With the elimination of absolute poverty and the improvement of the urbanization rate in China's rural areas, the phenomenon of “urbanization of poverty” has become increasingly prominent. Restricted by the influence of the household registration system, sources of livelihood, social capital, etc., the rural migrants are facing higher social exclusion and a stronger sense of relative deprivation, which makes the rural migrant population become the focus and difficulty of relative poverty governance. Based on the data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this paper discusses the impact of digital financial inclusion on the relative poverty of the rural migrant population. It is found that the development of digital financial inclusion can significantly reduce the incidence of relative poverty among the rural migrant population. Considering different model settings, relative poverty standards, dimensions of digital financial inclusion and the introduction of the number of banks in 1937 as an instrumental variable, the endogeneity test does not change the conclusion of this paper. Further results showed that digital financial inclusion has a greater relative poverty alleviation effect for traditionally disadvantaged groups such as those with low education levels and the older generation, which is in line with the original intention of the development of digital financial inclusion. Therefore, the paper emphasizes that the improvement of the inclusive financial system can restore power and enhance the financial capacity of the rural migrant population, drive the governance of urban relative poverty with the dual wheels of “financial empowerment and ability enhancement”, stimulate the endogenous motivation of common prosperity, and ultimately achieve “people-oriented urbanization” and common prosperity of the people.

Corporate misconduct poses significant risks to financial markets, undermining investor confidence and economic stability. This study investigates the influence of World Heritage culture, with its social, historical, and symbolic values, on reducing corporate misconduct. Using firm-level data from China, with its rich cultural heritage and ancient civilization, we find a significant negative association between the number of World Heritage sites near a company and corporate misconduct. This suggests that a richer World Heritage culture fosters an informal institutional environment that mitigates corporate misconduct. This effect is robust across 100 km, 200 km, and 300 km thresholds and remains significant when using a binary misconduct indicator. The results also show that World Heritage culture enhances corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social capital, which in turn reduces corporate misconduct. Additionally, the impact of World Heritage culture is more pronounced in firms located in high social trust areas, those with high institutional investor supervision, and those farther from regulatory authorities. These findings advance academic knowledge and offer practical implications for policymakers and investors.

As the problem of global climate change becomes more severe, countries have proposed the goals of carbon capping and carbon neutrality. Green finance is an essential capacity support for achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, and it can guide and stimulate social capital to invest in low-carbon industries and initiatives via marketbased mechanisms. Based on the panel data of Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2020, this paper empirically examines the impact of green finance on carbon emission efficiency using a two-way fixed-effects model, conducts a regional heterogeneity analysis, and examines the threshold effect of economic development level and the mediating role of regional innovation. The results indicate that, first, green finance contributes significantly to the improvement of carbon emission efficiency, and second, the level of regional economic development has a double threshold effect on the contribution of green finance to the improvement of carbon emission efficiency. Third, regional innovation is an important green finance channel for influencing carbon emission efficacy. The sensitivity of carbon emission efficiency to the green finance index demonstrates an inverted U-shaped trend. Fifth, the importance of green finance sub-dimensions in relation to carbon emission efficacy is as follows: green support, green credit, green insurance, green investment, green equity, green bond, and green fund. These findings provide theoretical support for green finance's role in promoting co-carbon efficiency and are valuable for policy formulation.

This paper examines the relationship between the large-scale construction of broadband infrastructure and digital financial inclusion in rural China. To make causal inferences, we exploit a quasi-natural experiment and use a difference-in-differences identification strategy with panel dataset of Chinese counties from 2014 to 2018. The results show that broadband infrastructure significantly contributes to digital inclusion. Further, we distinguish between two dimensions of digital inclusion, namely, the coverage and the usage. We find that while broadband infrastructure significantly promotes the coverage dimension, its effect on the usage dimension is limited. Besides, the effects of broadband infrastructure on digital inclusion, and in particular on the usage dimension, are larger in areas with higher levels of human capital, higher levels of social capital, and higher penetrations of bank branches. Taking into account those moderators is important to fully harness the potential of broadband infrastructure on financial inclusion.

The paper studies the effect of social capital on the firms’ debt capacity and capital structure in China. We measure the social capital of China’s 31 provinces through four indexes: the number of NGOs per capita, the index of trust among peoples, the volunteer blood donation ratio of civics, and the money and material donation of civics. The results show that in those areas with more social capital, the firms are more likely to have higher debt ratio and longer debt maturity, and the firms can get debt financing with less tangible assets. And in those districts, the firms are easier to obtain bank credits and trade credits. The paper has two contributions to the economics literature: first, it confirms the economic value of social capital from a micro view; second, it provides a new perspective to understand the firms’ capital structure choice.

We investigate how social capital in both the home and host countries affects foreign direct investment in high tech firms. Difference in the social capital (trustworthiness) among provinces of the host country, China, is shown to matter in foreign companies’ choice of location, ownership type, and investment in R&D. We find that the provinces in China characterized by high levels of social capital attract more foreign investment. We also find that the likelihood of foreign investors establishing joint ventures with local partners increases with the level of social capital prevailing in that area. Foreign high tech firms conduct more R&D investment and hire more R&D personnel in high-social-capital provinces. Moreover, foreign-owned firms located in high-socialcapital areas keep improving their intensity of R&D investments over time. By contrast, in lowsocial- capital areas, foreign high tech firms do not improve and actually diminish their R&D intensity over time. We further show that the social capital in the country of origin (the home country) of a foreign company also affects its investment decisions in China. Cultural difference between the home country and the host country magnifies the foreign company’s weighing of the regional social capital difference in the host country; foreign companies from higher uncertainty avoidance home country prefer to invest in regions with higher social capital in the host country; on the other hand, kinship decreases the need to deal with strangers, and thus reduces the reliance on the provincial social capital.