Table of Content

15 July 2023, Volume 0 Issue 7

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Theoretical Economi

Research on the Impact of“Green Factory”Certification on Enterprise Green Innovation

ZHU Zhao-hui, LIN Wen, ZENG Ai-min, HU Ying-jie

2023, 0(7):  3-16. 

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How to stimulate enterprises’ green innovation to promote the overall green transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry has become a key issue that needs to be solved urgently in environmental regulation policy and theoretical research. Taking the implementation of the voluntary environmental regulation policy of“green factory”certification as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper employs the multi-time point PSM-DID model to investigate the guiding effect of green innovation. The findings show that the level of green innovation of enterprises increases significantly after obtaining the“green factory”certification, which is mainly reflected in the breakthrough of innovation quality rather than quantity. The result of the mechanism analysis shows that the“green factory”certification, in conjunction with government subsidies and green credit policy tools, can effectively help enterprises obtain more government environmental subsidies, ease long-term credit costs and scale constraints, and serve as a signal to attract support from long-term institutional investors to improve the quality of green innovation. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the quality of green innovation is moresignificantly enhanced when the“green factory”has been recognized for many times, its environmental information is more transparent and no environmental violation has been found, while the effect of the green innovation quality improvement is rather weak when the“green factory”is in heavy pollution industries. These findings suggeststhat the policy-makers should further strengthen the synergy between the certification policy and other policy tools in combination with industry attributes to enhance the incentive effect, improve the“green factory”information disclosure system to give full play to the role of signals, strengthen the pre-qualification examination and post-assessment supervision and the dynamic adjustment of the accreditation list, so as to continue to provide impetus for green innovation. The above conclusions not only provide empirical evidences for the implementation effect and function mechanism of the green certification policy, but also have great practical significance for constructing a diversified policy system, giving full play to the complementary role of government and capital markets in green transformation and upgrading, and promoting the construction of green manufacturing engineering.

Land Resources Misallocation and Urban Green Total Factor Productivity under Dual Target Constraints

YE Yu-ping, WANG Zhan-xiang

2023, 0(7):  17-30. 

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The harmonious coexistence between man and nature requires efficient use of land resources and development of green economy. From the perspective of the dual constraints of economic growth target and environmental protection target, it is significant to analyze the impact of land resource misallocation on urban green total factor productivity. This paper conducts an empirical study based on the panel data of 284 prefecture cities of China from 2007 to 2019. The findings show that land resources misallocation significantly inhibits the improvement of urban green total factor productivity. After a series of robustness test and endogenous analysis, such as changing explanatory variables, shrinking tail treatment and so on, the conclusions still hold. Specifically, the inhibitory effect of land resource misallocation is realized by promoting urban sprawl and reducing urban green innovation, and the inhibitory effect is more obvious in the central and western cities, non-resource-based cities and medium-sized cities. Further analysis reveals that economic growth target will strengthen the inhibiting effect of land resources misallocation on green total factor productivity, and that strong environmental target constraint will significantly weaken the inhibiting effect of land resource misallocation on green total factor productivity, while the regulating effect of the weak environment target constraint is not significant. Therefore, it is necessary to further promote the market-oriented reform of land factor, build a market-oriented green innovation technology system, strengthen the environmental target constraints of official assessment, alleviate the degree of land resource misallocation, so as to improve the efficiency of urban green development.

Public Economics & Administration

Decentralization of Fiscal Expenditure, Livelihood Related Fiscal Expenditure, and Quality of Fiscal Revenue

CHEN Xu-dong, WANG Xue-tao

2023, 0(7):  31-43. 

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This paper constructs a comprehensive indicator of fiscal revenue quality, calculates the fiscal revenue quality index with the entropy evaluation method, andempirically examines the relationship between fiscal expenditure decentralization, livelihood fiscal expenditure, and fiscal revenue quality. The results indicate that the overall quality of China’s fiscal revenue is on a continuous upward trend. The decentralization of fiscal expenditure and livelihood related fiscal expenditure have a significant positive impact on the quality of fiscal revenue through the quantity, structure, and sustainability of fiscal revenue; and there is a certain interactive relationship between fiscal expenditure decentralization and livelihood related fiscal expenditure. From a regional perspective, the decentralization of fiscal expenditures and livelihood related fiscal expenditures in the eastern region can significantly promote the improvement of fiscal revenue quality. From the perspective of branching out projects, the impact of technology, education, and cultural expenditures on the quality of fiscal revenue is the most significant among the livelihood related fiscal expenditures. According to the results of further research, it is found that the fiscal expenditure decisions made by local officials under the promotion pressure would weaken the promoting effect of fiscal expenditure decentralization and livelihood fiscal expenditure on the quality of fiscal revenue. Therefore, we should adhere to the concept of high-quality development and establish a reasonable financial operation mechanism that matches the financial and administrative rights by adjusting the relationship between financial and administrative rights; establish a“people-oriented”financial and tax ideology, and increase public expenditure for people’s livelihoods; optimize the assessment mechanism for local officials, reverse their short-sighted behaviors, so as to promote the improvement of the quality of fiscal revenue.

Real Property Tax Reform in the New Era: Taxable Capacity, Tax Burden Distribution and Income Scale

WANG Yue, HAO Xiao-jing

2023, 0(7):  44-55. 

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The reform of the real property tax is the focal, key and difficult point in the reform of present China’s financial and taxation system. The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposes to“standardize the income distribution order and standardize the wealth accumulation mechanism”, which marks the construction of China’s distribution system entering the new journey of paying equal attention to income flow and wealth stock adjustment. To promote the common prosperity for all in the high quality development requires the modern real property tax as the stock adjustment to play a more extensive functional role. Based on the CFPS data, this paperconducts an empirical analysis to calculate the taxable capacity, tax burden distribution and income scale of the real property tax. The findings show that the taxable capacity and the feasible tax rate in different regions is quite different. From the perspective of tax burden distribution,along with the increase of the deduction of value and the deduction of area, the household real estate tax burden reflects a stronger progressivity. After calculating the income scale of China’s real estate tax under different tax incentives and tax rates and combined with international experiences, the financing capacity of the future real estate tax is relatively limited. Therefore, it is recommended to determine the tax basis and tax rate by province so as to highlight the principle of capacity based taxation, consider the actual situation of different income groups to determine tax exemption and deduction plans, and carefully carry out the top-level design of the reform implementation based on the financing capacity of real estate tax.

Modern Finance

Capital Market Openingand Quality of Enterprise Environmental, Social and Governance Information Disclosure

BA Shu-song, CHAI Hong-rui, ZHAO Wen-yao, ZHANG Shuai

2023, 0(7):  56-68. 

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Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investments are important means for China to achieve green development, inclusive growth, and consolidating its international image as a responsible major country. At present, the disclosure of environmental, social and governance information in China is still not standardized, and ambiguity and selective disclosure behavior are still widely existed, seriously restricting the development of ESG investment practices. This paper conducts a double difference regression analysis based on the annual data of A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2020. The findings show that the opening of the Shanghai (Shenzhen)-Hong Kong Stock Connect can significantly improve the quality of the environmental, social, and governance information disclosure of the listed companies. In addition, the empirical results of time heterogeneity indicate that the improvement of information disclosure quality under the Shanghai (Shenzhen)-Hong Kong Stock Connect trading system becomes increasingly significant over time. The mechanism analysis reveals that the Shanghai (Shenzhen)-Hong Kong Stock Connect trading system can improve the quality of ESG information disclosure of listed companies through“foot voting”and the use of“external supervision”effects. Further research has found that while playing an external supervisory role, the Shanghai (Shenzhen)-Hong Kong Stock Connect trading system also plays a role in optimizing the external supervisory environment of China’s A-share market. The above analysis indicates that in the early stages of ESG ecological environment construction, China should fully attach importance to the important role of capital market openness in the quality of ESG information disclosure, and promote China’s ESG ecological environment construction through planned and step-by-step capital market openness.

Approval System Reform and Corporate Equity Value

FU Wen-ji, GUI He-fa, WANG Hong-jian

2023, 0(7):  69-81. 

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This paper conducts an empirical study based on the data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets in China and incorporating the approval system reform into the real options analytical framework. The findings show that, firstly, the approval system reform can strengthen the motivation of corporate capital seeking profit, i.e., when faced with good investment opportunities, the approval system reform can induce firms to expand investment and execute growth options in a timely manner; when faced with poor investment opportunities, the approval system reform can induce firms to scale down investment and execute liquidation options in a timely manner; when faced with poor investment opportunities, the reform of the approval system can prompt firms to scale down their investments and execute liquidation options. Secondly, the reform of the approval system can promote the increase of corporate growth option value and liquidation option value. The extensibility tests show that the reinforcing effect of the approval system reform on firms’ capital-seeking-profitmotivation is more significant in the samples with more volatile investment opportunity information and downstream firms (i.e., the investment opportunity information is more dispersed). In terms of the path of action, firstly, the approval system reform can significantly reduce the time entrepreneurs spend on non-productive activities such as dealing with the government and increase the time entrepreneurs spend on business management; secondly, the approval system reform can significantly reduce the investment approval time of enterprises; thirdly, the empirical test based on the database of Chinese industrial enterprises shows that the approval system reform has significantly increased the degree of regional competition. The above findings imply that the government departments should continue to deepen the reform of the approval system and attach great importance to the important role played by information in the process of government decentralization, so as to continuously help enterprises achieve high-quality development.

Business Administration

The Impact of Inefficient Capital Market Pricing on Enterprise Innovation Quality

LI Qi-jia, LUO Fu-kai, PANG Ting-yun

2023, 0(7):  82-93. 

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The improvement of innovation quality has become an important driving force to promote the breakthrough of the key core technologies and the high-quality development of enterprises, but the problem of “low quality and low efficiency”still exists in the innovation activities of China. In the context of realizing technological independence and self-improvement and practicing innovation-driven development, it is of great significance to explore the influence of the capital market environment on the quality of corporate innovation and to seek breakthrough paths for corporatehigh-quality innovation. This paper conducts and empirical study based on China’s A-share non-financial listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. The findings show that the inefficient capital market pricing will significantly weaken the quality of corporate innovation and makes them fall into an innovation dilemma. The analysis of the mechanism of action shows that overvaluation of stock prices will lead companies to adopt strategic innovations to cater to investors, while undervaluation of stock prices will weaken the enthusiasm of enterprises to invest in R&D. Both of the two tendencies are not conducive to the improvement of corporate innovation quality. The heterogeneity test reveals that the negative impact of inefficient capital market pricing on corporate innovation quality is more prominent when the corporate equity financing is highly dependent, the short-term performance pressure is high, the information asymmetry is strong, and the agency problems are relatively serious. According to the above empirical evidences, the government can take advantage of the market-oriented reforms to further improve the pricing efficiency of the capital markets; while the enterprises should actively respond to the low-quality innovation-induced tendency under the short-term pressure of the capital market through the optimization of the corporate governance level and the information disclosure environment, so as to effectively enhance their high-quality innovation capabilities.

Can Digital Transformation Effectively Reduce Companies’ Reliance on Large Customers?

YUAN Ye-fang, WAN Yi-jian

2023, 0(7):  94-107. 

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China’s traditional informal system of“relationship contract trust”has contributed to the widespread dependence of enterprises on large customers, which is not conductive to their long-term development in the era of rapid development of the digit economy. Based on the samples of non-financial listed companies in China from 2007 to 2019, this paper analyzes the relationship between the digital transformation and the dependence on large customers. The results show that the digital transformation can effectively reduce customer concentration and then reduce their dependence on large customers. The results still hold after the robustness tests, such asthe parallel trend and placebo tests, changing the variable measurement indicatorsand the instrumental variables. In terms of the mechanisms of action, the improvement of corporate competitiveness and information transparency are two important mechanisms of the digital transformation affecting the customer concentration. Further examination of the cross-sectional differences reveals that the negative effect of digital transformation on the customer concentration is more significant among the firms with stronger management capabilities, higher technologies, higher market shares and higher levels of external digitization. The above findings can not only enrich the study of the influencing factors of customer concentration and provide empirical evidences for enterprises to reduce their dependence on large customers,but also provide a decision-making basis for local governments to formulate differentiated policies to promote enterprises’ digital transformation.

Industry & Trade

How Does Digitalization Empower the Green Development of the Manufacturing Industry

LUO Jun

2023, 0(7):  108-120. 

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The green development of the manufacturing industry is the key to achieve the“dual carbon”goal and the strategic goal of a strong country in manufacturing. The digital technology has the characteristics of knowledge-intensive and clean, and its deep integration with the manufacturing industry has become a new engine driving the green development of the manufacturing industry. On the basis of systematically analyzing the functioning mechanism of digitalization empowering the green development of the manufacturing industry, this paper empirically tests the effect of digitalization on the green development of the manufacturing industry. The findings show that, in general, digitalization has promoted the green development of the manufacturing industry. The heterogeneity study indicates that heterogeneity in manufacturing industry and the heterogeneity in digital technology can have an impact on the effectiveness of digital empowerment. The mechanism test reveals that digitalization can promote the green development of the manufacturing industry mainly through the four paths, i.e., optimization of the factor structure, improvement of resource allocation, reduction of costs, and technological innovation, but the expansion of the production scale will play a certain inhibiting role. Environmental regulation plays an important role of regulating in the process of digitalization empowering the green development of manufacturing industry, and there is an optimal range of the environmental regulation intensity; within the range, the effect of digitalization empowerment is the greatest. Therefore, it is necessary to accelerate the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry, smooth the transmission path of digital technology empowerment, and maintain the intensity of environmental regulation within a reasonable range, so as to achieve green and high-quality development of the manufacturing industry.

Research on the Innovation Effect of Digital Enterprises’ Outward Foreign Direct Investment

WANG Jing-jing

2023, 0(7):  121-131. 

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External investment and cooperation in the digital economy are important engines driving the high-quality development of the digital economy. Based on the annual reports of the listed companies of Chinese digital enterprises from 2002 to 2020 and the China Innovation Patent Research Database, this study empirically tests the innovation effect and its internal mechanism of digital enterprise outward direct investment by employing anasymptotic difference-difference model. The research results indicate that, firstly, the innovation effect of digital enterprises’ outward foreign direct investment is significantly positive, and its promotion effect on high-quality innovation is more significant. Secondly, the outward foreign direct investment of the digital enterprises can drive the innovation of the digital enterprises by saving transaction costs, expanding market size, and leveraging digital upgrading mechanisms. Thirdly, the test results of enterprise ownership, enterprise size, and industry heterogeneity indicate that the innovation effect of the outward foreign direct investment by the small and medium-sized digital enterprises and the non-state-owned digital enterprises is more significant; the innovation effect of the outward foreign direct investment by the enterprises in the telecommunications, radio and television, satellite transmission services, and computer, communication and other electronic equipment manufacturing industries is significant. Therefore, efforts should be made to promote the external investment and cooperation in the digital economy, encourage enterprises to actively participate in the host country’s digital platforms, align with the host country’s digital standards and rules, effectively seize the opportunities in the global digital market, and reasonably arrange digital enterprises to“go global”, so as to enhance the innovation capabilities of digital enterprises and achieve high-quality development of the digital economy.

Modern Accounting

Fiscal Supervision, Government Audit and Local Government Debt Risks

RONG Li, JIN Jing, YU Min-xin

2023, 0(7):  132-142. 

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Preventing and resolving the risks of local government debt is a highly concerned issue for the country, and strengthening the supervision of local government debt is an important part of the Ministry of Finance’s lawful performance of financial supervision responsibilities. So, can financial supervision prevent and resolve the risk of local government debt? Taking the release of the 2016 “Interim Measures for the Implementation of Local Government Debt Supervision by the Offices of the Ministry of Finance in Local Fiscal Ombudsmen”as a quasi-natural experiment, and selecting the provincial-level local government debt from 2009 to 2019 as the research object, this paper studies the role of financial supervision in preventing and resolving the risks of local government debt with the double difference method. The findings show that fiscal supervision can prevent and resolve the debt risks of local governments, and that fiscal supervision and government audit supervision can play an active resultant role in preventing and resolving the local government debt risks. The influencing mechanism analysis reveals that fiscal supervision can increase the efficiency of the use of financial funds and the fiscal transparency, hence it can reduce the debt risks of local governments. Further research reveals that the higher the level of legalization, the more significant the effectiveness of fiscal supervision on local government debt risk governance; compared with the central and western regions, this effect of fiscal supervision on local government debt risks is strongerin the eastern region. Therefore, in order to optimize the collaborative mechanism between fiscal supervision and government audit supervision, it is necessary to improve the local government debt information disclosure system.

Disclosure of Government Audit Results and Perception of Audit Anti-Corruption Effectiveness: An Empirical Study Based on Cognitive Psychology

ZHENG Xiao-rong

2023, 0(7):  143-156. 

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The effectiveness of auditing anti-corruption is the key to achieving success in auditing anti-corruption work, and it is also an important factor that affects the public’s perception of the effectiveness of auditing anti-corruption. Then, how can the perception of audit anti-corruption effectiveness of the public be improved? This paper studies the influence of public contact with audit result announcement information on their perception of audit anti-corruption effectiveness by employing the acculturation theory and designing questionnaires. The findings show that the higher the frequency of public contact with audit results, the stronger the public perception of audit anti-corruption effectiveness. Compared with unofficial channels, the public’s access to audit results through official channels has a greater effect on the improvement of their perception of anti-corruption effectiveness. Different types of audit result information have different effects on the improvement of the public perception of anti-corruption effectiveness. The effect of the transfer and settlement results of audit is the strongest, which is followed by the effect of the rectification results of audit, while the effect of the wrong and fraud information disclosed by audit is the weakest. Therefore, in order to improve the public perception of audit anti-corruption effectiveness, it is necessary to increase the opportunities that the public has access to the audit result announcement information and improve the arrival rate of the audit result information.