluates EE by drawing evidence from 3 regions in China during the period of 2011–2020, and further reveals how the three subsystems within EE system interact to achieve EE enhancement. The findings show EE and its three subsystems’ trend, the major constrains of EE development, the regional discrepancies in EE progress, and the interactions among the subsystems of economy-society-environment within the EE system in different regions of China. The policy implications are proposed accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital economy is a great route to promote the efficient utilization of natural resources and promote sustainability due to its high-tech, rapid growth, extensive penetration, deep integration and other characteristics. Existing study on the influencing factors of the digital economy is not deep enough and lacks the analysis on the relationship structure of factors influencing the digital economy, which is not conducive for an overall grasp of the digital economy. To correctly understand how to better develop the digital economy, this paper studies its influencing factors and the relationships between them. Based on the time-series data of China from 2002 to 2018, grey correlation analysis was applied to calculate the correlation between these influencing factors and the digital economy, and determine the major influencing factors of digital economy development in China. The Granger causality test and a review of existing research were used to judge the interrelationship of various factors. The interpretative structure model was utilized to determine the relationship structure of the main factors affecting the development of China's digital economy. The results show that the number of digital talents, state of the technology market, and degree of digitalization are direct influencing factors of the digital economy. The results help to better understand the development of the digital economy and will enable the implementation of policies to improve towards more sustainable cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on calculating resilience index of 282 cities in China from 2012 to 2019, to analysis the regional differences and random convergence. We use the entropy method to calculate the urban resilience index, adopt the Dagum Gini coefficient method to analyze the regional differences and the sources, explore the variation coefficients method and beta convergence model to diagnose the convergence mechanism. The conclusions are: (1) The urban resilience in China is at a medium and low level with a stable growth tendency, with a significant regional unbalance of "higher in east, and lower in other regions". As the sub-resilience, there is a big gap in the regional difference of the resilience structure with good performance in social resilience and economic resilience, poor in ecological resilience and infrastructure resilience. (2) The Gini coefficient of urban resilience continuously decreases with the regional unbalance narrowing accordingly. The Gini coefficients in different regions have a phased convergence tendency, and the hypervariable density contribution and intra-regional differences contribution are the main sources of differences in urban resilience. (3) The urban resilience in China and eastern region has s convergence, while China and all regions have significant absolute ß and conditional ß convergence. Therefore, this paper proposes to continuously accelerate the urban resilient construction, make up for the shortcomings, and narrow the regional development gap, to promote the healthy and orderly development of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty is a challenge faced by all countries worldwide. This paper focuses on a factor that has been less well documented: the consumption loss of farmer households caused by the fluctuation of rural public expenditure. Based on large-scale micro household data and climate data, the instrumental variable estimation results show that every 1% fluctuation of rural public expenditure will lead to a 0.113% decrease in farm household consumption. In addition, the fluctuation of rural public expenditure is also a main cause of long-term consumption loss of farmer households. Furthermore, it was found that the impact of rural public expenditure fluctuation on consumption loss is of certain spatial heterogeneity. The worse the spatial environment is, the more serious the consumption loss will be. The policy suggestion of this paper is to ensure a stable scale of rural public expenditure through the central transfer payment, so as to improve the ability of local governments to implement counter cyclical public policies, and transform local finance (industrial investment) into public finance (infrastructure and education) to improve the local space environment. Overall, this study reveals the impact of spatial externality on rural poverty from the perspective of public expenditure fluctuation, and at the same time provides empirical evidence for a better evaluation of the relationship between development and poverty and support for rational regional anti-poverty policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism exerts a great effect on the modern economy and relies largely on the flow of people facilitated by high-quality transportation infrastructure. Applying a spatial econometric method, this paper investigates the effect of high-speed rail (HSR) on tourism expansion in China from the view of the spatial spillover effect. Based on a 276 Chinese cities’ panel dataset over 2005–2019, a positive role of HSR in tourism expansion is observed. Compared with cities unconnected to the HSR network, cities accessible by HSR experienced a 22% increase in tourism revenue and a 38% rise in tourist arrivals. In addition, the connection of a city to the HSR network also exerts a great spatial spillover role in the increase of tourism revenue and arrivals in peripheral cities which are not directly connected by HSR. The research findings offer important insights on the relationship between transportation infrastructure and tourism with significant policy implications regarding tourism development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of knowledge innovation and technology innovation provides vitality for social science and technology innovation. China leaps into the front ranks of the world in the 2021 Global Innovation Index (GII). Therefore, this research takes China's theoretical-application innovation as the research object and empirically analyzes measure the innovation efficiency of knowledge innovation dominated by universities and technological innovation dominated by enterprises in China, as well as the gravity-center migration trajectory. The results show that the ranking of overall efficiency of theoretical innovation-application innovation is eastern region > central region > western region. Knowledge innovation presents a drag on overall efficiency, while technology innovation offers a contribution to overall efficiency. In the analysis of PIE (R&D personnel of industrial enterprises above a designated size) variables, the efficiency value is relatively low. The peak value of kernel density increases in the eastern, central and western regions, namely the concentration degree of theoretical innovation-application innovation effi- ciency in China has risen. The gravity center of each stage migrates to the eastern region, meaning the efficiency value of China's theoretical innovation and application innovation increases more significantly in the eastern region. From the perspective of knowledge innovation and technology innovation, this paper puts forward suggestions for China and provides some references for other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the social welfare effect of China’s largest online ride-sharing platform. Under the plausible assumption that consumers would change from traditional transportation to online ride-sharing when the marginal benefit of saved time outgrows the additional cost, we calculate the distribution of implied wage rate of passengers. We then use the passenger wage rate to calculate the social welfare generated by the decrease in waiting time and the reduction of waiting uncertainty brought about by the ride-sharing platform. Our estimate suggests that the ride-sharing platform created a total of 130.5 billion Yuan of social welfare in the three years between 2016 and 2018, and the consumer surplus and producer surplus created by an average transaction are 5.4 Yuan and 2.5 Yuan, respectively. The robustness test finds that our results were insensitive to the assumed risk aversion coefficient in the model, the subsample number used for each city, and the inclusion of nonlinear terms in the model. Alternative hypotheses, such as learning effect, seem unable to explain our result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The green credit policy (GCP) is an institutional framework aimed at guiding enterprises towards green transformation and promoting high-quality development, which serves as a crucial tool for supporting the establishment of a green technology innovation system. In this study, utilizing the green credit guidelines as a quasi-natural experiment and constructed a continuous difference-in-difference (DID) model, examines the impact of GCP impact on enterprise green innovation and its internal mechanisms by analyzing data from Chinese A-share listed companies between 2006 and 2021. Our findings indicate that the GCP had a significant impact on enterprise green innovation, inhibiting companies from independently developing green innovation while promoting joint green innovation with other institutions; These results were robust and consistent, even after conducting several sensitivity analyses; This mechanism indicate that the commercial credit plays an important regulatory role in the process of GCP affecting green innovation of enterprises and the financing constraints act as an intermediary factor in the process of GCP affecting green innovation. Based on our research, we offer policy recommendations aimed at improving the GCP and fostering a market-oriented green technology innovation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploration employs the generalized supremum augmented Dickey-Fuller (GSADF) approach to explore whether there are digital tech bubbles in China. The empirical results suggest the existence of multiple digital tech bubbles, which are mostly accompanied by an excessive rise. However, the appearance of digital tech bubbles is curbed since 2016, mainly due to the increasing mature regulations in relevant fields. Besides, bubbles in different digital technologies are similar during the same period, which could be attributed to the close relationships among them. Additionally, we further investigate the factors influencing the explosive behaviours, and find that the Chinese stock market positively affects digital tech bubbles, while economic policy uncertainties and situations negatively influence such explosive behaviors. In the context of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, these conclusions provide valuable implications to achieve the target of constructing a "Digital China" by becoming moderately cautious about potential bubbles in the digital tech industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trend of market-oriented land transaction scheme and the optimal allocation of land resources have become two important components of ecological sustainable development. However, the relevance of analyzing effects of land marketization on ecological and environmental development cannot be overemphasized. The ecological and environmental effects of land marketization are the focus of this paper. We begin by developing a theoretical framework to investigate how land marketization affects eco-efficiency. Moreover, we develop a data envelopment analysis model to measure eco-efficiency. We empirically investigate the effect of land marketization on eco-efficiency using a data set of 251 cities in China over the period of 2003 to 2018. Both theoretical and empirical results show that the land marketization exerts positive effects on eco-efficiency. Specifically, a 100% increase in land marketization level leads to a 2.4 percent increase in eco-efficiency. The heterogeneous effects and spatial effects of the land marketization on eco-efficiency are also examined. Besides, the endogeneity issues are also discussed using instrumental variable approach. Finally, the mechanism analysis shows that land marketization improves eco-efficiency primarily through improving efficiency change, best practice change and technology gap change, respectively. The main conclusions are confirmed by several robustness checks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) as an efficient mode to provide public services through the government and social capital's cooperation has been in China for more than 30 years. In this paper, we propose an approach to evaluate PPP's advancement in different areas based on the subjective and objective information fusion. At first, we establish an index system from the perspective of the stakeholder. Then, considering that double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (DHHFLTS) that has two hierarchies of linguistic term sets can describe the subjective linguistic information more accurately, it is applied in the paper to depict the subjective information. By applying the entropy of the DHHFLTS, a programming model is proposed to derive the attribute weight through combining subjective evaluation with objective data. In addition, we develop the double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic PROMETHEE combining the subjective and objective information (DHHFL-PROMETHEE-S&O) method. At last, we illustrate the index system and the method with the PPP's advancement evaluation problem, and we can find the best choice based on the ranking result. Meanwhile, we also find that the objective information and the subjective information are complementary in the evaluation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate analysis of technological innovation mechanism in different regions is the key to promoting China's technological innovation, economic transformation and upgrading. This paper collected statistical data of high-tech enterprises in 27 provinces in China from 2009 to 2016, established a novel PSO-GRNN model, and applied sensitivity analysis to explore the influencing factors and regional differences of enterprise technological innovation in Eastern, Central and Western China. The empirical results showed that the influencing factors were innovation investment, market environment, government support and foreign technology spillover sorting by impact size. Innovation investment was the decisive factor of technological innovation, but innovation resources mainly concentrated on Eastern China, severely insufficient in Central and Western China. Market environment was favorable to Eastern and Central China, but unfavorable to Western China, which restricted greatly the development of Western China. The principalagent problem of state-owned enterprise and the crowding out effect of government research and development funds jointly led to the negative influence of government support on technological innovation. Foreign technology spillover had significant positive effects on technological innovation in Western China. This paper clarifies some disputes about influencing factors of technological innovation and provides a new research perspective for related issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the acceleration of world economic integration and enterprise management globalization, the advent of Internet of things based on Internet and information technology has become inevitable. The Internet of things also brings about a cascading effect between firms' shadow banking behaviour and bank connections. This study investigates the relationship between firms' shadow banking behaviour and bank connections by analysing a sample of Chinese listed firms in Internet of things industry. The results show that bank connections eliminate information asymmetry between banks and firms, bank connections are positively related to firms' long-term debt, and as long-term debt increases, firms' shadow banking behaviour also increases. Furthermore, this finding shows very strong robustness, the empirical analysis provides sufficient evidence that firms' shadow banking behaviour increased with bank connections in Internet of things industry. In addition, the evidence also shows that the tendency of shadow banking behaviour is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs) than state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by sub-sample sensitivity analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since China is facing a complicated international situation and sustainable development requirement at the same time, this paper examines the effects of external uncertainty, international sanctions, on green innovations by adopting the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation for 30 provinces (autonomous region and municipalities) from 1997 to 2019. We employ green inventions as the dependent variable and 5 indicators of sanctions (including unilateral, plurilateral, multilateral, economic, and intensity) as the main explanatory variables alternately. For further robustness tests, we use substitution variable green utility models, adopt sub-samples in different regions, change the empirical methodology, and add omitted variables. We also examine the mechanism effects of three possible channels. The conclusion is that plurilateral and economic sanctions both present significant negative impacts on green innovations, whereas China was not affected by unilateral or multilateral sanctions during the sample period. GDP, interpersonal globalization, and environment are proved to be the possible channels through which sanctions affect green innovations. Our research findings should assist Chinese-listed companies suffering from sanctions to make better responses on their way to green innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to assess the dynamics of the innovation divide between China and the Triad, as well as to determine the factors that influence its evolution. The Triad consists of three economies traditionally dominating the world economy: the United States, the European Union, and Japan. The methodology involves the decomposition of the innovativeness of the economy into innovation capability, innovation position, and the relationship between them, which indicates the efficiency of the innovation system. The analysis of dynamic indexes and σ-convergence in all these components confirms that the global economy has been gradually losing clear polarization into innovation leaders, found among developed countries and innovation followers, which have traditionally been associated with developing nations. In addition to demonstrating fast improvement in the Summary Innovation Index of China towards the Triad, the paper has a clear contribution by showcasing China's improvement through the decomposed factors of the innovativeness of the economy. In comparison with the Triad, China has a proportionally higher innovation position and efficiency of the innovation system and a lower level of innovation capacity. This demonstrates its dependence on external sources of innovation and international technology transfer, e.g. through foreign direct investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of environmental regulation on regional environmental efficiency convergence using the fixed effects model and threshold regression model. The results show that the differences in environmental efficiency have a convergence trend in China, as well as in the eastern, central and western regions. The effect of environmental regulation on regional environmental efficiency is inhibition first and then promotion, research and development investment and outward foreign direct investment have a positive transmission effect; when environmental regulation intensity exceeds a certain threshold, the growth rate of environmental efficiency in the central and western regions will be significantly higher than that in the eastern regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we apply an RV coefficient network to investigate the topological structure of China's new energy stock market via daily prices of 60 component stocks of CSI (China Stock Index) New Energy Index spanning the period January 4, 2012 to March 29, 2019. Compared with the Pearson correlation coefficient, RV coefficient can better reflect the similarity between stocks from the perspective of multi-dimensional data. The empirical result indicates that (1) the scale-free characteristics of China's new energy stock market are not significant; (2) the new energy storage is the leading sub-sector of the new energy sector and the new energy interactive equipment plays a connecting role between renewable energy production and new energy storage; (3) the most influential stock in the network is Group DMEGC Magnetics Co., Ltd., Xiamen Tungsten Co., Ltd. and GEM Co., Ltd. play an important role in the network connection. These findings are of great significance to understand the interaction between Chinese new energy stocks and the pricing mechanism of stocks. The authority should pay more attention to the new energy storage industry. Investor's portfolios can be optimized according to the influence assessment of stocks and sub-sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to reflect the grey information coverage and complex interactions effect in digital economy development. Therefore, a multi-attribute decision making method based on the grey interaction relational degree of the normal cloud matrix (GIRD-NCM) model is proposed. First, the original information coverage grey numbers are transformed into normal cloud matrixes, and then a novel Minkowski distance between normal clouds is proposed by using different information principles. Second, the GIRD-NCM model is established according to the Choquet fuzzy integral and grey relational degree. Finally, the dynamic comprehensive evaluation of digital economy development in China from 2013 to 2020 is conducted. The implementation, availability, and feasibility of the GIRD-NCM model are verified by comparative analysis with three existing evaluation models. The empirical findings reveal a stable growth trend in China’s digital economy, with an annual growth rate of 7.87%, however, there are notable regional development disparities. The change in interaction degree has no effect on the rankings of provinces that are in the lead or have a moderately high level of digital economy development, but has a positive and negative impact on the rankings of these provinces with high and low levels of digital economy development, respectively [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, the research focus on Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) is mainly on the economic consequences of ESG performance, and research on the influencing factors of ESG overall performance is lacking. The top management team plays a decisive role in the decision of ESG investment. To improve ESG performance and promote sustainable development of enterprises. This research explores the influence of different types of top management team faultlines on the ESG performance by using the panel fixed effects model from 2015 to 2019 for the samples of 347 listed enterprises in China, and tests the moderating effect of management incentives. Results show that the relationship-type top management team faultlines is positively correlated with the ESG performance, whereas the task-type faultlines is negatively correlated with the ESG performance. Management compensation incentive will weaken the positive effect of the relationship-type faultlines on the ESG performance, and the moderating effect of the task-type faultlines on the ESG performance is insignificant. Management equity incentive will strengthen the positive effect of the relationship-type faultlines on the ESG performance and weaken the negative effect of the task-type faultlines. Our findings provide a new perspective for how to improve the ESG performance of listed companies by the optimization of corporate governance structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid energy consumption increase in China's non-ferrous metal industry (NMI), there are inequalities in energy-related CO2 emissions among the sub-sectors. In this paper, a meta-frontier decomposition analysis was proposed for decomposing inter-structural low-carbon economic development inequalities among 29 sub-sectors in China's NMI from 2004 to 2018 into 11 components, including four new factors, i.e., energy- and output-oriented technological gaps and scale economies. In addition, an I(CI) index is constructed to measure the inter-inequalities of low-carbon economic development among NMI and decomposed from the static and dynamic perspectives, respectively. Results show that: (1) I(CI) index was in a downward trend during 2004-2010, while remained stable during 2010-2018; (2) the energy-oriented technological gap (ETG) was the key promoters to increase I(CI); (3) the potential energy intensity (PEI) was the primary inhibiting factor for I(CI); (4) the government can reduce the inter-inequalities by narrowing the technological gap and reducing potential energy intensity in the energy market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high-quality development of regional economic system is inseparable from the collective efforts of multiple economic sectors. Increasing attention has been paid to the environmental performance evaluation of different administrative levels or economic sectors, but integrated research is scarce. Taking the three industries (the primary, secondary and tertiary industries) into account, this paper proposes a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with parallel network structure to assess the environmental performance of 30 provinces in China from integrative perspective of efficiency and productivity. Then, the Tobit model is adopted to investigate the effects of external factors on the environmental performance. The results show that environmental efficiency of Chinese economy is only 0.4436 during 2010-2019 and the performance of the secondary industry is the highest, followed by the tertiary and the primary industries. Moreover, the environmental efficiency of eastern region is far higher than that of the central or western regions. Technological progress is the main driver of environmental productivity improvement for China's economic system. Most of the external factors such as energy structure and technology innovation, have different effects on the environmental performance of different regions. Finally, several targeted policy implications are suggested for improving the environmental performance of China's economic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unprecedented downward pressure of China's economic growth trend raises several questions, including what the current level of China's long-term economic growth trend is, and what drives and how to inhibit the downward trend. Therefore, we develop a time-varying mixedfrequency dynamic factor model using data with different start dates to measure the trend, and perform a real-time decomposition of changes in the trend. We find that the trend has entered a downward stage since 2007, left a high-speed phase since 2012, and stepped in an accelerated downward stage since 2018. The current level of the trend is about 4%. However, the lower limit of the 90% confidence interval is below 2%, which is lower than natural rate level. Additionally, decelerated capital deepening, diminishing demographic dividend and technological recession all drive the downward trend. Compared to the relatively weak push-down effects of capital deepening and demographic dividend that are less than two percentage points, the downward trend is mainly driven by technological recession. Given that technological progress is unlikely to improve significantly in the short run, mitigating the mismatch between technological progress and obsolete capital, revitalizing existing capital stock, and increasing the efficiency of technology utilization become more feasible means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a generalized form of both intuitionistic fuzzy set and Pythagorean fuzzy sets, the q-rung orthopair fuzzy set (q-ROFS) has strong ability to handle uncertain or imprecision decisionmaking problems. This paper aims to introduce a new multiple criteria decision making method based on the original gain and lost dominance score (GLDS) method for investment evaluation. To do so, we first propose a new distance measure of q-rung orthopair fuzzy numbers (q-ROFNs), which takes into account the hesitancy degree of q-ROFNs. Subsequently, two methods are developed to determine the weights of DMs and criteria, respectively. Next, the original GLDS method is improved from the aspects of dominance flows and order scores of alternatives to address the multiple criteria decision making problems with q-ROFS information. Finally, a case study concerning the investment evaluation of the BE angle capital is given to illustrate the applicability and superiority of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

House purchasing has become an important asset allocation choice for most families in China. House price fluctuation is also one of the important factors that leads to systematic risks in the financial market, which might cause economic crises and then reduce consumption. Since China formally established the dual-pillar management framework of macroprudential policy in 2019, it has played a crucial role in maintaining the stability of house prices. This article employs the mediating effect model to comb the internal mechanism of the interaction between macroprudential policies, housing prices, and household consumption and test by the panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2004 to 2019. Experience implies that macroprudential policy can not only stabilize consumption demand directly and effectively, but also affect consumption indirectly through the cross of the real estate market and the credit market. Further research has also found that macroprudential policies may fail between regions with higher GDP and high-income groups. This finding will contribute to research on the relationship between macroprudential policies and real economics. In addition, it would be helpful in making policies to increase consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic freedom has central importance among the nations, however, Chinese economic freedom index declining continuously, leading to the several issues. Particularly, economic freedom is low among the Chinese female population. The world average of economic freedom index in 2022 based on 175 countries is 60 index points, but the Chinese index is 48. To address this issue, this study introduced green microfinance institutions based on Mayoux’s Feminist Empowerment Theory. The objective of this study is to examine the role of green microfinance institutions in women economic freedom in China. A survey questionnaire is used to collect data from female clients of microfinance institutions. 315 respondents responded to the survey and data analysis is carried out by using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results of the study identified that, green microfinance institution’s services such as credit and insurance can facilitate green micro enterprises. The promotion of green micro enterprises causes to increase women economic security, leading to the economic freedom. Additionally, green microfinance policy is a critical factor to promote the positive relationship between green microfinance institution’s services and women economic freedom. Findings of this are helpful for the practitioners to increase women economic freedom in China by providing various services of green microfinance institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-carbon transformation of the economy is the inevitable orientation of socialism with Chinese characteristics to high-quality development in the new era, while the Chinese decentralized development model determines that the competition of local governments in China is an important factor influencing the green technological innovation on low-carbon transformation of the economy. How to achieve coordinated economic growth and ecological environment has become a problem for local governments. Data from a Chinese provincial panel covering the years 2007–2019 is used to investigate the effects of heterogeneous local government competition (Comp), namely, economic, ecological and service competitions on economic low-carbon transition, and moderating effects of heterogeneous government competition and green technology innovation (GTECH) on the low-carbon economic transition (LCT). The results reveal that there are substantial disparities in the consequences of heterogeneous government competition on low-carbon economic transition (LCT). Among them, economic competition significantly dampens economic low-carbon transition (LCT), and ecological competition and service competition significantly boost economic low-carbon transition (LCT). After performing robustness checks, these results continue to be strongly convincing. The study of moderating effects shows that economic competition can dampen the positive influence of green technology innovation (GTECH) to the economic low-carbon transition (LCT). However, ecological competition and service competition facilitate the promoting effect of green technology innovation on economic low-carbon transition (LCT). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The technological progress in favor of energy conservation and emission reduction will help increase green total factor productivity and thus mitigate China's environmental problems. This study adopts the data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the total factor productivity (TFP) index of the Chinese three urban agglomerations from 2005 to 2014, and the reasons for its changes are also analyzed. Furthermore, the biases of technological progress from two perspectives of inputs and outputs (including the undersirable output, measured by CO2 emissions) are estimated. Main results are: (i) During the sample period, the TFP of the three urban agglomerations continues to increase, and the main driving force is technological change. (ii) From the perspective of inputs, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei prefers to use electricity, whereas the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations tend to use capital and save labor. (iii) From the perspective of outputs, the technological progress of the three major urban agglomerations is significantly biased toward GDP with a slight difference among the three urban agglomerations, which means its technological progress is conducive to reduce CO2 intensity, symbolizing low carbon development. From this point of view, their economic growth shows a low-carbon trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of various factors on the level of non-performing loans (NPL) and, to determine the moderating role of efficiency on the relationship between different factors and NPL in China. The current study addressed four important factors to examine the role in relation to the NPL. These factors include; return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), economic sustainability and political instability index. Furthermore, the moderating role of efficiency is addressed between these factors and NPL. Secondary data is used in this study to consider the empirical results. Secondary data related to ROA, ROE, economic sustainability and political instability index is collected from different sources. Consistent with the literature, we found significant effect of ROA, ROE, economic sustainability and political instability index on NPL. Banking sector of China is majorly influenced by these factors due to the effect on NPLs. Furthermore, the efficiency has contribution to the NPLs as moderating variable. Results of this study are helpful for the management of banking industry to resolve various issues related to NPLs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using panel data from 269 Chinese cities, this study examined the impact of housing prices (HP) on cities' innovation capacity (IC) in China. Firstly, a fixed effect model was used to analyze the effect of HP on cities' IC in China, revealing that HP positively impacts cities' IC. Next, several robustness tests were conducted to verify the finding's reliability. Thirdly, the analysis empirically tested mediating mechanisms between HP and cities' IC in China. The results show that, on the one hand, higher HP can improve cities' IC by attracting talents and stimulating the growth of local fiscal revenue. On the other, increasing HP can inhibit cities' IC in China by attracting funds into the real estate market and impeding residents' consumption ability. Finally, the heterogeneous nature of the HP-IC link in China was further explored. This study's results provide recommendations for the government of China on how to promote cities' innovation performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk-taking is a key factor in corporate competitive advantage, and economic development. The type of strategic configuration that can drive high-level risk-taking is a problem worthy of attention. This study takes 2,219 listed firms in China as samples and performs a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore the linkage effect and path choice of strategic change, corporate social responsibility, innovation, diversification, and financialization with corporate risk-taking (CRT). It finds that: (a) a single strategy does not constitute a necessary condition for high-level CRT; (b) three types of adaptive schemes exist for high-level CRT, among which the risk-taking level is the highest under the path of "Innovation, diversification, and financialization"; and (c) the driving paths of CRT in different regions, industries, and ownership show obvious differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China’s total R&D funding has increased from CNY 89.6 billion in 2000 to CNY 2,442.6 billion in 2020 or by 27 times in 20 years. Although a large amount of literature has analyzed China’s R&D efficiency, scant studies have targeted second-stage economic and environmental efficiencies and rarely considered both university and industrial R&D. This research thus uses the Parallel Two-stage Undesirable Dynamic Model to evaluate the R&D efficiencies of universities and industry and examines their impact on the economy and the environment. The empirical results are as follows. 1) There are differences in the R&D and environmental efficiency of various regions in China with the eastern part being the highest, the western part second, and the central part the lowest. 2) The input index efficiency of universities is generally higher than that of industry. 3) The linkage effect between universities and the local economy and the environment is higher than that of industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the digital economy has become a new way to respond to the epidemic impact effectively. With the innovative breakthrough of information and communication technology, the digital and real economies are deeply integrated. The digital economy has become an important driving force for the transformation of economic momentum and development. Panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2010 to 2019 were selected for analysis. In the first stage, the study constructed the evaluation index system of digital economy development. Then, the quality development index of the digital economy is calculated by using the entropy method. Finally, the main factors of digital economy development are analysed by spatial measurement. The research results prove that: (1) the development of China’s digital economy in 2010–2019 has gradually increased; (2) the development of the digital economy has a positive correlation between regions and has a spatial spillover effect; (3) the level of economic development, urbanisation, government support, industrial structure, and the level of opening will promote the development of the digital economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With rapid global development, outward foreign direct investment (FDI) has become a controversial issue, mainly focused on whether it is helpful to domestic green innovation, especially in developing countries. How does outward FDI reverse spillover technology to China, and does China’s innate endowment restrict it? The relevant mechanisms remain unclear. Therefore, this study investigated the heterogeneous effect of absorptive capacity on the impact path of reverse technology spillovers of outward FDI on green innovation in China. A fixed-effects panel model and stepwise regression analyze the direct relationship between outward FDI and green innovation and the mediating relationship of absorptive capacity. Threshold analysis reveals the mutation point of the mediating effect of absorptive capacity among China’s 31 provinces. Domestic green innovation is directly stimulated by more significant reverse technology spillovers of outward FDI. Absorptive capacity has an indirect impact as an intervening variable. The mediating effect will only make sense on one side of the threshold because the transformation effectiveness of green innovation is improved only by greater absorptive capacity, including adequate green financial support, more outstanding human capital, and a smaller technology gap. Moreover, it revealed significant regional heterogeneity in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on green innovation by using the panel fixed effects model from 2000 to 2017 for the samples of 31 provinces in China. The general conclusion is that there exists a positive link from EPU to green innovation, and that the impact of EPU varies significantly among different provinces that have diverse levels of marketization and trade openness. Specifically, provinces with higher marketization and degrees of trade openness have witnessed stronger positive effects from EPU on green innovation, whereas the correlation is rather weak in regions with low levels of those two factors. Our findings serve as a research reference for how governments may boost green innovation in the face of increasing EPU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 21st Century, the construction industry regards green building as an important breakthrough to achieve sustainable development, and energy-saving retrofits of residential buildings has been conducted globally with China no exception. In order to better understand consumers' attitudes and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for green retrofits and identify the shortcomings of the industry's development, this study designs a retrofit scheme and organizes a questionnaire survey to collect feedback of responds from the Pearl River Delta, China regarding their WTP for energy-saving retrofits of residential buildings and their decision factors. The study identifies a retrofit cost of $517.92 and found that 94.29% of respondents had the intention of green reconstruction. The results of a Pearson correlation analysis and one-way ANOVA show the professional background of respondents and their WTP to be negatively correlated, while education level, perceived value, perceived behavior control, and feelings of the surrounding reference group are positively correlated with participants' expected inputs. Of all the factors considered, the level of education and feelings of the surrounding reference group influence budget most significantly. The findings will help property developers and the government to design better marketing strategies and launch corresponding policies, thereby promoting the development of the green building industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological innovation is a long-term activity with highly unpredictable returns on investment, which makes SMEs with information problems and lack of collateral value be vulnerable to financing constraints when engaging in innovation activities. This study incorporates financing and R&D activities into the evaluation of innovation efficiency and further considers the impact of financial regulation as an external factor in technology-based SMEs in China. This study puts forward a three-stage dynamic DDF-DEA model to explore the overall innovation effi- ciency as well as the efficiency of each stage in technology-based SMEs by dividing the innovation process into three stages, namely the financing stage, R&D stage and operating stage. The study reveals that the overall efficiency of innovation are higher in non-coastal areas of China than in coastal areas. Non-coastal regions have higher efficiency in the financing and operating stages, while coastal regions have higher efficiency in the R&D stage. Strengthening financial regulation could improve the financing and R&D efficiency both in coastal and non-coastal areas, but it has different effect on the operating efficiency in coastal and non-coastal areas. The results of this study could provide some reference for China and other emerging economies to formulate policies in improving the efficiency of financing and R&D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantifying the shock to the economy from the COVID-19 pandemic is difficult. Although this shock is easily linked to financial markets as a sort of monetary shock, few studies have been done on its effect on the real economy. This study takes a particular economic perspective, focusing on electricity uses in various sectors of the economy. We propose a novel method for comparing electricity use in 2019Q1 and 2020Q1, based on which we derive the degree of the real shock to some important economic sectors from COVID-19. In our theoretical framework, demand for energy and its influencing factors are related to the total scale of the economy, i.e., the gross domestic product. Using suitable empirical methods, we obtain certain marginal effects and then calculate the corresponding ratio as the real shock from COVID-19. The ratio between these marginal effects reveals the need for a balance between stocks and the corresponding differences in the economy. In our cases, the electricity use in various economic sectors plays a role in both stocks and the differences. We find that, although manufacturing and consumption are affected, the services are more vulnerable to the shock from the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings offer implications for policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tenure insecurity and thin land rental markets weakened the incentives to farmland investment in rural China, which was not conducive to improving agricultural productivity. Thus, impacts of tenure security and farmland transfer on farmland investment were analyzed by using the household fixed effect model, the IV method and a 762 household-level and 1163 plot-level data set. The results indicated that: (1) compared with owned plots, the number of farmyard manure in rented plots without stipulating rental time was significantly decreased by 64.0~66.9%; (2) each 1% increase in land rents led to a 1.7% rise in the input of farmyard manure; (3) each 1% increase in the size of farmland transfer resulted in a 0.1% rise in the input of farmyard manure. Our study contributed to boosting agricultural sustainable development from the perspectives of improving the systems of farmland property rights and developing farmland rental markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exchanges of products and services in bilateral industries may be accompanied by environmental and economic inequalities which lead to imbalanced situations in relation to environmental protection and economic development. In a close trade relationship between two countries such as Australia and China, their industries inevitably affect each other. This study maps the embodied CO2 emissions and value added in bilateral trade under the input--output model and measures the unequal exchanges in such trade using an originally established industrial environ-economic balance index. The bilateral trade between Australia and China is taken as an example to validate the outcomes of the research method. The results indicate that in 2014, Australia transferred 580.90 billion tons of CO2 and 105.85 billion USD of value added to China, while approximately 375.65 billion tons of CO2 and 25.15 billion USD of value added flowed from China to Australia. China's manufacturing, construction, and services and other industries, and China's and Australia's real estate activities industries had net inflows of embodied CO2 emissions and value added, indicating these industries paid economic costs in return for reducing environmental pressure. In inter-industrial trade between Australia and China, 49 pairs of bilateral industrial trades were relatively fairly balanced, while the remaining 15 pairs of inter-industrial trades were imbalanced. The established environ-economic balance analysis method and quantitative findings are valuable for better understanding the environment impacts of the economic development of national economies and developing national policies in corresponding to the rising environmental issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of push and pull factors that have influenced China's outward foreign direct investment (COFDI) in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries. The sample of BRI countries is divided according to three geographical regions representing Europe, MENA, and Asia for better understanding of the main factors that influence the COFDI across the respective regions. This study supports Dunning's FDI theory in modeling the determinants of COFDI in BRI economies by focusing on the role of push and pull factors. This present study also extends and improves the existing research by considering the new factors, new methodology, and splitting the sample BRI economies. Thus, a static, dynamic panel and quantile regression technique was employed to model COFDI determinants for 50 BRI countries from 2005 to 2016. The main findings revealed that China's minimum wage policy, including the host countries' natural resources, labor cost, and institutional factors were the key determinants influencing COFDI. However, some determinants such as the host countries' gross domestic product, total patents, trade openness, and inflation rate did not significantly influence COFDI. By splitting the sample according to the respective regions, the results revealed that only the minimum wage policy significantly influenced COFDI in the European region. In comparison, natural resources, gross domestic product, and minimum wage policy were statistically significant for the MENA region. In the Asian region, minimum wage policy, government index, and trade openness were proven essential for COFDI. The policy implications from this study suggest that MNCs from China need to strategize their location for investment in BRI economies. In complement, the BRI recipient countries need to show their advantage and strength in attracting more FDI from China. BRI economies and China MNCs can also be leveraged through understanding how strong the push and pull factors are exerting on outward investment from China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effects of different subsidy use patterns on economic performance, the effect mechanisms, and differences among enterprises with heterogeneous economic performance. A theoretical model is built to analyze the factors influencing subsidy use. Applying ordinary least squares and panel quantile regressions on panel data of China's 3,565 A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2017, we find that subsidies can significantly improve economic performance. Specifically, enterprises usually use subsidies in three different ways (i.e. R&D input, expansion of production capacity for existing products, and human resource training), and the positive impact of these three use patterns on economic performance is moderated by two factors (i.e. the proportions of both R&D operating expenses and human resource training cost) in different degrees. Moreover, the effects are more significant in the lower quantile of economic performance; hence, heterogeneity of economic performance must be considered when formulating relevant policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution control is crucial for promoting the modernization of governance systems and efficiency. To address the subjective contrived factors and errors in the gross domestic product (GDP) data in traditional statistical almanacs, our study aims to construct a panel data model of 287 prefecture-level cities for the period from 1998-2016 (using objective nighttime light data). We also used government work report words related to environmental regulation to characterize the constraints of government environmental regulations. For this purpose, we used instrumental variables (to explore the relationship and interaction between air pollution and economic growth) and a model setting, with which we carried out regression analysis and robustness tests; the findings were validated using a transmission mechanism hypothesis. We found that that economic growth and air pollution positively influence each other and government environmental regulations significantly reduce air pollution. We also found that to achieve high economic development, environmental pollution must be controlled to avoid further damage to human and material capital. Furthermore, government environmental regulations can help improve the environmental comfort level and economic development quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]