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The rapid development of fintech is transforming the global financial system. However, how does fintech impact financial efficiency? Based on the technology spillover theory, this study analysed the theoretical mechanism of fintech's impact on financial efficiency and used the text mining method to construct a fintech level index for each province in China. Using interprovincial panel data from 2008 to 2018, the study empirically tested the relationship between fintech development and financial efficiency. The results show that technology spillover theory can adequately explain the impact of financial technology on financial efficiency and that there is a U-shaped nonlinear relationship between fintech development and financial efficiency. Further analysis shows that financial decentralisation moderates the marginal effect of fintech on financial efficiency. The effect of fintech on financial efficiency is more significant in regions with greater financial decentralisation. Therefore, at this stage, the study recommends that we actively embrace fintech, continuously deepen the integration of technology and finance, promote improvement in financial efficiency, and expand the positive role of local governments in technological innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policymakers around the globe have used various options for controlling CO2 emissions, among which increasing renewable energy consumption has proved to be the most viable. Consequently, this research attempts to look into the effects of financial efficiency, education, and digitization on renewable energy consumption in China from 1994 to 2020. To estimate the short- and long-run relationship between the variables, we have utilized the QARDL approach. The results suggest that the ICT, financial institutions and market development, education, GDP, and CO2 emissions all help improve renewable energy consumption in China in the long run. In the short run, the ICT, financial institutions and markets, education, GDP, and CO2 emissions all proved to be beneficial in increasing renewable energy consumption. In order to test whether our independent variables have a symmetric or asymmetric impact on renewable energy consumption, the Wald test is applied, which confirms the long-run nonlinear impact of ICT, financial institutions and markets, education, GDP, and CO2 emissions on renewable energy consumption, while the short-run asymmetric impacts are confirmed for a financial institution and GDP only. Therefore, governments should reinforce the amalgamation of digitalization, financial efficiency, and education while formulating policies for renewable energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of financial development on carbon emissions is a hot topic. Although some researches study the heterogeneous impacts of financial development on carbon emissions at the country level, few paper has investigated their heterogeneous relations within the same country. This paper, applying geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR), studies the spatial–temporal heterogeneity of the impacts of financial development on carbon emissions across China's 30 provinces from 2003 to 2017. The results show that financial development proxied by bank credit indicators curbs carbon emissions in most provinces most of the time, while that proxied by stock market indicator exhibits nonlinear relationships in most provinces, such as U-shaped, inverse U-shaped, and inverse N-shaped. The paper concludes first that financial development proxied by different indicators may exert varied impacts on carbon emissions. Second, the impact of financial development on carbon emissions shows great heterogeneity among different provinces and different years: it may be curbing or increasing, and even it is curbing, its curbing effects differ greatly across provinces and years. Third, the impact of financial development on CO2 is not always monotonic; instead, it may be nonlinear. Regional segmentation of financial markets may explain the heterogeneity. Some policy suggestions are also given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pediatrics is an integral part of public health services. With the impact of the epidemic and the high-quality transformation of China's development, the contradiction in the supply of pediatric public services has become more prominent. Scientific evaluation of the efficiency and quality of pediatric services, clarifying the redundancy of pediatric input resources and adjusting the construction of pediatric services with the help of influencing factors have become important research topics. This paper uses the three-stage SBM-DEA model to summarize the efficiency of China's pediatric services using panel data from 31 provinces and cities in 2008–2019, taking into account undesired outputs such as doctor-patient disputes. Among them, the evaluation system focuses on the role of financial, capital, and other factors, and the Tobit regression model is used to clarify the degree of influence of various factors. The study found that (1) China's pediatric service supply has the characteristics of geographic heterogeneity. (2) The redundancy of various resource inputs is apparent, and the supporting capacity of financial capital is not significant. (3) The economic, technological, and professional environment helps to digest the redundancy of inputs. (4) Capital, urbanization, education development, and birth rate increase under financial operation will promote the increase of the efficiency of pediatric public services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the nature and degree of persistence of the financial efficiency of the tourism and hospitality industry in China. Efficiency scores and the degree of persistence of firm efficiency are estimated using data envelopment analysis and dynamic panel regression, respectively. The results confirm significant and positive persistence of the financial efficiency of sample firms over 9 years, and support the 'performance‐persistence' theory. The findings of this study can help new industry entrants formulate market‐entry strategies and make investment decisions. In addition, existing firms can use the findings as a guide to increase their financial efficiency and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of spatial heterogeneity and using data from 281 prefecture-level cities in China over the 2003–2012 period, we empirically test the interactions and differences in the spatial effects through which fiscal decentralization and financial efficiency influence the upgrading of regional industrial structure. The results indicate that regional differences in fiscal decentralization and financial efficiency lead to significant spatial heterogeneity in upgrading the industrial structure. The interaction mechanism between fiscal decentralization and financial efficiency plays a positive role in promoting the upgrading of the regional industrial structure, which is subject to organic integration between fiscal systems and financial development. Moreover, there is significant spatial dependence in the effects of fiscal decentralization and financial efficiency on upgrading the regional industrial structure, the ‘high-lying-land’ effects and the ‘low-lying-land’ effects coexist in the spatial pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a plethora of current research on economic or financial resources for fostering innovation. These studies lack the micro-analysis and, more importantly, disregard the effect of environmental control. This study will offer a new analytical paradigm by linking financial growth, environmental regulation, and innovation growth throughout the value chain. Using the information on 30 Chinese provinces collected between 1990 and 2020, we develop a dynamic panel data model to examine the interplay between financial effectiveness, ecological regulation, and research and development (R&D) innovation. We assess the impact that the efficiency of financial organizations and the stock market have on R&D's ability to influence R&D innovation. There are positive spillover effects for stock market efficiency, which boosts the development and conversion of R&D innovation; there are positive spillover effects for financial institution efficiency, which hurts the conversion of R&D innovation, and there is an adverse effect on environmental regulation efficiency. To what extent environmental rules affect the commercialization of research and development innovation is unclear; human capital is an effective motivator for the advancement of R&D innovation, and the volume of FDI may increase the commercialization of R&D innovation., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

To deepen financial reform, China's financial policy displays more regional characteristics and the expansion of financial innovation to the regions has a far-reaching impact. This paper aims to evaluate the performance of financial innovation in 30 provinces in China. By using the panel data of 30 provinces in China, we apply the three-stage data envelopment analysis (Three-stage DEA) to regional financial innovation with environmental constraints taken into account. The application of Three-stage DEA that involves environmental factors and statistical noise enables us to assess the innovation disparity in the financial industry of each province in terms of technology. The conclusions are as follows: (1) Technical efficiency and scale efficiency are significantly reduced except for pure technical efficiency in the intermediary-oriented model compared with that before adjustment. The main reason for the decrease in overall efficiency is that the real level of financial innovation declined after the external environmental factors have been excluded. And the overall level in the market-oriented model is lower than that in the intermediary-oriented model. (2) External environment variables, including the regional economic basis, government loan intervention, the founding of the regional financial market, will affect the input of regional financial industry in accounting technical efficiency. Firstly, with a higher level of economic development, the quantity of personnel employed in the financial industry tends to rise. Secondly, the intervention from the local government is positive in the slack model of capital investment input, indicating that more government intervention in one area will lead to the inefficient use of capital investment in the financial industry. The estimated value of personnel input is negative, implying that personnel redundancy is negatively correlated with government intervention. Finally, the effect of the regional dummy variable is significantly negative in the slack of capital input, indicating that the regional financial market can improve the efficiency of capital investment in the financial sector. (3) The efficiency gap between provinces and districts still exists. It is revealed in our finding that there are efficiency disparities between coastal and interior regions, and between eight economic zones as well. It is suggested that fostering a good external environment is beneficial not only to promoting the efficiency of regional financial innovation, but also to bridging the gap between developed and developing provinces. Expanding the perspective of financial innovation research, this paper extends efficiency evaluation from traditional manufacturing to financial industry. Specifically, in this paper, regional financial innovation refers to the ability to reduce costs and increase the efficiency of input factors in financial industry. However, there is still plenty of room for research in this field, such as the characteristics of financial innovation in organizational structure, the external environment of financial competition and cooperation, and the growth effect of financial innovation. These are the directions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the time series data of the Yangtze River Delta region from 1993 to 2015, this paper uses the state space model and the mediating effect model to investigate the time-varying effect and its mechanism of financial development (measured by two indicators: financial scale and financial efficiency), urbanization on carbon emissions. The results show a positive in the short term and negative in the long-run impact of financial scale on carbon emissions, while the impact of financial efficiency on carbon emissions is negative in the short term and positive in the long term, and the impact of urbanization on carbon emissions is always positive. Moreover, the results of mediating effect test demonstrate that urbanization is a positive partial mediating effect in the path of financial scale and financial efficiency influencing carbon emissions, and the mediating effect accounts for 71.64% and 61.69% of the total effect, respectively. The mediating effect of financial development includes chain effect and parallel effect; in the chain mediating effect, financial scale has a negative mediating effect with 27.40% of the total effect in the path of urbanization affecting carbon emissions, whereas financial efficiency plays a positive role with 2.07%; in the parallel mediating effect, the individual effect of financial scale and financial efficiency accounts for 24.39% and 1.05%, respectively.