In the process of Chinese path to modernization, promoting the coordinated development of investment in physical capital and human capital is a key pathway to achieving high-quality growth. The essence of their synergy lies in the fact that the investment portfolio of material capital and human capital needs to dynamically adapt to the factor endowment structure, technological and economic conditions, and institutional environment of specific development stages. From element coupling, process interaction to result feedback, the synergy between the two presents a hierarchical structure that progresses layer by layer. Its effectiveness can be judged from three dimensions: structural adaptation, incentive compatibility, and goal value realization. Since the reform and opening up, the form of collaboration between the two has evolved from basic collaboration, efficiency collaboration, reconstruction collaboration to systematic collaboration. Currently, the coordinated development of the two still faces challenges such as a phased mismatch between the deepening of material capital and the accumulation of human capital, insufficient compatibility of institutional arrangements for micro subjects, and a lack of cross domain coordination and cross cycle linkage mechanisms. To solve these difficulties, it is necessary to further deepen the reform of the fiscal and taxation system, improve intergovernmental fiscal relations, and reshape the endogenous incentives for local governments to promote coordinated development; innovate fiscal expenditure tools and establish a precise and empowering structural allocation mechanism; optimize tax incentive tools to stimulate micro vitality of multi-party collaboration and cooperation; establish a sound budget performance management system and establish integrated assessment and evaluation standards.

Regarding the governance pathways of involutionary competition in the manufacturing industry, the existing literature has predominantly approached from the dimensions of supply-demand structure, institutional environment, and digital platforms, while rarely focusing on the micro-level effects of patient capital with long-termism attributes on such competitive behaviors. Based on the data of A-share listed manufacturing firms in China from 2011 to 2023, this empirical research from the perspective of price markup demonstrates that patient capital can elevate the price markup ratio of manufacturing firms and alleviate the pressure of involutionary competition in the sector. From the theoretical mechanism perspective, optimizing internal governance, improving supply chain structure, and enhancing operational resilience constitute the critical pathways through which patient capital exerts its mitigating effects. The mitigating role of patient capital exhibits significant heterogeneity: it is more pronounced in firms facing high financing constraints, those adopting growth-oriented development strategies, as well as enterprises in high-tech industries and industries with high environmental uncertainty. These findings imply that efforts should be intensified to cultivate and expand patient capital, promote its in-depth integration with industrial development, and give full play to its governance function in alleviating involutionary competition in the manufacturing industry. Meanwhile, targeted guidance and governance policies for patient capital should be formulated in light of the objective differences in firms' financing environments, strategic orientations, and industry technological attributes, thereby facilitating China's manufacturing industry to achieve the leap from price-based competition to high-quality value-based competition.

In the digital era, a“learning by doing”effect driven by data and embodied in capital is emerging. As a by-product of the production process, data is not only generated through capital but also serves as learning materials for machine learning algorithms, thereby enhancing algorithmic performance in capital. Given the non-rivalrous nature of data, output cannot remunerate data owners based on the marginal contribution of data; thus, in income distribution, data should be bundled with rivalrous factors. From a new perspective of capital “learning by doing”, a theoretical analysis that introduces data as a new factor into the endogenous economic growth framework shows that data exhibits a multiplier effect, which elevates the balanced growth path of the economy. For the two regions with different factor endowments, they exhibit different balanced growth paths under the three scenarios of “no data”,“exclusive data”, and“freely flowing data”. The comparative static analysis indicates that the economic growth effect of freely flowing data can be decomposed into a multiplier effect and a spillover effect. The multiplier effect raises the balanced growth rate of each region but also widens regional disparities; and the spillover effect allows data dividends from regions with better factor endowments to spill over to those with poorer endowments, promoting the inclusive growth of their economy. In practice, for highly exclusive data, emphasis should be placed on strengthening its data multiplier; and for non-exclusive data such as public data, policy should break down data silos and promote the building of a secure and trustworthy data-flow ecosystem.

Actively cultivating a distinctive Chinese financial culture holds significant guiding implications for promoting high-quality financial development and building a financial powerhouse. This paper conducts an empirical analysis by using the data from Chinese commercial banks from 2013 to 2022, combined with manually collected bank culture data, to examine the impact of commercial bank culture on bank risks and its underlying mechanisms. The findings reveal that bank culture can suppress bank risks. The mechanism tests indicate that bank culture can mitigate banking risks by enhancing the standardization of credit operations and optimizing internal governance. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that compliance, accountability, and collaborative cultures play a role in reducing banking risks. Compared to nationwide commercial banks, systemically important banks, and banks with higher liquidity creation, the intensity of banking culture exerts a more pronounced risk-reducing effect on local commercial banks, non-systemically important banks, and banks with lower liquidity creation capabilities. Therefore, the government should guide banks to strengthen their cultural construction, embedding cultural concepts throughout the entire process of bank operations and management. By leveraging policy guidance and cross-sector collaboration, it should enhance cultural cultivation in key institutions such as small and medium-sized banks. Furthermore, it should promote the synergistic efforts of cultural construction and formal regulatory systems, harnessing cultural soft power to drive the high-quality development in the banking industry.

The illegal activities of the bond-issuing enterprises hidden behind bond defaults have severely disrupted the order of the bond market. So, as an innovative investor protection system for regulatory minority shareholders to carry out right exercise activities, can China Securities Investor Services Center (CSISC) produce a spillover effect on the bond market? Based on this, taking the bonds publicly issued by Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2023 as samples, this paper empirically examines the impact of CSISC's exercise of rights on the credit spread of bonds. The research reveals that CSISC's exercise of rights has significantly increased the credit spread of bonds. The mechanism analysis shows that CSISC's exercise of rights can exert a signal effect, transmitting the signal of poor governance and capital situation of the listed companies to bond investors, thereby increasing the credit spread of bonds. The heterogeneity test reveals that when the regional credit environment is weak, the degree of protection for enterprise investors is relatively lower, and the investor learning effect is insufficient, CSISC's exercise of rights has a more prominent effect on enhancing the credit spread of bonds. In addition, CSISC's exercise of rights has increased the issuance cost of bonds in the primary market and exacerbated the risks of financial distress it faces after raising the credit spread of bonds in the secondary market. Therefore, the listed companies need to continuously improve their information disclosure and enhance their bargaining power in the bond market. The regulatory authorities should use the right exercise activities of investment service centers to prevent and resolve systemic financial risks, thereby promoting high-quality development of the capital market.

The deep application of AI in manufacturing is driving the evolution of manufacturing from traditional geographical agglomeration toward virtual agglomeration. However, the existing studies still focus primarily on geographical agglomeration and pay relatively limited attention to manufacturing virtual agglomeration, especially lacking systematic investigation into how AI influences manufacturing virtual agglomeration. Based on the panel data of 261 Chinese cities from 2014 to 2022, this paper measures the level of artificial intelligence development based on the number of patents, and constructs a comprehensive index of manufacturing virtual agglomeration that covers knowledge spillover networks, production platform networks, market networks, and network support capabilities. The results show that, first, the improvements in the level of AI can significantly enhance the degree of manufacturing virtual agglomeration at the city level. Second, human capital and entrepreneurial vitality serve as important transmission channels through which AI promotes manufacturing virtual agglomeration; by fostering human capital accumulation and stimulating entrepreneurial vitality, AI indirectly facilitates the formation and deepening of manufacturing virtual agglomeration. Third, the promoting effect of AI on manufacturing virtual agglomeration is more pronounced in eastern and central regions, in regions with higher levels of marketization, and in regions with greater R&D investment, indicating clear regional and contextual heterogeneity. These findings suggest that we should focus on the development of artificial intelligence, accumulation of human capital, and optimization of entrepreneurial ecology, implement differentiated regional layouts based on regional development stages, and form a policy pattern of coordinated promotion to better grasp the development trend of virtual agglomeration in the manufacturing industry under the background of digital economy.

With the deep integration of generative artificial intelligence into various fields of social and economic life, social and economic life is constantly changing and innovating. So, how can we use generative artificial intelligence to break through the bottleneck of supply chain finance development and help promote the development of the real economy? Taking Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2024 as research samples, this study examines the impact of applying generative artificial intelligence on the development of supply chain finance. The results indicate that the application of generative artificial intelligence in enterprises can significantly promote the development of supply chain finance. The mechanism verification shows that generative artificial intelligence can maintain supply chain security, improve operational efficiency, and reduce information asymmetry between financial institutions and enterprises. Therefore, the application of generative artificial intelligence by enterprises can promote the development of supply chain finance. Further analysis shows that enterprises belonging to non strategic emerging industries and those in high uncertainty environments can better promote the development of supply chain finance by applying generative artificial intelligence. Therefore, enterprises should fully utilize generative artificial intelligence to promote the integration of their business with supply chain finance. The government should strongly support the development of generative artificial intelligence in enterprises and fully leverage its leading role in optimizing industrial and supply chains.

The widespread adoption of industrial robots provides a new practical basis for manufacturing firms to enhance their import bargaining power. Based on the data of the listed manufacturing firms from 2007 to 2015, this study investigates the impact of the adoption of IRs on firms' import bargaining power. The results show that industrial robot adoption has significantly enhanced firms' import bargaining power, mainly through expanding firms' market power and promoting the development of domestic supply chains. The heterogeneity test reveal that the impact of industrial robot adoption on enhancing firms' import bargaining power is more pronounced in high-tech industries, processing trade enterprises, and coastal firms. The results also exhibit a certain policy orientation, indicating that enterprises supported by policies experience a more significant improvement in their bargaining power for imports after adopting industrial robots. Further analysis shows that the impact of industrial robot applications on enhancing firms' import bargaining power exists both within and across industries, though the manifestations differ: within industries, the related effect spreads from leading firms to others and extends along a decreasing capital intensity trend; across industries, the effect is more pronounced in firms with high capital intensity. Research has shown that continuous efforts should be made to promote the intelligent transformation of enterprises, strengthen the construction of domestic supply chains, and provide appropriate policy support when enterprises face import restrictions or have weak capabilities.

Against the backdrop of the frequent use of export controls by the United States and its ongoing sanctions against Chinese enterprises, it is of great significance to study the impact of US export controls on the idiosyncratic risks of Chinese firms. Taking Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2022 as research objects, and incorporating the entity list from the US Export Administration Regulations, this study employs a multi-period difference-in-differences model to investigate the impact of U.S. export controls on the idiosyncratic risk of Chinese firms. The findings show that after being impacted by US export controls on China, Chinese companies have effectively reduced their idiosyncratic risks through active strategic adjustments. This conclusion still holds true after endogeneity analysis and a series of robustness tests. Further analysis reveals that this effect is more significant in core regulated industries, enterprises that have not engaged in overseas business, and after adjusting the intensity of US export control policies. The mechanism analysis shows that in the face of US export controls on China, companies actively improve their information environment by optimizing risk disclosure strategies, reducing earnings management, and enhancing their performance in environmental, social responsibility, and corporate governance aspects, thereby reducing their specific risks. Meanwhile, the improvement of the information environment helps to enhance the accuracy of analysts' predictions, reduce prediction errors and discrepancies. Based on the research findings, government departments can maintain capital market stability by improving external risk disclosure mechanisms, strengthening financial and accounting supervision, and improving environmental and social governance systems.

Under the wave of digital economy development, the transformation of accounting intelligence is an inevitable trend. Taking Chinese A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2013 to 2023 as samples, this study uses text analysis and machine learning word vector generation model (Word2Vec) to construct indicators for measuring the accounting intelligence transformation of listed companies, and empirically tests the impact and mechanism of accounting intelligence transformation on enterprise value creation. Research has found that the transformation of accounting intelligence can enhance a company's ability to create value. The mechanism test results indicate that the transformation of accounting intelligence has promoted the flow of human capital in enterprises, reduced the cost of human capital, and achieved a dual improvement in the quality and efficiency of human capital work. Therefore, the transformation of accounting intelligence can empower enterprise value creation. Further analysis reveals that in regions with a favorable institutional environment and strong government support for education, the empowering effect of enterprise accounting intelligence transformation on enterprise value creation is more pronounced. Therefore, enterprises need to accelerate the transformation of accounting intelligence, and the government needs to continuously optimize the institutional environment, and increase support for education.

Enhancing innovation quality is the only path for Chinese firms to overcome technological bottlenecks. Starting from the perspective of the special flow of technology talents in the workplace, based on a unique dataset of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2018, this study empirically tests the impact of technology talent's workplace return on the quality of corporate innovation. Research shows that the return of technology talents to the workplace can significantly improve the quality of innovation in enterprises. The mechanism analysis results indicate that the return of technology talents to the workplace mainly promotes the improvement of enterprise innovation quality through two mechanisms: knowledge diversification and cooperation network expansion. The heterogeneity analysis results indicate that the impact of the return of technology talents to the workplace on the innovation quality of enterprises is more significant in samples with weak intellectual property protection, non technology intensive, and large enterprise scale. The economic consequence analysis shows that the return of technology talents to the workplace has a significant positive impact on the disclosure of descriptive innovation by enterprises. Therefore, enterprises should strive to attract technology talents to return to the workplace and actively give full play to the returning technology talents in the process of technological innovation. The government should play a guiding and supportive role, encourage enterprises to recruit departing technology talents in the process of promoting orderly talent flow, and create a favorable external environment for returning technology talents to play their role in the workplace.

With the deepening understanding of sustainable development concepts, corporate ESG performance has become a critical factor influencing modern investment and financing decisions. Year-over-year fluctuations in corporate ESG performance may affect the stock price volatility of the enterprises. This study empirically examines the impact of declining corporate ESG performance on stock price crash risk by using the data from A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges in China. The findings reveal that a decline in corporate ESG performance has a significant positive impact on the risk of stock price collapse. This conclusion still holds true after a series of robustness tests. The mechanism test results show that the decline in ESG performance increases the risk of stock price collapse by damaging the company's market reputation and exacerbating investor sentiment panic. At the same time, the impact of declining ESG performance on the risk of stock price collapse is more significant in the enterprises with larger scale, or with poor accounting information quality, or at the downstream in the value chain, or facing higher ESG“greenwashing”risk, or with higher degree of upward mispricing. Therefore, enterprise should regularly evaluate their own ESG development status and actively strengthen the construction of communication mechanisms with investors. Relevant government departments should accelerate the development of mandatory ESG disclosure quantitative indicators, increase the punishment for ESG violations, classify and grade the scope of enterprise ESG stress testing, further innovate ESG oriented financial instruments and risk mitigation mechanisms, and strive to cultivate an ESG rational investment ecosystem.