In the mid-1990s, the concept of smart growth emerged in the United States as a critical response to the phenomenon of suburban sprawl. To promote sustainable urban development, it is necessary to further investigate the principles and applications of smart growth. In this paper, we proposed a Smart Growth Index (SGI) as a standard for measuring the degree of responsible urban development. Based on this index, we constructed a comprehensive 3E evaluation model—covering economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental sustainability—to systematically assess the level of smart growth. For empirical analysis, we selected two medium-sized cities from different continents: Wuhu County, China, and Colima, Mexico. Using an improved entropy method, we evaluated the degree of smart growth in recent years and analyzed the contributions of various policies to sustainable urban development. Then, guided by the ten principles of smart growth, we linked theoretical insights to practical challenges and formulated a development plan for both cities. To forecast long-term trends, we employed trend extrapolation based on historical data, enabling the prediction of SGI values for 2020, 2030, and 2050. The results indicate that Wuhu demonstrates a greater potential for smart growth compared with Colima. We also simulated a scenario in which the population of both cities increased by 50 percent and then re-evaluated the SGI. The analysis suggests that while rapid population growth tends to slow the pace of smart growth, it does not necessarily exert a negative impact on the overall trajectory of sustainable development. Finally, a study on the application of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) theory in Wuhu County was conducted. Based on this analysis, we proposed several policy recommendations aimed at enhancing the city’s sustainable urban development.

Recently, the Chinese Government has strengthened the enforcement of bankruptcy laws to protect creditors’ rights. This study shed light on the effect of creditor protection on asset-debt maturity mismatch by employing a quasi-natural experiment in China. The results show that creditor protection mitigates maturity mismatch, and the effect is more pronounced among financially constrained firms. Results remain robust after the dynamic effects test, placebo test, propensity score matching approach, entropy balancing method, and controlling for COVID-19 shocks. Mechanism tests show that creditor protection decreases the cost of debt and reduces over-investment. The effect of creditor protection is pronounced in private companies, financially independent companies, and companies with secured loans. Creditor rights can alleviate maturity mismatch in firms with medium ownership concentration and managerial ownership levels. Economic consequences studies suggest that creditor protection reduces corporate default risk. This study reveals the mechanism and effect of creditor protection on asset-debt maturity mismatch in emerging markets, providing recommendations to policymakers for assessing and improving bankruptcy law regimes.

In this paper, we present an entropy-based approach to measure the asymmetry of stock returns. By applying this approach, we use the Bootstrap method that our asymmetry measure exhibits a significantly enhanced ability to detect asymmetry compared to skewness. Moreover, our empirical findings reveal that stocks characterized by higher upside asymmetries, as determined by our innovative entropy measure, exhibit lower average returns across a crosssection of stocks. This supports the conclusions drawn by Han et al. (2018). In contrast, when employing the three-moment skewness measure, the relationship between asymmetry and stock returns remains inconclusive within the Chinese market.

本文从突出金融部门角度，编制了中国地区宏观金融社会核算矩阵，该项研究对于决策者和研究人员全面了解和分析地区经济状况，提供了科学的经济数据库。首先，论文从宏观经济循环角度，在分析了金融部门和地区部门的特点基础上，研究了中国地区宏观金融社会核算矩阵的结构和内容；其次，以《江苏投入产出表》(2000)和《江苏统计年鉴》为基础，结合大量调查，编制了江苏宏观金融社会核算矩阵；最后，利用跨熵(cross entropy，CE)技术，对矩阵进行了平衡处理。