As digital technologies proliferate, firms increasingly leverage digital transformation strategically, necessitating new orientations attuned to digital technological change. This study investigates how digital orientation (DORI)- the philosophy of harnessing digital technology scope, digital capabilities, digital ecosystem coordination, and digital architecture configuration for competitive advantage – influences firms’ environmental, social, and governance performance (ESG_per). Analysis of Chinese A-share firms from 2010-2019 reveals DORI is associated with superior ESG_per, operating through the mediating mechanism of enhanced digital finance (DIFIN) as a fund-providing facilitator for sustainability initiatives. Additional analysis uncovers important heterogeneities – private firms, centrally owned state-owned enterprises, politically connected, and emerging companies exhibit the strongest DORI - ESG_per linkages. Prominently, the study findings are validated through a battery of robustness tests, including instrumental variable methods, and propensity score matching. Overall, the results underscore the need for firms to purposefully develop multifaceted digital orientation and furnishes novel theoretical insights and practical implications regarding DORI’s role in improving ESG_per.

There are large regional disparities in relation to the development of digital finance in China. This study expands on the human–land relationship to analyze the impact of terrain relief on digital finance adoption using China Household Finance Survey data. The results show an inverted U-shaped relationship. Further, mechanism analysis indicates that terrain relief influences the wealth creation environment and stimulates the likelihood of entrepreneurship, especially through small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition, the impact is more pronounced in rural and western areas. These findings provide insights enabling the development of a more inclusive financial system.

In this paper, we investigate whether those enterprises adopting digital finance exhibit higher values. On the basis of the constructed fintech-related lexicon developed by the machine learning-based Word2Vec model, we employ the frequency of fintech-related words (phrases) in the management discussion sections of annual reports as a proxy variable for the degree to which enterprises apply digital finance. We utilize panel data regression and mediation models based on data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2022 and explore the impact of this degree of digital finance application on enterprise value. We find that the degree to which enterprises apply digital finance elevates their values. The in-depth integration of digital technology and finance directly enhances enterprise value by reducing financing costs. Additionally, the effects are more evident among small-scale firms and enterprises located in regions with lower marketization levels. However, in the face of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the positive effects on enterprises are relatively low.

This paper examines the effects of digital finance and corporate stock price crash risk, and the underlying mechanisms, using panel data from Chinese A-share listed companies between 2012 and 2021. Specifically, we focus on whether digital transformation and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance are intermediary channels through which digital finance mitigates corporate stock price crash risk. By employing panel regression and mediation effect models, we demonstrate that digital finance significantly reduces corporate stock price crash risk. This conclusion remains robust after a series of robustness tests, including the replacement of core explanatory variables, lagging digital finance by one period, using alternative dependent variables, applying the instrumental variables method, and system GMM estimation. More importantly, we find that digital finance curbs stock price crash risk by enhancing digital transformation and ESG performance. In addition, we reveal that digital finance has heterogeneous effects on corporate stock price crash risk. The inhibitory effect of digital finance on stock price crash risk is more pronounced in the central and western regions of China and for companies with lower internal control levels, higher information transparency, and higher financing constraints.

This study investigates the influence of mobile payment application use on crime rates. Using a unique database of verdicts from criminal courts in China and an index measuring the extent of mobile payment usage, we find that a one standard deviation increase in mobile payment adoption and usage leads to an 11% decrease in the theft rate. Furthermore, the effect of widespread mobile payment adoption on theft rates is more pronounced in areas characterized by a higher prevalence of cash transactions. These findings suggest that the decrease in cash circulation in society due to mobile payment use can reduce incentives for theft. However, we do not find evidence linking mobile payment usage to other types of criminal activity, including robbery, arson, brawling, homicide, and serious injury by vehicle.

As a product of the integration of traditional finance and Internet technology, digital finance plays an important role in micro enterprise innovation and even macroeconomic development. Based on the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2018, this paper explores the effect of the development of digital finance on enterprise innovation. The research finds that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the development of digital finance and enterprise innovation. Further research shows that this inverted U-shaped impact of digital finance is stronger on strategic innovation of enterprises, suggesting that enterprises pay more attention to the "quantity" rather than "quality" of innovation. Finally, the inflection point of the inverted U-shaped relationship is brought forward by the industry competition and media pressure. This paper not only enriches the research on the relationship between digital finance and enterprise innovation, but also provides a theoretical basis for the development of digital finance and the improvement of financial regulatory framework.

This paper examines the impact and mechanism of digital finance on financial fraud by constructing a theoretical framework of digital finance affecting corporate financial fraud. We use panel data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2018. The results that digital finance can significantly inhibit corporate financial fraud and improve the ability of financial institutions to identify financial statements. Thus, the incentive and opportunity for corporations to engage in financial fraud is directly reduced. The internal mechanism shows that digital finance can restrain corporate financial fraud by alleviating the financing constraints faced by enterprises, as well as reducing corporate financial fraud by reducing corporate leverage. These effects will reduce debt pressure, thus easing the motivation of corporate financial fraud. The results of heterogeneity analysis that digital finance has a significant inhibitory effect on financial fraud of enterprises with different scales and different property rights.

This paper examines the relationship between the large-scale construction of broadband infrastructure and digital financial inclusion in rural China. To make causal inferences, we exploit a quasi-natural experiment and use a difference-in-differences identification strategy with panel dataset of Chinese counties from 2014 to 2018. The results show that broadband infrastructure significantly contributes to digital inclusion. Further, we distinguish between two dimensions of digital inclusion, namely, the coverage and the usage. We find that while broadband infrastructure significantly promotes the coverage dimension, its effect on the usage dimension is limited. Besides, the effects of broadband infrastructure on digital inclusion, and in particular on the usage dimension, are larger in areas with higher levels of human capital, higher levels of social capital, and higher penetrations of bank branches. Taking into account those moderators is important to fully harness the potential of broadband infrastructure on financial inclusion.

Over the past 150 years, finance has evolved into one of the world’s most globalized, digitized and regulated industries. Digitalization has transformed finance but also enabled new entrants over the past decade in the form of technology companies, especially FinTechs and BigTechs. As a highly digitized industry, incumbents and new entrants are increasingly pursuing similar approaches and models, focusing on the economies of scope and scale typical of finance and the network effects typical of data, with the predictable result of the emergence of increasingly large digital finance platforms. We argue that the combination of digitization, new entrants (especially BigTechs) and platformization of finance – which we describe as FinTech 4.0 and mark as beginning in 2019-2020 – brings massive benefits and an increasing range of risks to broader sustainable development. The platformization of finance poses challenges for societies and regulators around the world, apparent most clearly to date in the US and China. Existing regulatory frameworks for finance, competition, data, and technology are not designed to comprehensively address the challenges to these trends to broader sustainable development. We need to build new approaches domestically and internationally to maximize the benefits of network effects and economies of scope and scale in digital finance while monitoring and controlling the attendant risks of platformization of finance across the existing regulatory silos. We argue for a principles-based approach that brings together regulators responsible for different sectors and functions, regulating both on a functional activities based approach but also – as scale and interconnectedness increase – addressing specific entities as they emerge: a graduated proportional hybrid approach, appropriate both domestically in the US, China and elsewhere, as well as for cross-border groups, building on experiences of supervisory colleges and lead supervision developed for Globally Systemically Important Financial Institutions (G-SIFIs) and Financial Market Infrastructures (FMIs). This will need to be combined with an appropriate strategic approach to data in finance, to enable the maximization of data benefits while constraining related risks.