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.

Community-based natural resource governance is often promoted in the name of sustainability, yet long-term outcomes remain elusive. This study examines the impact of various types of trust as the underpinning factor for the long-term resilience of collaborative resource governance. Using a four-type trust framework, dispositional, affinitive, rational, and procedural, the study compares trust trajectories across the prior to-, during-, and post-project phases of matsutake mushroom management in two communities within the S National Protected Area, Yunnan Province, China. Drawing on qualitative interviews and comparative case analysis, the study finds that while neither community sustained co-management mechanisms in full, X Village retained partial continuity through embedded procedural and rational trust. In contrast, Y village experienced accelerated institutional decline after project withdrawal, as market changes and weak enforcement undermined collective norms and trust in formal structures. These findings underscore that institutional resilience is shaped not only by institutional design but also by the evolution and interaction of trust types over time. By tracing trust trajectories across project stages, this study contributes a micro-level explanation of how trust mediates post-project governance outcomes. It emphasizes the importance of layering trust and embedding it within local social and institutional practices. The findings highlight the need to consider how co-management strategies can support trust continuity after project withdrawal, particularly by acknowledging the underlying structural conditions that shape trust resilience.

Understanding the impact of local government debt on economic development has emerged as a focal issue for both academic research and policymakers. This study adopts a financing structure perspective and utilizes panel data from 214 cities and 3,228 A-share listed companies in China (2017–2023) to empirically investigate the impact of local government debt on corporate “shift from virtual to real economy” and its underlying mechanisms. The expansion of local government debt significantly promotes enterprises “shift from virtual to real economy”. The positive impact of local government debt on enterprises” transition from financialization to the real economy is more pronounced among firms in first tier and new first-tier cities, non-state-owned enterprises, and labor-intensive industries. Further analysis indicates that local government debt drives capital reallocation from financial investments to real investments by alleviating corporate financing constraints. This study proposes policy recommendations including optimizing debt fund allocation, further optimizing the financing environment, implementing differentiated regulatory measures. These suggestions provide both a theoretical foundation and practical references for synergistically advancing debt governance and real economy revitalization.

This paper investigates whether and how independent director-affiliated corporate donations affect stock price crash risk in China. We find a significant positive relationship between affiliated donations and future crash risk. The relationship is more significant for firms with weak internal governance and limited external monitoring, when affiliated directors serve on the audit committee, and in non-state-owned enterprises. Overall, our findings suggest that the social ties built through affiliated donations undermine rather than enhance director monitoring, and that agency theory has more explanatory power than resource dependence theory for understanding the impact of affiliated donations on stock price crash risk.

Capital market internationalization is widely regarded as an important pathway to improving resource allocation efficiency and enhancing governance quality, while simultaneously imposing higher requirements on corporate sustainability and social responsibility. However, its impact on firms’ internal income distribution remains subject to academic debate. This study treats the inclusion of China’s A-shares in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index as a landmark exogenous shock of capital market internationalization. Based on a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2014 to 2022, we manually compile firm-level MSCI inclusion data and construct a multi-period difference-in-differences model for empirical testing. The results indicate that firms’ inclusion in the MSCI Index significantly increases their labor income share. The mechanism analysis reveals that this promoting effect operates mainly through three channels: alleviating financing constraints, fostering innovative development, and strengthening investor governance. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect is more pronounced among technology-intensive firms, firms under greater competitive pressure, and firms with higher degrees of internationalization. By incorporating income distribution outcomes into the framework of capital market internationalization, this paper enriches the evidence on the economic and social effects of internationalization and provides policy implications for emerging economies to advance high-level capital market opening and optimize income distribution.

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 article examines the link between foreign institutional holdings and firms’ efficiency in labor investment in the setting of Chinese markets. We find that foreign institutional investors enhance firms’ labor investment outcomes primarily through mitigating asymmetric information and by strengthening internal governance. Specifically, the influence of foreign institutional investors on a firm’s labor investment efficiency is stronger when the firm faces greater labor adjustment frictions. This effect is more evident when foreign institutional investors are originated from countries or areas with stronger cultural connections to China, stronger governance quality, common law traditions, or stronger bargaining power in the firms’ governance. Our paper contributes to the literature in that it documents the monitoring role of foreign institutional investors from the perspective of firms’ labor investment decisions, and adds to the literature on the drivers of firms’ labor investment choices.

Cultural tightness measures the extent to which individuals behave according to the broader values shared by other members in society. While cultural tightness has been studied extensively in the context of individuals’ behavior and (cross) country-level outcomes, much less is known about the explanatory power it holds in the setting of organizational structures. Motivated by the ambiguous relationship between cultural tightness and population-level gender equality documented by prior literature, we investigate whether cultural tightness helps explain board gender diversity levels in China. Rooting our hypotheses in institutional theory and the contextual governmental reforms of China, we leverage a large sample of Chinese A-share listed firms and document that firms located in culturally tight provinces have higher levels of board gender diversity. Further analyses reveal that cultural tightness in China partially offsets the impact of more traditional Confucian values, and the relationship becomes more pronounced in settings where firms can realize higher legitimacy gains from adopting women on their boards. Finally, we counter potential critiques of window dressing, by demonstrating that in culturally tighter areas women are more likely to be higher educated, have more experience abroad, hold more board positions, and are less likely to be independent directors.

This study investigates the impact of employee ownership on firms’ investment responsiveness to stock market feedback. Using data from Chinese listed firms, we find that employee ownership significantly enhances the sensitivity of corporate investment to Tobin’s q. This effect is more pronounced in firms with higher information asymmetry, greater labor intensity, weaker corporate governance, and higher financial distress risk. While employee ownership is linked to increased subsequent profitability volatility, it also mitigates financial mismatch and downside operating risk. Our findings also suggest that employee ownership drives a shift in corporate strategy, leading to more aggressive approaches and improved risk preferences. These results highlight the role of employee ownership in mitigating agency problems and enhancing firms’ ability to incorporate market information into investment decisions.