Financial technology, also known as Fintech, is transforming our daily life and revolutionizing the financial industry. Yet at present, consensus regarding the effect of Fintech on green bonds market is lacking. With novel data from China, this study documents robust evidence showing that Fintech development can significantly boost green bonds issuance. Further analysis suggests that this promotion effect occurs by empowering intermediary institutions and increasing social environmental awareness. Additionally, we investigate the heterogeneous effect and find that the positive relation is more pronounced for bonds without high ratings and in cities connected with High-Speed Railways network. The results call for the attention from policymakers and security managers to take further notice of Fintech utilization in green finance products.

This study investigates the impact of CIO on the Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance. Our analysis is based on a panel dataset comprising 2395 Chinese listed companies throughout the period from 2007 to 2020. Evidence from empirical results shows that CIO is positively correlated with ESG performance. In other words, CIO enhance the corporate ESG performance. The issue of endogeneity was duly considered, and appropriate measures were made to address it. Furthermore, robustness tests were conducted, and the findings remained consistent and reliable. The examination of the mechanism indicates that CIO enhance internal control quality that facilitates the advancement of ESG activities within firms. This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge by examining the impact of external governance systems on the promotion of ESG activities in Chinese enterprises. This study adds to the existing body of scholarship on the implications of Common institutional ownership. Findings recommend several possible policy and economic ramifications that might support Chinese enterprises in their endeavors to incorporate ESG initiatives and contribute to the overall sustainability of society.

This paper provides evidence on the cost of political interference on banks with Chinese Private Enterprise Survey data between 2002 and 2012. Using regional political turnovers as a proxy for political influence, we show that political motivations for future promotions distort the bank lending decisions and crowd out lending to private firms. Besides, firms with business connections are more sensitive to turnover, while political connections are not significantly affected. These lending distortions are more considerable where competition for future promotion is more intense and where incumbents have more influence over banks. Moreover, the effect is especially pronounced for small firms. As a result of reduced bank credit, firms’ total credit availability decreases and they have to cut investments. Overall, our results suggest that preferential lending to politically important sectors has negative spillovers and can lead to costly crowding-out of private sectors.

Based on the panel data of listed manufacturing companies in China from 2010 to 2019, the artificial intelligence (AI) index is constructed using the industrial robot data provided by the International Federation of Robotics, and the two-way fixed effect model is used to test the impact of AI on the total factor productivity (TFP) of enterprises. The results show that AI significantly improves the TFP of manufacturing enterprises, and this conclusion remains valid after robustness tests and endogeneity processing. AI promotes TFP by improving the level of human capital and technological innovation, and management and operational levels positively regulate the promotional effect of AI on the TFP of enterprises. Compared with manufacturing enterprises in the central and western regions, AI boosts the TFP of those in the eastern region; compared with non-state-owned enterprises, AI boosts the TFP of state-owned enterprises; and AI significantly boosts the TFP of high-tech and non-high-tech enterprises.

In the context of promoting high-quality economic development, using digital technology to empower industrial transformation and upgrading, thus driving consumption growth has become a key problem that needs to be solved urgently. By using data at the prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2020, the paper has discussed the influence of the digital economy on residents' consumption and its internal mechanism. Theoretical analysis and empirical test results have shown that first of all, the digital economy has significantly improved residents' consumption, and this conclusion is still valid after the endogenous test and robustness test. Secondly, mechanism analysis has shown that the digital economy can increase residents' consumption by promoting the upgrading of the industrial structure. Thirdly, the promotion effect of the digital economy on residents' consumption is heterogeneous between urban and rural areas and between different regions. Compared with urban, and eastern and central regions, the digital economy has a more significant incentive for residents' consumption in rural areas and western regions, indicating that its development is beneficial to narrowing the gap of consumption between urban and rural areas and between regions. Finally, the improvement effect of the digital economy on residents' consumption has marginal increment nonlinear characteristics, which is continuously strengthened with the upgrading of industrial structure. The above research conclusions can provide a theoretical basis for further improving the infrastructure of the digital economy, accelerating the integration of the digital economy with traditional industries, and building a consumer Internet.

As a vital documentation for assessments, rewards and punishments in terms of political promotions, the intellectual property pilot city policy (IPPC), an strategic incentive measure to enhance innovation capacities at the city and firm level, may play a prominent role in innovation fostering in China. Yet patent bubbles that focus more on quantity over quality have been thrown into doubt, as local cadres and firms shall pay more attention to the easier observable low-quality innovation performance amid the pressure of political task. this paper conducts an investigation that drew upon listed firm data from 270 prefecture-level cities and employs a PSM-DID design to evaluate the IPPC policy effectiveness on innovation quality and innovation quantity. The results are obvious: The policy have boosted the number of innovations, but has a limited effect on improving the quality of innovation. We further apply a hierarchical liner modeling approach to deal with the stratified cityand firm-level data and to verify the mechanism through which policy distortions may affect corporate innovation. There also gives evidence that the IPPC policy comes into effect mainly through financial subsidies, institutional supply and the intensity of IPR protection at the local scale. This report concludes by proposing further policy implementations for the future optimization of China’s innovation strategies.

The study explores the impacts and processes of traditional Confucianism on the green technology innovation behavior of organizations from the perspective of the informal system, using samples of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2003 to 2022. The findings indicate that Confucianism has a significant promotional effect on green technological innovation, which remains robust after using the cross-multiplier term between the number of regional Confucius temples and the mean ESG of firms as an instrumental variable to mitigate the endogeneity problem and a series of tests. According to mechanistic research, Confucianism works largely through two channels: reducing agency conflicts and raising environmental consciousness. Further investigation reveals that there is a substitution impact between Confucianism in the informal institution and environmental legislation in supporting green technology innovation in firms. To encourage green technological innovation in enterprises, it is critical to emphasize the integration of informal and formal systems, as well as to fully use traditional culture’s governance efficacy in supporting the enterprise green transformation.

This study investigates the impact of CIO on the Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance. Our analysis is based on a panel dataset comprising 2395 Chinese listed companies throughout the period from 2007 to 2020. Evidence from empirical results shows that CIO is positively correlated with ESG performance. In other words, CIO enhance the corporate ESG performance. The issue of endogeneity was duly considered, and appropriate measures were made to address it. Furthermore, robustness tests were conducted, and the findings remained consistent and reliable. The examination of the mechanism indicates that CIO enhance internal control quality that facilitates the advancement of ESG activities within firms. This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge by examining the impact of external governance systems on the promotion of ESG activities in Chinese enterprises. This study adds to the existing body of scholarship on the implications of Common institutional ownership. Findings recommend several possible policy and economic ramifications that might support Chinese enterprises in their endeavors to incorporate ESG initiatives and contribute to the overall sustainability of society.

In the international context of the surging tide of anti-globalization, China will raise the establishment of pilot free trade zone as a national strategy, and achieve the goal of promoting highquality economic growth through a series of reform measures, such as promoting investment liberalization and facilitation, improving investment promotion and protection mechanisms, and improving the level of overseas investment cooperation. To study the role of the pilot free trade zones on investment, the panel data of 46 cities from 2005 to 2018 are used to empirically test the investment growth effect and investment spillover effect of the pilot free trade zones by using the Difference-in-Differences Spatial Dubin Model. The results show that the pilot free trade zones can significantly promote investment growth and have a spillover effect on investment in surrounding areas. Through the grouping regression of the eastern, central, and western regions, it is found that the eastern pilot free trade zones have the most obvious investment spillover effect on the surrounding areas, and the central pilot free trade zones have a siphon effect on the investment in the surrounding areas. In addition, different batches of pilot free trade zones or the same batch of pilot free trade zones have different investment spillover effects on surrounding areas at different time points. Finally, policy suggestions are put forward: strengthen the strategic implementation of the pilot free trade zones, improve the spatial radiation mechanism, promote linkage development and differentiated development, and make the pilot free trade zones better promote investment growth and investment spillover.

The past three decades have witnessed the boom of patents and mounting place-based innovation policies (PIPs) in China. However, the PIP-innovation nexus, particularly the distortion effect and underlying mechanisms, remains poorly understood. Matching micro-level patent data and industrial firm data, we documented a promotion effect of PIPs on local firm innovation measured by both patent quantity and quality. Moreover, we observed a distortion effect on patent quality following the 2008 crisis, primarily originating from privately owned enterprises rather than stateowned ones. Drawing from theories of technological learning and the unique institutional characteristics of PIPs in China, we have further unpacked the underlying mechanisms driving these effects: Both industry-academia collaboration and foreign direct investment play significant roles in the PIP-innovation nexus, and the latter appears to be particularly influential in causing the distortion effect. Additionally, our analysis has revealed that preferential policies, such as patent subsidies and reductions in land prices, are instrumental in enabling PIPs to exert their impact.