In recent years, despite China’s sustained expansion of public investment in education, pronounced regional disparities in educational development persist, revealing the practical constraints of the existing fiscal sharing structure in advancing equity objectives. In particular, the mechanism through which the allocation of fiscal responsibilities between central and local governments influences educational equity performance remains insufficiently examined in a systematic and empirical manner. From the perspective of fiscal structure, this study seeks to identify and explicate the evolutionary trajectory of educational fiscal equity in China, as well as its underlying institutional determinants. To this end, the study constructs a fiscal performance evaluation framework comprising seven core indicators. Objective weights are assigned using the entropy method, and the TOPSIS model is subsequently employed to conduct a comparative ranking analysis of national education fiscal performance over the period from 2013 to 2023. The results indicate that educational fiscal equity has exhibited an overall upward trend during the study period; however, its evolution displays clear stage-specific characteristics. In the initial phase, improvements in equity were primarily driven by fiscal expansion, leading to rapid gains. In the subsequent period, progress became increasingly constrained by structural optimization bottlenecks, with fiscal performance gradually stabilizing at a plateau in more recent years. Further analysis reveals that the persistently heavy fiscal burden borne by local governments, coupled with the relatively limited regulatory and equalization capacity of the central government, constitutes a key structural impediment to the sustained improvement of educational equity. By elucidating the internal mechanism through which the allocation of fiscal responsibilities shapes educational equity performance, this study provides both theoretical grounding and quantitative support for deepening fiscal system reform and optimizing policies related to the allocation of educational resources.

Despite strong GDP growth and a favourable demographic profile, India faces an impending jobs crisis. A large share of the workforce remains employed in lowproductivity agriculture, while many new labour market entrants are absorbed into the persistently large informal sector. By contrast, China's rapid ascent was driven by manufacturing-led, export-oriented industrialisation, underpinned by large inflows of foreign direct investment and sustained technology transfer. India's manufacturing base remains modest in contrast. The bulk of well-paid, formal employment continues to be concentrated in the high-skill services sector. This paper contrasts the development trajectories of these two economies and identifies several underutilised jobs-growth levers in India: manufacturing, goods exports, manufacturing-oriented foreign direct investment and innovation. All of these remain underdeveloped, yet together they offer a pathway to more labour-absorbing, durable growth. Leveraging them effectively would be central to achieving India's 'Viksit Bharat 2047' ambition of attaining high-income status. The scale of India's challenge to employ eight to ten million labour-market entrants per year implies that job creation must become an explicit policy priority. This calls for greater trade openness, particularly with Asia and Europe, to integrate India into Asia-centric global supply chains as an alternative to China. Labour market reform is equally critical, making the effective implementation of the new labour codes essential. Strengthening innovation ecosystems and realigning education and skills policies to support industrialisation are also key. Without these structural shifts, India's current pattern of jobless growth risks transforming its demographic dividend into a long-term liability.

Despite strong GDP growth and a favourable demographic profile, India faces an impending jobs crisis. A large share of the workforce remains employed in low-productivity agriculture, while many new labour market entrants are absorbed into the persistently large informal sector. By contrast, China’s rapid ascent was driven by manufacturing-led, export-oriented industrialisation, underpinned by large inflows of foreign direct investment and sustained technology transfer. India’s manufacturing base remains modest in contrast. The bulk of well-paid, formal employment continues to be concentrated in the high-skill services sector. This paper contrasts the development trajectories of these two economies and identifies several underutilised jobs-growth levers in India: manufacturing, goods exports, manufacturing-oriented foreign direct investment and innovation. All of these remain underdeveloped, yet together they offer a pathway to more labour-absorbing, durable growth. Leveraging them effectively would be central to achieving India’s ‘Viksit Bharat 2047’ ambition of attaining high-income status. The scale of India’s challenge to employ eight to ten million labour-market entrants per year implies that job creation must become an explicit policy priority. This calls for greater trade openness, particularly with Asia and Europe, to integrate India into Asia-centric global supply chains as an alternative to China. Labour market reform is equally critical, making the effective implementation of the new labour codes essential. Strengthening innovation ecosystems and realigning education and skills policies to support industrialisation are also key. Without these structural shifts, India’s current pattern of jobless growth risks transforming its demographic dividend into a long-term liability.

The low-altitude economy (LAE) refers to economic activities conducted within airspace below 1,000 meters. Drawing on related theories on socio-technical transitions, LAE can be understood as a future regime challenging the dominant urban mobility paradigm. As an emerging field, it has yet to be systematically examined through an empirical study, especially about local response. In this paper, we construct an Integrated Local Support Index (ILSI) based on the number of relevant local policies and the level of public interest measured by the Baidu search index. Private sector readiness is measured by the LAE Development Scale (DS) based on the registered capital of relevant enterprises locally. Focusing on the top 50 cities in China’s LAE sector, we conduct a comprehensive empirical study to explore the relationships between DS, ILSI, and other natural and socio-economic factors between 2012 and 2023. The dynamic interactions of key stakeholders (local government, foreign capital, and talents) are analysed by game theory. The findings suggest that the ILSI, education level, and foreign investment have significant positive impacts. Wind speed is identified as a negative factor for LAE development. The game theory analysis further reveals that the three positive factors tend to foster efficient and stable growth when working synergistically. This implies that enhancing local government support could trigger chain reactions that attract more investment and talents, thereby accelerating LAE development. Projecting to the future, local LAE DS in 2026 is predicted via a panel time-series model with random effects. This study provides both empirical evidence and governance strategies for decision-makers navigating the socio-technical transition of the LAE.

Digitalization is widely promoted as a means to enhance faculty development, yet in resource-constrained regions like Northwest China, structural inequalities persist. This qualitative case study examines how national policy, institutional capacity, and faculty agency interact to shape digital support in higher education. Drawing on institutional records and interviews with faculty from two universities, the study reveals stark disparities in funding, infrastructure, and training strategies. Research-intensive institutions benefit from policy-backed resources and expert-led programs, while regional universities rely on low-cost lectures and collaborations. Faculty report limited autonomy, disciplinary biases, and insufficient support for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. In this regional context, these findings challenge assumptions of resource neutrality and technological determinism in digital education policy. The study proposes a governance-oriented framework that emphasizes institutional responsibility, faculty empowerment, and context-sensitive digital strategies. It offers insights for policymakers and institutions seeking to advance equitable and sustainable faculty development in digitally transforming higher education systems.

The Excellence Initiatives represent a significant investment in higher education, yet little is known about the causal impact of these programs on doctoral students and future researchers. Using a comprehensive student-level dataset, we apply a difference-in-differences approach to identify how China’s Double World-Class (DWC) Project affects PhD students’ research productivity. Our results indicate that the DWC Project significantly increases both the quantity and the quality of research output among PhD students in supported disciplines, even after controlling for supervisor-related effects. In addition, these impacts vary significantly across institutional tiers and academic fields. Lower-tier universities experience considerable increases in publication volume with slight enhancements in quality, while top-tier institutions show no notable variation in either aspect. Disciplinary patterns also vary: Science and medicine show improvement in both measures, while engineering displays little change overall. These findings demonstrate how excellence initiatives influence human capital development via doctoral training and provide evidence-based recommendations for education policymakers aiming to maximize returns on strategic higher education investments worldwide.

Traditional production function theory treats executive characteristics as exogenous fac-tors, failing to capture how managerial heterogeneity dynamically influences productiv-ity. This study integrates Upper Echelon Theory and Dynamic Capabilities Theory to develop an endogenous production function framework where executive attributes serve as dynamic parameters reshaping capital and labor elasticities. Using fixed effect-s panel-data models, we analyze Chinese listed companies, examining how executives’ education, experience, and compensation interact with production parameters. Re-sults show executive characteristics significantly moderate factor productivity: higher education and board independence enhance capital productivity, while compensation intensity transforms labor elasticity from negative to strongly positive values. Hetero-geneity analysis reveals effects vary across ownership types and technology intensity, with technology-intensive firms showing strongest responsiveness. This research recon-ceptualizes executives as active architects of production processes, provides a rigorous framework for endogenizing management factors, and offers evidence-based guidance for corporate governance and talent strategy optimization.

This study constructs a three-dimensional space model based on fund investment styles, using a sample of open-end equity and mixed funds from 2005 to 2021 to measure the degree of style convergence. The research explores how style convergence impacts fund managers’ window dressing behavior. The results indicate that, after accounting for the effects of fund performance, style convergence exacerbates window dressing behavior among fund managers. Specifically, this is reflected in fund managers increasing their holdings in winning stocks and selling off losing stocks, which indirectly highlights the intense competition within China’s open-end fund industry. The findings remain robust after a series of endogeneity and robustness tests. Further analysis reveals that style convergence contributes to the risk of client attrition, thereby intensifying the agency problem within the fund industry. The window dressing effect due to style convergence is particularly pronounced in funds managed by individuals with lower educational backgrounds, lower investment skills, smaller family sizes, and lower institutional investor ownership. The paper offers valuable insights into the agency problems arising from investment style convergence and provides guidance for mitigating fund managers' self-interested behavior.

Does digital financial inclusion alleviate poverty? This study investigates this question by integrating the Digital Financial Inclusion Index of Peking University with microdata from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to examine how the expansion of digital financial inclusion affects household multidimensional poverty in China. Anchored in Amartya Sen ’ s capability approach and operationalized through the Alkire–Foster (A–F) framework, the study identifies multidimensional poverty across five key dimensions: income, health, education, insurance, and living standards. Probit models are employed to estimate how digital financial inclusion influences both the likelihood and structure of multidimensional poverty, while instrumental variable techniques are used to address potential endogeneity. Beyond the average effects, the study further explores the mechanisms through which digital financial inclusion contributes to poverty alleviation, focusing on three channels—promoting household consumption, increasing financial investment, and enhancing access to credit. The results reveal that digital financial inclusion significantly mitigates multidimensional poverty, particularly by improving income, living standards, and health outcomes, though its effects on education and insurance are limited. These findings underscore the transformative role of digital finance in fostering inclusive growth, suggesting that policies expanding digital financial infrastructure and literacy can amplify its poverty-reducing effects and advance equitable development.

Assessment in vocational education institutions is frequently organized around performance metrics—graduation rates, employment outcomes, and satisfaction scores—gathered too tardily to avert institutional dysfunction. In increasingly unstable policy situations, these models have become precarious: they quantify collapse more frequently than they avert it. This paper presents fuse logic as an innovative mechanism for risk-responsive governance in technical and vocational education and training (TVET). Utilizing systems control theory and the analogy of circuit breakers, fuse logic is a threshold-sensitive, dynamically activated assessment paradigm designed to disconnect institutional activities prior to complete failure. The research formulates a four-stage model—situational sensing, threshold definition, fuse activation, and adaptive reconfiguration—and implements it in a simulated scenario reflecting Chinese TVET trends. When critical metrics surpass risk thresholds (e.g., dropout rate, employment mismatch), fuse logic triggers systematic program shutdowns, stakeholder consultations, and conditional reintegration procedures.This study's contribution is in redefining evaluation from measurement to protection. It advocates a governance framework that permits temporary disconnection to maintain system integrity. Fuse logic enhances conventional quality assurance frameworks by providing an integrated, failure-tolerant layer of organizational resilience. The report concludes with a discussion on transferability, ethical considerations, and prospective avenues for implementation across varied educational systems.