This paper highlights the crucial role of land allocation mechanisms in promoting industrial agglomeration by examining China’s 2007 industrial land market reform. By introducing transparency into the land-selling process, the reform facilitated more buyers to compete for land (reflected by increased land sale prices), enabling local governments to allocate land to the most suitable users. Combining comprehensive data sets that include information on initial local industrial structure, new industrial establishments, and industrial land transactions, the empirical analysis finds that the reform significantly increased the entry of firms from industries aligned with local specialization, particularly in areas that implemented the reform more strictly. A back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates a 1.3% increase in the national average total factor productivity of new entrants over three years post-reform due to a better match between new entrants and local industry specialization. Supporting evidence demonstrates the reform’s positive effect on economic growth (reflected in changes in nighttime lights), potentially through increasing local firms’ TFP.

This paper investigates the impact of local fintech development on analysts’ earnings forecast accuracy. We use the method of web text mining to construct the local fintech development index for empirical test and find that local fintech development significantly improves analysts’ earnings forecast accuracy by promoting firm digital transformation, improving firm information transparency, and alleviating the information asymmetry between firms and outsiders. Furthermore, this effect is more significant for analysts without equity pledge associations and those with weaker buy-side pressure. This study shows that local fintech development can optimize the capital market information environment.

Factoring financing is the most widely used form of supply chain finance, which has been adopted by more and more enterprises. The existing literature focuses on the motivation of suppliers to adopt factoring financing and the factors that affect the development of factoring. However, little attention is paid to the results of factoring. This study uses the event study method, draws on the Extended Resource based theory (ERBT), discussing how the factoring business announcement affects the stock market value of listed companies from the perspective of competitive advantage and the firm's own characteristics. By manually collecting 205 factoring business announcements from 115 Chinese listed companies from October 2019 to December 2022, we found that: (1) from the perspective of competitive advantage, the announcement of factoring business by non-Combination of Industry and Finance enterprises or their holding enterprises has more positive impact on the stock price of the enterprises. There is no obvious relationship between the size of factoring quota and stock price. (2) From the perspective of the enterprise's own characteristics, the announcement of factoring business by state-owned enterprises and small-scale enterprises can have a positive impact on the stock price of the enterprise. Before and after the Civil Code came into effect, there was no significant difference in the relationship between factoring business announcements and stock prices. This study uses secondary data to fill the gap in the study of the impact of factoring announcements on stock market value. This paper discusses the relationship between factoring business announcement and stock market value from the perspective of competitive advantage for the first time, providing theoretical guidance for managers to adopt factoring business under what circumstances. In addition, this study also provides documentation for the empirical study of factoring business announcements in China.

By exploring additional information, both institutional investors’ site visits and analyst coverage can stimulate corporate innovation. However, because analysts are more specialized in information exploration, their existence should weaken the effect of institutional site visits on corporate innovation. By using Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2013, we investigate the effect of institutional site visits on firms’ innovation output, with a focus on its heterogeneity from analyst coverage. We use patent citation records to accurately measure firms’ innovation output. We find that institutional site visits significantly enhance corporate innovation among firms without analyst coverage, among firms with low analyst coverage, while this effect turns insignificant among firms with high analyst coverage. IV estimations confirm the causality. Additionally, we find that our major results exist only among non-SOEs, firms with a lower quality of information disclosure, firms with lower liquidity, and newly listed firms. Overall, this paper helps better understand the interaction between institutional site visits and analyst coverage regarding information exploration.

We examine the effect of the identification of high-tech enterprises on corporate innovation from the perspective of supplier relationship management. We use data from the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies in China from 2007 to 2020 as samples and a time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) method. The results show that the identification of high-tech enterprises significantly promotes corporate innovation. The potential mechanism is that there is a sharp decline in the concentration of suppliers, the occupation of suppliers’ trade credit, and the inventory cost of enterprise after getting the identification of high-tech enterprises. Further analyses show that the enterprise identified as a high-tech enterprise tends to be more innovative due to the improvement of the supplier relationship management, leading to a better operating performance. Overall, our findings indicates a positive implementation effect of the policy of identification of high-tech enterprises. This paper not only contributes to the research about the economic consequences of the identification of high-tech enterprises from the perspective of supplier relationship management, but also enriches the existing literature on the effect of the supply relationship on corporate innovation, and supplier relationship management from the perspective of identification of high-tech enterprises. In summary, this study provides a theoretical basis and policy reference for the evaluation of the implementation effect of the policy of identification of high-tech enterprises, and the strengthening of supplier relationship management .

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.

Using data from Chinese A-share listed firms from 2015 to 2022, a difference-in-differences model is employed to empirically examine the impact of bankruptcy regimes, marked by the establishment of the bankruptcy court, on firms’ total factor productivity (TFP). The results show a significant decline in TFP among firms in regions following the establishment of the bankruptcy court. This result remains valid after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism tests reveal that bankruptcy court heightens firms’ risk aversion by endowing excessive rights to creditors. Consequently, firms tend to downwardly adjust capital structure, curtail innovation investment, and accumulate liquid assets as coping measures, ultimately contributing to a decline in TFP. However, well-developed market mechanisms can alleviate the negative impact of bankruptcy court excessively protecting creditors. Specifically, when firms are located in regions with weak government intervention and strong financial development, as well as in market environments with low uncertainty and strong competition, this negative impact can be mitigated. Moreover, we find that under bankruptcy court operations, while a series of risk reduction measures taken by firms triggers a decline in TFP, it mitigates the risk of financial distress. These findings provide fresh insights into the dual nature of creditor protection and offer valuable references for governments to improve the bankruptcy legal system.

The implementation of prefabricated housing (PH) has become prevalent in China recently because of its advantages in improving production efficiency and saving energy. However, the benefits of adopting PH cannot always be accrued by the stakeholders because of the arising transaction costs (TCs) in the projects’ development process. This study investigates the strategies for developers to make rational choices for minimizing the TCs of the PH project considering their own attributes and external constraints. A Bayesian Belief Network model was applied as the analytical method, based on the surveys in China. The single sensitive analysis indicated that developers influence the TCs of PH through the three most impactful factors: Prefabrication rate, PH experience, and Contract payment method. Furthermore, combined strategies were recommended for developers in various situations based on the multiple sensitivity analysis. Developers facing high prefabrication rate challenges are suggested to reduce the risks by procuring high-qualified general contractors and adopting unit-price contracts type. For developers with limited PH experience, adopting the Engineering-Procurement-Construction procurement method is the most efficient in reducing their TCs in the context of China’s PH market. This study contributes to the current body of knowledge concerning the effect of traders’ attributes and choices on TCs, expanding the application of TCs theory and fulfilling the study on the determinants of TCs in construction management.

Our study explored the rise of public companies competing to launch large language models (LLMs) in the Chinese stock market after ChatGPTs' success. We analyzed 25 companies listed on the Chinese Stock Exchange and discovered that the cumulative abnormal return (CAR) was high up to 3% before LLMs' release, indicating a positive view from insiders. However, CAR dropped to around 1.5% after their release. Early LLM releases had better market reactions, especially those focused on customer service, design, and education. Conversely, LLMs dedicated to IT and civil service received negative feedback.

Taking the national carbon market and seven local carbon markets in China, we use DEA model to measure market efficiency, and then classify them by hierarchical cluster method. Efficiency of the national carbon market and local carbon markets of Beijing, Shenzhen, Hubei and Shanghai are leading, while Guangdong is in the middle; Chongqing and Tianjin are left behind. Room for improvement and scale returns are further analyzed, and suggestions for each carbon market are proposed finally.