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.

We examine whether firms with high organization capital (OC) are more likely to purchase Directors’ and Officers’ (D&O) liability insurance, using a panel of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2021. We document a robust positive association between OC and the propensity to carry D&O insurance. The effect remains statistically and economically significant after controlling for firm characteristics and employing multiple identification strategies to address endogeneity. We propose two economic channels through which OC affects D&O insurance demand, namely, agency and information asymmetry. Consistent with these mechanisms, we find that the positive OC–D&O relationship is significantly stronger in firms with weaker internal governance and those facing opaquer information environments. Additional cross-sectional analyses show that this effect is concentrated in privately-owned firms and in regions with more developed market institutions, suggesting that external pressures accentuate the value of insuring key decision-makers. Our results are robust to alternative model specifications and remain stable after using propensity score matching, instrumental variable approaches, and the Heckman two-stage model. Overall, the findings highlight OC as a critical internal driver of corporate insurance decisions. Firms with substantial intangible assets strategically obtain D&O coverage to strengthen governance and reduce information frictions, especially in emerging markets like China where formal investor protections are still evolving.

Data-factor marketization (DFM) serves as a critical driver for cultivating manufacturing-enterprise new-quality productive forces (ME-NQPF), fundamentally supporting China's transition toward high-quality economic development. Integrating matched panel data from A-share listed Chinese manufacturing firms (2011–2022) with the staggered establishment of regional data trading platforms as a quasi-natural experiment, this study employs a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) framework to identify the causal impact of DFM on ME-NQPF. Empirical results demonstrate that DFM significantly enhances ME-NQPF, a finding that remains robust across alternative specifications and endogeneity treatments. Mechanism analysis identifies enterprise digital transformation as a pivotal mediator in this relationship, while competitive intensity is found to positively moderate the productivity gains from data marketization. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that these effects are most pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises, technology-intensive sectors, and firms situated in China's eastern and central regions. These findings suggest that institutionalizing data-factor markets and accelerating digital integration are effective mechanisms for optimizing resource allocation and sustaining advanced industrial productivity.

This paper investigates the weekly evolution of child skills as measured by unique data from a widely-emulated early childhood home-visiting program developed in Jamaica, adapted to rural China, and applied in different versions worldwide. The design of the study avoids problems of endogeneity of inputs and lack of truly comparable measures of skills across children that plague previous econometric studies of child development. Skills that are nominally classified as the same, in fact, do not appear to share a common unit scale across levels. They are produced by skill-specific, lifecycle-stage-specific technologies. We formulate and estimate a new dynamic stochastic skill production model for multiple skills that is consistent with the evidence. We quantify the dynamics of early life learning. The model explains the “fadeout” of measures of learning by the emergence of new skills not properly measured. We investigate the role of ability in learning. We find important differences in learning patterns between boys and girls.

In emerging markets characterized by signiffcant information asymmetry, mitigat-ing firm-level risk is paramount for market stability. While the governance role ofinstitutional investors is known, the impact of their direct, on-the-ground engagementremains underexplored. This study’s objective is to investigate how institutionalinvestor site visits, a crucial hands-on governance mechanism, affect stock returnvolatility. Using a sample of Chinese-listed A-share firms from 2012 to 2022, wefind that frequent site visits significantly reduce firm-level stock return volatility.This risk-reduction effect is more pronounced for firms with greater agency problems,poorer ESG performance, and higher expropriation risk. Our analysis, robust toendogeneity concerns, indicates this effect is driven by improved external oversight.We conclude that direct institutional engagement is a vital channel for reducinginformation asymmetry, enhancing corporate governance, and ultimately promotingmarket stability by lowering investment risk.

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.

This paper examines the impact of Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) ownership on corporate earnings management. We find that ETF ownership is associated with a significant reduction in earnings management, and this result remains robust across a wide range of endogeneity tests and robustness checks. Further analyses reveal that ETFs exert a pronounced mitigating effect on sales manipulation, production manipulation, and expense manipulation. Mechanism tests indicate that ETFs curb earnings management by improving stock liquidity and strengthening external monitoring. We also find that the influence of ETFs is stronger in private firms, in firms with lower information transparency, and in firms with CEO duality, suggesting that ETFs serve as a more prominent external governance force when internal governance mechanisms are relatively weak. Overall, this study enriches the literature on the economic consequences of ETFs and provides new empirical evidence that financial innovation in emerging markets can help alleviate the information risk faced by investors.

This study theoretically and empirically examines the impact of intangible capital on firm markups. The current research follows Altomonte et al. (2021) and first establishes a theoretical framework of intangible capital affecting firm markups. Accordingly, this study finds that an increase in intangible capital results in an increase in firm markups via the “production efficiency” channel but a decrease in firm markups via the “market-based pricing” channel. We use the data of Chinese manufacturing firms to further empirically study the influence of intangible capital on firm markups and its influencing mechanism. After a series of robustness and endogeneity tests, this research finds that intangible capital is conducive to increasing firm markups. Results of the empirical analysis also reveal that the positive impact of an increase in intangible capital on the markups of Chinese manufacturing firms via the “production efficiency” channel are higher than the negative impact of an increase in intangible capital via the “market-based pricing” channel. Moreover, the impact on the markups of different types of firms are not the same, with significant heterogeneity characteristics. This study provides micro evidence from a large developing country on how intangible capital affects the change in firm markups, thereby providing a new perspective on the economic effects of intangible capital.

The governmental governance environment significantly influences real corporate investment. Based on the data of listed A-share enterprises from 2010-2020,we adopt a heterogeneous timing difference-in-differences method to examine the impact of Open government data (OGD) on real corporate investment by leveraging the launch of OGD platforms. It is found that OGD significantly promotes real corporate investment. This conclusion remains robust after a series of tests for robustness and endogeneity, including parallel trend, placebo, heterogeneity treatment effect, and replacing variable. The analysis of the impact mechanism reveals that OGD influences real corporate investment by reducing enterprise uncertainty and alleviating financing constraint. The heterogeneity analysis indicates that OGD exerts a more pronounced investment promotion effect on non-state-owned enterprises, without political affiliations, regions characterized by intense government intervention, and areas exhibiting low social trust. This study contributes both conceptual insights for advancing the real economy with higher quality and practical recommendations to support the modernization of national governance structures and administrative effectiveness.