Farmland transfer in developing countries is characterized by informal contracts. Rich research typically attributes this phenomenon to the lack of property rights and rarely emphasizes the influence of land characteristics themselves. Utilizing plot-level data from 2017-2019 collected in Yangshan County, China, we evaluate the impact of land consolidation on the farmland transfer market transformation. We find that land consolidation has a positive impact on the transformation of farmland transfer markets, instead of its scale expansion. After land consolidation, the scope of transaction partners extends from relationship-based households to anonymous new agricultural operating entities; the transfer rent shifts from being free of charge to being paid; and the transfer duration shifts from short-term to long-term. Mechanism analysis reveals that land consolidation increases land value and reduces transaction costs by improving the endowment of farmland resources, thus driving the farmland transfer market transformation. Further exploration warns that market transformation caused by land consolidation may trigger non-grain farming, leading to a 15.2% reduction in the rice planting area and posing potential risks to food security. These findings enrich the existing studies that only focus on the impact of land rights reform, both theoretically and empirically. In practice, it has important policy implications for countries facing similar difficulties in the farmland transfer market as China.

With the digital transformation of the capitalist economy, some contemporary scholars have put forward the Techno-Feudalism narrative of the digital economy. This narrative emphasizes that digital platform enterprises, as emerging market entities in the digital economy, have many practices that are highly similar to those of feudal lords. For example, digital platform enterprises plundering user data is similar to feudal lords plundering land; digital platform enterprises collecting digital rent is similar to feudal lords collecting land rent; digital platform enterprises controlling users and workers is similar to feudal lords controlling slaves. However, this narrative has many theoretical fallacies. Marx's theory of surplus value shows that the above phenomena are essentially still the contemporary form of capital seizing surplus value through technological innovation. The techno-feudalism narrative ignores the internal logic of capital using technological iteration to reconstruct the exploitation mechanism and falls into a superficial misjudgment. In contrast, the Chinese governance practice of digital economy breaks the monopoly of platforms on data elements through the innovation of the separation of three rights of data property rights; promotes fair competition and optimal allocation of resources in the digital economy by strengthening anti-monopoly supervision and promoting the construction of digital infrastructure; proves that the socialist system can break the capital proliferation cycle and achieve "people-centered" development by building a labor rights protection system to promote the creation and sharing of value and transcending the techno-feudalism phenomenon of the digital economy.

Informal institutions can play a crucial role in fostering corporate and policy innovation, especially when formal institutions are weak. However, their intangible nature makes them difficult to quantify. In this paper, we proxy the strength of kinship-based informal institutions using surname homogeneity among business owners, specifically, the extent to which they share a limited number of surnames within the same county. Our analysis reveals that a one-standard-deviation increase in the strength of informal institutions leads to a 21.1% increase in patent filings and an 18.9% increase in policy innovation. We find that kinship-related informal institutions foster corporate innovation by compensating for weak formal institutions, enhancing protection for intellectual property rights, facilitating access to finance, improving public service delivery, and promoting supply chain cooperation. We also suggest that kinship-related informal institutions encourage local governments to engage in policy experimentation, which relies on the collaboration of business owners. This experimentation process is easier to coordinate and monitor in counties dominated by a few kinship networks. Both informal institutions and policy innovation contribute to economic development and foster entrepreneurial market entries. However, the positive impact of informal institutions declines over time as formal institutions strengthen in China.

Despite nearly twenty years of privatization, mixed-ownership reform has been the mainstay of SOE reform in China in recent years. This raises the question of whether the financial performance of mixed-ownership firms (Mixed firms) is better than private-owned enterprises (POEs). Although Mixed firms suffer more from government intervention, unclear property rights, and interest conflicts between state shareholders and private shareholders, they can also benefit from the external resources controlled by the state. Therefore, the performance of Mixed firms is still unclear. Collecting data from the Chinese A-share listed market, we divide the firms into POEs, Mixed firms controlled by the state (MixedSOEs), and Mixed firms controlled by the private sectors (MixedPOEs). Measuring profitability using ROA and ROE, we find that on average, POEs perform better than Mixed firms, and MixedPOEs have a higher profitability than MixedSOEs. Within Mixed firms, more state shares are related to lower profitability, and more private shares are related to higher profitability. Using the NBS survey data, we further find that on average, SOEs exhibit the lowest profitability, with MixedSOEs and MixedPOEs in the middle, and POEs have the highest profitability. We try to address the endogeneity challenge in several ways and get similar results. Overall, our analysis provides new evidence on the financial performance of mixed-ownership firms.

Using one of the largest samples of litigation data available to date, we examine whether the political culture of a firm determines its propensity for corporate misconduct. We measure political culture using the politi- cal contributions of top managers, firm political action committees, and local residents. We show that firms with a Republican culture are more likely to be the subject of civil rights, labor, and environmental litigation than are Democratic firms, consistent with the Democratic ideology that emphasizes equal rights, labor rights, and envi- ronmental protection. However, firms with a Democratic culture are more likely to be the subject of litigation related to securities fraud and intellectual property rights violations than are Republican firms, whose party ideology stresses self-reliance, property rights, market discipline, and limited government regulation. Upon lit- igation filing, both types of firms experience similar announcement reaction, which suggests that the observed relationship between political culture and corporate misconduct is unlikely to reflect differences in expected litigation costs.

Despite nearly twenty years of privatization, mixed-ownership reform has been the mainstay of SOE reform in China in recent years. This raises the question of whether the financial performance of mixed-ownership firms (Mixed firms) is better than private-owned enterprises (POEs). Although Mixed firms suffer more from government intervention, unclear property rights, and interest conflicts between state shareholders and private shareholders, they can also benefit from the external resources controlled by the state. Therefore, the performance of Mixed firms is still unclear. Collecting data from the Chinese A-share listed market, we divide the firms into POEs, Mixed firms controlled by the state (MixedSOEs), and Mixed firms controlled by the private sectors (MixedPOEs). Measuring profitability using ROA and ROE, we find that on average, POEs perform better than Mixed firms, and MixedPOEs have a higher profitability than MixedSOEs. Within Mixed firms, more state shares are related to lower profitability, and more private shares are related to higher profitability. Using the NBS survey data, we further find that on average, SOEs exhibit the lowest profitability, with MixedSOEs and MixedPOEs in the middle, and POEs have the highest profitability. We try to address the endogeneity challenge in several ways and get similar results. Overall, our analysis provides new evidence on the financial performance of mixed-ownership firms.

Using the formal implementation of the 2012 Green Credit Guidelines (GCG) as an exogenous shock to construct a quasi-natural experiment, we study the impact of green credit policies on the inefficient investment of heavily polluting firms in China's listed companies from 2008 to 2020. We find that green credit policies can significantly alleviate the inefficient investment of heavily polluting enterprises. By reducing agency costs and long-term liabilities, green credit policies mitigate the problem of inefficient investment in heavily polluting firms. Moreover, the mitigating effect of green credit policies on the inefficient investment of heavily polluting enterprises has significant heterogeneity in terms of property rights, internal characteristics.

The voluminous strategy research on the determinants of corporate scope is often premised on a well-established property rights regime, which contrasts with the weak property rights protection that still characterizes most countries today. We address this gap by applying property rights theory to theorize and empirically examine how the strengthening of the property rights regime affects corporate scope. Our analysis exploits the enactment of a property law that enhanced the formal protection of private properties in China as a quasi-experiment. We show that with a strengthened property rights regime, the horizontal relatedness among private firms’ businesses increases, but their vertical relatedness decreases, compared with state-owned firms. Further, these effects are less prominent for politically connected firms that are afforded informal protection of property rights. Our findings shed new light on the property rights regime as a critical determinant of firms’ horizontal and vertical scope.

This paper uses the enactment of China’s 2007 Property Law (the Law), which reduces the risk of expropriation by local governments, as the setting to investigate the importance of property rights protection for private firm investment. Using propensity score matching and a difference-in-differences design, we find that firms facing weaker property rights protection prior to the Law significantly increase their investment and investment efficiency after the Law. Cross-sectional analyses document evidence consistent with a decrease in firms’ perceived expropriation risk as the main mechanism underlying the Law’s effect. Finally, we show that the Law improves local economic outcomes and employment.

In the era of digital economy, the development and application of digital intelligence technology are changing rapidly, and human society has entered a new era where digital intelligence technology is rapidly advancing and playing an important role. Workers who master digital intelligence technology play a decisive role in the sustained and healthy development of enterprises, and the human capital possessed by workers has become the driving force for high-quality development of enterprises. The recognition and measurement of the value of human capital possessed by workers is the foundation and prerequisite for motivating workers, and the recognition and measurement of human capital value has become a core issue that urgently needs to be studied in human resource equity accounting. The article briefly introduces the development of human resource accounting theory, expounds that establishing human capital property rights is an important condition for the sustainable development of enterprises in the digital economy era, stimulates the potential of human capital, and is conducive to accelerating economic transformation and upgrading. The dynamic equity distribution mechanism is an important way to stimulate the vitality of human capital.