This study investigates the role of financial development in shaping the relationship between FDI and firm innovation, based on Chinese firm-level dataset during 2008-2014. Our findings reveal that bank deregulation significantly enhances the positive effect of FDI on firm innovation. We also find that firms with greater financial constraints and those located in cities with lower levels of bank competition exhibit a more pronounced response. These results underscore the importance of considering financial market conditions and highlight the role of financial constraints and bank competition as crucial channels through which bank deregulation influences the effect of FDI on firm innovation.

This study explores how foreign competition impacts the capital structure of domestic firms. While import competition is associated with a decrease in domestic firms’ leverage, we propose a novel perspective concerning the positive effect of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) on leverage. FDI competition can boost demand for debt via productivity spillover to domestic firms, and also increase supply of debt by inducing lenders to herd toward foreign investors. Using Chinese firm-level data, we find that the positive effects of industry inward FDI on domestic firms’ leverage are more pronounced in high-tech industries and industries where foreign investors exhibit a high degree of herding behavior. Our instrument variable approach, employing industry exchange rates and import tariffs, supports these findings. Additionally, we reveal that the positive effect of FDI on local firms’ leverage is amplified when the firms have stronger absorptive capacities, receive foreign capital, and experience more human capital transfers from foreign rivals.

数字普惠金融能否作为提升制造业出口复杂度的新动能，对我国制造业全球价值链攀升意义重大。本文在阐述数字普惠金融对制造业出口复杂度的直接传导效应和间接调节效应的基础上，基于 2011-2018 年中国省级面板数据，采用空间杜宾模型，实证检验数字普惠金融对制造业出口复杂度的直接传导效应和间接调节效应。实证结果表明，数字普惠金融及其各维度能显著促进本地区制造业出口复杂度的提升，但溢出效应呈现显著的虹吸现象；数字普惠金融通过人力资本积累以及 FDI 技术溢出，能显著促进本地区以及周边地区制造业出口产品技术复杂度。

This paper examines whether foreign investor heterogeneity plays a role in stock liquidity on a sample of 27,976 firms from 39 countries for the period from 2003 to 2009. Results show that foreign direct ownership is negatively, while foreign portfolio ownership is positively, associated with various measures of stock liquidity. Furthermore, liquidity also reduces more (less) in firms with larger foreign direct investment FDI (foreign portfolio investment, FPI) during the 2008 market downturn. As predicted by finance theory, foreign investors influence stock liquidity through both trading activity and information channels. Our findings also indicate that the presence of FDI investors improves firm valuation and operating performance even at the expense of an increase in the firm’s cost of capital, suggesting that the value-enhancing benefits from FDI investors’ monitoring efforts outweigh the liquidity costs and high adverse selection premium demanded by less informed investors. In contrast, the positive impacts of FPI ownership on firm performance, as previously documented in existing literature, becomes negative and also not robustly significant after controlling for liquidity.

Spatial imbalance of technology, which refers to unevenness or disproportionality in a spatial distribution of technology, is of key importance in the harmonious and balanced development of the world economy. This study is an attempt to develop a comparable map-independent analysis that measures spatial distribution, deviation angle, shift distance, direction and velocity of the gravity center (location-related spatial imbalance analysis) from an international range. Analyzing respectively on the gravity centers of different attribute values of 44 countries or regions and studying on the effects of the gravity centers of GDP, FDI and population on the technology center of gravity, it comes to the following conclusions: (1) the imbalance of spatial distribution is existing and will lasts for a long time; (2) the spatial distributions of GDP, FDI, and population don’t coincide with that of technology in longitude and latitude only except that the latitude distribution of FDI coincide with latitude and longitude distribution of technology; (3) the distributions of gravity centers of technology and population approximately record a south-east extending; (4) the distributions of gravity centers of GDP and FDI take on a loop-line movement with a clockwise rotation; (5) the gravity centers of GDP, FDI, population are positively associated with the gravity center of technology in latitude rather than in longitude. (6)Besides, the average velocity of different gravity centers is approximately 300km per year except that the gravity center of GDP shifts at an average speed of a little more than 9km per year. Combining analyses of the spatial distribution, deviation angle, shift distance, direction and velocity with the calculation of the coordinates’ correlation coefficients of the gravity centers, the hypotheses are partially supported. This study provides insight into the possible relationships between spatial distribution of technology, harmonious economic development and population spatial shift, and generates some interesting avenues for future research.

A political-macroeconomic model is developed to explain why small differences in fiscal decentralization may ultimately lead to dramatically di¤erent economic policies toward FDI hence starkly different amount of FDI flows into two otherwise identical developing countries. Too much fiscal decentralization hurts incentives of the central government while too little fiscal decentralization renders the local governments captured by the protectionist special interest group. Moreover, the local government's preference for FDI can be endogenously polarized and sensitive to fiscal decentralization. Calibration and counterfactual experiments results support fiscal decentralization as the major reason for China and India's nine-fold difference in FDI per capita.

Chinese outbound investment can overall be explained by traditional theories on FDI and MNEs. However, in some aspects Chinese outward FDI is unique and differs from known investment in the “Western” context. Most importantly, it is largely executed by Chinese SOEs. This paper aspires to deepen understanding on the phenomemon by focusing on the policy dimension of Chinese outbound investment. It provides an understanding of the potential and actual government influence, comparing motivations for internationalization by Chinese enterprises and the Chinese government, and pointing out where Chinese companies own a comparative advantage in their internationalisaton activities compared to its mostly Western competitors due to the particular Chinese policy support. Apart from typical motivations for internationalization that apply for Chinese MNEs (market-seeking, resource-seeking, strategic asset seeking and efficiency-seeking motivations), a number of additional motivations exist, which are directly linked to the particular institutional and societal context of China.

Opacity (the converse of transparency) has only recently received attention as it has been considered to be linked to a series of financial crises. This study utilizes Price Waterhouse Cooper’s 2001 opacity indices and capital flow data from the World Bank and Bank for International Settlement. Capital flows are disaggregated into categories of foreign direct investment flows by multinational enterprises, portfolio capital flows and international bank lending. Regression analysis supports the idea that higher opacity leads to a reduction in capital flows, in general. The results have policy-relevant implications as countries wishing to enhance capital inflows need to reduce the level of opacity in decision-making. More interestingly, however, the investigation with opacity sub- indices shows higher capital flows, in general, were associated with higher opacity in corruption and regulatory indices corroborating some existing evidence in the FDI literature that opacity will influence the choice of entry mode rather than the actual level of flows. In addition, the paper supports the notion that Bank Assurance mechanisms are highly desirable with regard to international bank lending, as the nature of these flows means that they are more influenced by general levels of opacity and are less responsive than FDI and portfolio flows.