The long-term extensive economic development has caused China's resource and environmental problems, especially the resource misallocation. The way China prioritises its limited resources is being significantly impacted by the rise of the digital economy and the interconnectedness of new technologies and the real economy. This paper quantitatively examines the linear and nonlinear impacts and mechanisms of digital development represented by internet development. With a series of empirical tests, we found that the internet development has significantly inhibited the resources misallocation, and the conclusion is still valid in the robustness test with internet popularization and internet infrastructure as the core explanatory variables. In addition to the marketization, internet development can further inhibit resource misallocation by promoting financial development, openness, urbanization and industrial structure. The findings of threshold regression suggest that the inhibitory effect of internet growth on resource misallocation becomes more visible as the degree of financial development and industrial structure increases; with the higher degree of urbanisation and marketization, although the internet development has always played an inhibitory role on resource mismatch, the inhibitory effect first increases and then decreases; with the improvement of openness, the hindering impact of internet growth on resource mismatch becomes more visible as the degree of financial development and industrial structure increases.

This study estimates the impact of third-party online payment systems on trade, export, import, and Internet retailing in China. Also, the study examines the financial development mechanism via which third-party payment affects trade, export, import, and Internet retailing in China. By employing a sample of 31 provinces in China covering 2011 to 2018, the findings indicate that, third-party payment drives China’s trade (0.43%), export (0.42%), import (0.47%), and Internet retailing (0.24%). The study also finds that third-party payment complements financial development to positively affect trade, export, import, and Internet retailing in China. The study recommends policymakers promote third-party payment development in China to boost trade, export, import, and Internet retailing.

With the development of information technology and its application in environmental governance, the role of the internet in improving energy efficiency and reducing energy-saving potential (ESP) has attracted more attention. In this study, the slack-based model (SBM) and the unexpected model, along with the entropy method, were applied to measure China's energy-saving potential and internet development. Further, we empirically analyzed the direct effect, mediating effect, threshold effect, and regional heterogeneity of the internet on ESP. Our conclusion shows that there is a significant spatial correlation between internet penetration and ESP. Internet penetration has become an important tool for reducing ESP, but this effect shows regional heterogeneity. Human capital accumulation, financial development, and industrial upgrading are important influencing mechanisms, but indirect effects are weaker than direct effects. The impact of internet penetration on ESP is non-linear, and for improving human capital accumulation, financial development, and industrial upgrading, the role of internet popularization in energy conservation is more obvious.

This paper evaluates the treatment effect of high-speed rail (HSR) operation on city consumption using the dataset of Chinese cities from 2003 to 2019. Firstly, the applicability of observations is discussed; secondly, observations with no appropriate contrast samples are dropped for more precise empirical results. Then, propensity score matching (PSM) is implied to have the database much more balanced and suitable for the difference-in-difference (DID) framework, that is, the PSM-DID approach. The main results find a novel phenomenon of Simpson's paradox regarding the HSR-consumption nexus, which indicates that even though we can observe the positive effect on the whole, the results argue negative relationships between HSR and consumption within subclass cities. In addition, a dose-response assessment (DR) and some other checks have been proposed to demonstrate robust estimation results.

Based on provincial panel data in China, this study is the first to investigate whether industry-university-research collaborative innovation (IURCI) can help to improve factor misallocation. It is found that IURCI can significantly improve capital misallocation and labor misallocation, and the effect has regional differences, which shows that the improvement effect is obvious in areas with factor under-allocation, such as the central and western regions, but not obvious in areas with factor over-allocation, which conforms to the rule of diminishing marginal returns. A regulatory effect model is built to explore the impact of regional heterogeneity, through which we find that after considering three external environmental conditions, including economic development level, academic research level, and marketization degree, the improvement effect of IURCI on factor misallocation undergoes significant changes. The research results show that to deepen the marketization reform of factor allocation, we can start with IURCI. The government should form a sustainable and normalized industry-university-research collaborative innovation ecological mode through pilot cases and adopt measures according to local conditions to ensure the efficient use and reasonable distribution of capital and human resources of enterprises, universities, and scientific research institutions.

Financial development and industrial structure optimization are two-wheeled engines for promoting high-quality development, but the causal identification of the two is still poorly understood. This paper addresses this research gap by comprehensively analyzing the relationship between them. Regional economic growth is a necessary condition for achieving high-quality development. Taking China as an example, this study empirically examines the role of financial development and industrial structure optimization in high-quality development using the entropy method, fixed effects, mediation effects and instrumental variable regression. The study results show that (i) financial development has actively promoted regional economic growth. (ii) The driving effect on the central and western regions is greater than that on the eastern region. (iii) There are differences in the mediating effect of industrial structure optimization and rationalization between different levels of financial development and economic growth. (iv) In addition, the mediating effect of industrial structure optimization is larger in the eastern region than in the central and western regions. (v) The mediating effect of industrial structure rationalization is not obvious in the eastern region, but has a masking effect in the central and western regions. Our findings provide new strategies for financial development and industrial structure optimization in developing countries.

Influenced by traditional notions of solidarity, when a province’s planning can be highly aligned with that of the central government, the province is perceived to be more collective and thus able to receive financial or resource favors from the central government. This consistency, as is often the case, reflected in doing the same thing as the central government. This situation may lead governors to ignore local economic performance and thus reduce regional innovation efficiency, as in the case of China’s Great Leap Forward. Likewise, it is possible to get better resources (energy or capital) by demonstrating managerial submissiveness, thus improving the regional innovation efficiency. Therefore, to verify the relationship between imitative governance and regional innovation efficiency, we collected relevant data from 31 major provincial administrative units in China, calculated the degree of imitative governance between provincial government work reports and central government work reports through text similarity, as well as utilized the SBM-DEA model to evaluate regional innovation efficiency. Meanwhile, we provide a new explanation of the phenomenon from the perspective of resource inclination. Finally, the empirical results show that imitative governance promotes local innovation efficiency and is moderated by resource inclination.

Speeding up digital development and building "digital China" is an important strategic deployment of the "14th Five-Year Plan" and a concrete measure to promote the high-quality development of China's sports industry and national health. Based on provincial data in China from 2011 to 2019, an empirical model is used to analyze the relationship between digital construction, sports industry development and national health investment. The results show that digitalization is instrumental for sports industry development and the improvement of national health in China. Digitalization has promoted the healthy development of sports industry and national health by increasing the input of public science and technology.

This paper describes two novel approaches to cost estimation of manufactured products where a data set of similar products have known manufactured costs. The methods use the notion of piecewise functions and are (1) clustering and (2) splines. Cost drivers are typically a mixture of categorical and numeric data which complicates cost estimation. Both clustering and splines approaches can accommodate this. Through four case studies, we compare our approaches with the often-used regression models. Our results show that clustering especially offers promise in improving the accuracy of cost estimation. While clustering and splines are slightly more complex to develop from both a user and a computational perspective, our approaches are packaged in an open-source software. This paper is the first known to adapt and apply these two well-known mathematical approaches to manufacturing cost estimation.

This study focuses on the impact of trade in environmental goods (green trade) on the environment. We found that green trade can decrease pollution levels by exploiting a panel of 277 Chinese cities from 2004 to 2013 and using the instrumental variable (IV) strategy. However, total trade openness is far less favorable to the environment. We also found that both green imports and exports are conducive to the Chinese environment, while ordinary green trade performs better than green processing trade. Nevertheless, the effects of green trade are restricted by a city's purchasing power and absorptive capacity, as well as the classifications of environmental goods. Furthermore, green trade mainly promotes local green technological progress to benefit the environment.

This study examined the determinants of the exchange rate in a mono-resource economy, during the period of currency and oil price fall in Nigeria. The aim of the study is to ascertain the potentiality of economic diversification (non-oil export) in saving the falling value of the domestic currency, as well as, its stability. The study employed the use of monthly data from the Central Bank of Nigeria and Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation from January 2008 to December 2020 using the ARDL and NARDL models to achieve the stated objectives. In the literature, several empirical studies analyzed the relationship between exchange rates, oil price, and oil export and came to the logical conclusion that a rise in the price of oil would bring about a rise in the exchange rate, all things being equal while the reverse is the case. To add to the existing body of knowledge this study did not only look at the relationship between the variables but also examined the determinants of the exchange rate in a mono-resource economy and ascertained the potentiality of economic diversification in bringing succor to the falling exchange rate in the midst of falling oil price. The NARDL result corroborates the findings of previous studies on the relationship between exchange rate, oil price, and the performance of non-oil export. It maintains that positive changes in oil prices would lead to the appreciation of domestic currency while negative changes in oil prices would lead to the depreciation of the domestic currency. With this analysis, the study recommends the diversification of the economy and revitalization of the non-oil sector. Since import proves to have a negative impact on the exchange rate, the revitalization of the non-oil sector stimulates domestic consumption and thus reduces import bills which raise the demand for the dollar and weakens the naira.

This paper investigates the impacts of COVID-19 on women’s employment and gender disparity with a longitudinal dataset spanning the pandemic. We exploit the regional intensities of social vulnerability and temporal variation to implement the difference-in-differences (DID) estimation. The results indicate that the pandemic and its associated lockdowns generate a significant and negative impact on women’s employment but not on men’s employment. Moreover, a counterfactual analysis using pre-pandemic data further supports the causal nature of the documented relationships. The evidence suggests that economic downturns caused by public health emergencies, unlike previous economic recessions, have a greater impact on women, and differentiated policies should be designed.

Environmental degradation is becoming a fundamental issue as it is directly associated with human lives and environmental sustainability. This research particularly highlights the significance of green transportation taxes in achieving environmental sustainability due to limited available literature considering the environmental sustainability and green transportation taxes nexus. By employing the newly developed QARDL approach, this study is unfolding the linkages of green transportation taxes on transport-based CO2 emissions for Chinese economy spanning 1992 to 2020. The results infer that green transportation taxes to enhance environmental sustainability in the long-run for the highest quantiles, i.e., 0.70 to 0.95. Though, green transportation taxes enhance environmental sustainability in all quantiles in the short-run. Based on these results, the study suggests that the Chinese government and policymakers should increase green transportation taxes that help in combating CO2 emissions, which ultimately enhances environmental sustainability.

The vigorous development of the digital economy has brought new opportunities and challenges to the construction of local fiscal revenue efficiency. Based on the panel data from 2011 to 2020, this paper uses the fixed effect model, instrumental variable method and other empirical studies to investigate the impact of the development of the digital economy on the efficiency of local fiscal revenue. The research results show that the development of the digital economy has directly improved the efficiency of local fiscal revenue, and the regression results of instrumental variables are still significant. The mechanism analysis shows that the development of digital economy mainly promotes local fiscal revenue such as efficiency improvement by cultivating tax sources.

A differences-in-differences (DID) model and financial data from Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2019 are used to empirically investigate the effects of the digital economy on corporate financial asset holdings using the "Broadband China" policy as a quasi-natural experiment. After robustness testing and heterogeneity effects are disposed of, the digital economy dramatically boosts corporate financial asset holdings. According to the channel analysis, the digital economy can reduce corporate financing constraints and boost corporate financial asset holdings, notably based on speculative demand. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the digital economy has a greater impact on corporate financial asset holdings for firms with higher market competition, small-scale firms with a short-listed age, and firms in the western region. This paper provides policy guidance for enterprises returning to the real economy.

Considering that housing is the single biggest asset for most households, owning a home may create barriers to entrepreneurship for young people who generally accumulate relatively little wealth due to a short-term career and low income. Using longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) survey, our empirical work suggests that homeowners are associated with significantly less propensity for entrepreneurial engagement and the negative homeownership effect on entrepreneurship is much larger for younger homeowners. These findings are robust to omitted variable bias, reverse causality and model misspecification. We explore the mechanism through which capital constraints related to housing purchase may more affect younger homeowners from starting entrepreneurial activities. We find strong supportive evidence for this mechanism.

This study investigates the impact of inventor CEOs on firm performance using a manually collected database of firms' inventors. Our findings reveal that, on average, firms with inventor CEOs experience a one- and two-percentage-point increase in ROA and ROE, respectively, compared to firms with noninventor CEOs. To address potential endogeneity issues, we employ turnover analysis, an instrumental variable approach, and propensity score matching. The estimation results suggest that inventor CEOs significantly enhance firm performance by fostering innovation and total factor productivity. This research contributes novel evidence on the relationship between inventor CEOs and firm performance.

In the context of digital economy, Hebei Province, as an important province in central China, has a huge manufacturing base and potential, and the development of digital economy has driven the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry to a certain extent. In order to better play the driving role of digital economy in the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry, this paper establishes an intermediary effect model based on three intermediary variables: enterprise resource allocation ability, enterprise cost and enterprise innovation ability, and conducts an empirical study on the panel data of 11 prefecture-level cities in Hebei Province from 2017 to 2022. The mechanism of digital economy driving manufacturing upgrading in Hebei Province was discussed. The results show that: (1) there is a significant positive correlation between the development of digital economy and the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry, which indicates that the development of digital economy has a direct driving effect on the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry; (2) There is also a positive correlation between the development of digital economy and the resource allocation ability and innovation ability of enterprises, indicating that the development of digital economy can improve the resource allocation ability and innovation ability of enterprises, and is conducive to the stable development of enterprises in the future; (3) Enterprise resource allocation ability and enterprise innovation ability play a significant intermediary role in the relationship between digital economy development and the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry, indicating that digital economy can indirectly accelerate the transformation of manufacturing enterprises' R & D achievements by improving enterprises' resource allocation ability and innovation ability, thus improving enterprises' market competitiveness and increasing enterprises' earnings. Drive the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry. Based on this research conclusion, the government should give full play to the role of guidance and support, and introduce relevant policies to help the digital economy drive the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing enterprises. Manufacturing enterprises should seize the tide of the development of the digital economy, use digital technology to improve their resource allocation ability and innovation ability, enhance core competitiveness, and accelerate the transformation and upgrading of enterprises.

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing consumers’ cognitive attitude towards the brands of products during their consumption willingness, behaviors and choices. Taking pork brands as an example, this study conducts a questionnaire by using a random sampling method in 165 farmers’ meat markets and 54 supermarkets in Tianhe District, Yuexiu District, Liwan District, the representative districts in Guangzhou city in China, and obtains 1,050 valid observations of the pork consumers. The empirical results via a logit regression show that the factors significantly enhance consumers’ brand cognitive attitude include younger age; lower perception of product safety; less cognition of green food, frailer awareness of fresh, cold, and frozen meats, as well as weaker ability to identify a specific product. Also, stronger consumers’ brand attitude results from larger amount of money spent in a single purchase, stronger cognition of nuisance-free food, and higher identification of different types of pork meats.

The development of digital economy is becoming an important path to promote the kinetic energy of China's tax revenue development. Based on the panel data from 2011 to 2018, this paper uses Gini coefficient to analyze the regional differences of China's digital economy, and uses fixed effect model, spatial Durbin model, multi-period double difference model and other empirical methods to examine the tax effects of digital economy development. The results show that the regional disparity is the main reason for the regional disparity of digital economy development in China. The development of digital economy directly increases the tax amount of local digital industry, and at the same time it also radiates and drives the increase of local total tax revenue; The tax effect of digital economy has a negative spatial spillover, showing a "siphon effect" to neighboring areas; Mechanism analysis shows that the development of digital economy mainly promotes the increase of local tax revenue through growth effect.