Table of Content

15 December 2024, Volume 0 Issue 12

Previous Issue    Next Issue

Theoretical Economics

New Quality Productive Forces Enabling Common Prosperity: Basic Logic, Mechanism and Key Pathway

XIE Hua-lin, CHEN Bin, LIU Wei

2024, 0(12):  3-15. 

Asbtract ( 134 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Common prosperity is the essential requirement of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the fundamental purpose of high-quality development. As a new type of productivity development in the new era, the logical sorting, mechanism deconstruction, dilemma analysis and pathway exploration for new quality productive forces enabling common prosperity can help create a new situation of China’s high-quality development, which is of great significance in guiding the promotion of the common prosperity in the new stage of development. Multidisciplinary theories, national policies and regional practices all provide theoretical support, institutional guarantees and case studies for new quality productive forces enabling common prosperity. New quality productive forces consolidate the material foundation of common prosperity, satisfy the spiritual needs of common prosperity, narrow the gap in common prosperity development through “technology-factor-industry”, therefore inject new momentum, cultivate new foundation, and provide new opportunities for common prosperity. However, the new quality productive forces enabling common prosperity still faces technological dilemma, factor dilemma, and industrial dilemma. Therefore, in the future, we should strengthen the multi-dimensional drive of technological innovation, application and popularization, the multi-dimensional support of factor integration, configuration and identification, and the multiple promotion of industrial optimization, integration and regulation, so as to promote the new quality productive forces to accurately play a role in material prosperity, spiritual prosperity, and coordinated development.

The Impact of Digital Economy on High-Quality Economic Development

REN Yan-yan, WANG Wen-yue, WANG Na

2024, 0(12):  16-27. 

Asbtract ( 123 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

The digital economy is gradually becoming a new engine for high-quality economic development in China. Analyzing the impact of the digital economy on high-quality economic development based on its internal linkage and operating characteristic has important theoretical and practical significance. Based on the urban data of China from 2011 to 2021, this paper conducts an empirical research with a dual fixed-effect model. The findings show that the linkage between digital infrastructure, digital industrialization and industrial digitalization has injected strong impetus into the high-quality economic development. The construction of digital infrastructure can effectively help the high-quality economic development by supporting digital industrialization and industrial digitalization, and digital industrialization can provide new impetus for high-quality economic development by promoting the process of industrial digitalization. While the digital economy enables the high-quality economic development, there is a reverse spillover effect. The development of digital industrialization will lead to the accumulation of related digital resources and produce a siphon effect, and the accumulated resources will further promote the high-quality economic development. However, with the continuous deepening of digital industrialization, this effect will gradually weaken. The reverse spillover effect of digital industrialization will not only be affected by its own level of development, but also by multiple factors such as the regional economic development level, the unemployment rate and the marketization level.

Public Economics & Administration

Can Water Resource“Fee-to-Tax”Improve the Environmental Performance of Enterprises? Evidences from High Water-Consuming Enterprises

WANG Qiao, YUAN Jia-hui

2024, 0(12):  28-41. 

Asbtract ( 53 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

In the context of the high-quality economic development, leveraging tax tools to strengthen the rigid constraint on water resources and promote the green transformation of enterprises is crucial for the realization of the sustainable economic development. Taking the pilot implementation of water resources fee-to-tax reform in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this study conducts an empirical analysis of the impact of water resources fee-to-tax reform on the environmental performance of high water-consuming enterprises and its mechanism based on the micro-level data from A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2022 in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. The results indicate that the water resource tax can significantly enhance the environmental performance of high water-consuming enterprises. The mechanism analysis reveals that the water resource tax can increase the tax compliance costs of the enterprises, and by incentivizing corporate green technological innovation their environmental performance can be improved. Meanwhile, this promoting effect exhibits heterogeneity. The enhancement of water resource tax on the environmental performance of the high water-consuming enterprises is more pronounced in the non-state-owned enterprises, the large-scale enterprises, and the enterprises with higher initial environmental performance. Therefore, in the future, the pilot scope of water resource tax should be expanded, the design of water resource tax rates should be improved, differentiated tax rates should be set while raising the minimum tax rate, the multi departmental cooperation should be promoted, the tax collection and management mechanism of water resources tax should be optimized, the tax incentives and supporting measures should be strengthened to leverage green technology innovation in enterprises, so as to improve their environmental performance and accelerate their green transformation.

Smart Tax Construction and Voluntary Enterprise Tax Compliance

ZHOU Nan, GONG Na

2024, 0(12):  42-53. 

Asbtract ( 58 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Tax modernization is an important part of Chinese modernization, and smart tax construction is the core force of tax modernization to serve Chinese modernization. One important goal of constructing smart tax is to promote the shift of corporate tax payment behavior from passive compliance to voluntary compliance, paying taxes according to law, and improving tax collection and administration efficiency. On one hand, by fostering the construction concept of precise law enforcement, fine services, precise supervision, and sincere co-governance, smart tax can enhance corporate tax compliance willingness; on the other hand, through promoting the digital and smart transformation of enterprise tax management, smart tax can enhance enterprises’ tax compliance ability. However, the construction of smart tax is still in its early stages, and the deficiencies in law enforcement, services, supervision, and co-governance of the tax bureaus will affect the enterprises’ tax compliance willingness; the insufficient digitalization in tax management of enterprises will affect enterprises’ tax compliance ability. Therefore, it is necessary to accelerate the legislative process of tax laws, enhance the certainty of the tax system, improve law enforcement capabilities and willingness, ensure the tax obligations being legally fulfilled by enterprises, improve the level of equity services, safeguard the legitimate tax rights and interests of enterprises, establish a sound new tax regulatory mechanism and a multi-party governance mechanism to curb the motivation of enterprises to violate tax regulations and avoid taxes, and promote the digital and smart transformation of corporate tax management and truly achieve automatic compliance with corporate taxation.

Modern Finance

Carbon Risk Pricing: Evidence from China’s Municipal Investment Bonds Market

CHEN Xuan-juan, YANG Gang, WANG Nan

2024, 0(12):  54-67. 

Asbtract ( 85 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Since the proposal of the“dual carbon”target was put forward, researchers have paid special attention to the climate risks and financial asset price risks caused by carbon dioxide emissions. As an important space and action unit for promoting low-carbon economic transformation, the urban investment bond market of cities provides an ideal experimental platform for studying carbon risk pricing. Based on the researches on the Chinese urban investment bond market, it has been found that after controlling a series of other factors as well as the fixed effects of city and time, the carbon emission intensity of cities is positively correlated with the credit spread of urban investment bonds, and this effect is significant in different industries. When using the low-carbon city pilot policy as an exogenous event shock to carbon emissions and employing the instrumental variable method to mitigate the potential endogeneity issues, the results remain robust. The mechanism test reveals that urban carbon emission intensity has an impact on the credit spread of urban investment bonds through punitive credit mechanisms and asset stranding mechanisms, indicating the particularity of carbon risk transmission pathways. Further study reveals that technological innovation in high energy consuming industries and government efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and promote environmental governance can both reduce the marginal impact of carbon risk on the credit spread of urban investment bonds. Therefore, government departments need to accelerate the construction of green infrastructure, capital markets should actively innovate green financing tools for urban investment, and policies are needed to incentivize city leaders to take measures to mitigate climate changes.

A Study of the Green Transformation Effect of MLF Collateral Expansion Policy

SUN Shao-yan, Gao Yang

2024, 0(12):  68-82. 

Asbtract ( 51 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

How the structural monetary policy affects green investment and environmental protection investment in a differentiated manner, thus playing a role in green transformation, is an important issue worth studying. Taking the event of the central bank expanding the scope of collateral for MLF as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper employ the DID model and the SBM-DEA-Tobit model to study the impact of structural monetary policy on enterprises’ green investment decisions, and then the difference of the impact of green investment and environmental protection investment on economic and environmental performance is compared to verify the green transformation effect of the policy. The findings indicate that the expansion policy can promote corporate green investment, reduce corporate environmental investment, and optimize the structure of corporate green investment; its impact mechanism is to alleviate financing constraints and increase managers’ optimistic expectations. Enterprises with different property rights, scale, and degree of marketization in their location have heterogeneity in the impact of policies. The coordination of environmental regulatory policies and the improvement of public environmental awareness are conducive to the effectiveness of the expansion policies. Environmental investment can improve environmental performance more quickly than green investment, while green investment can improve both environmental and economic performance over a longer period of time. The expansion policy can achieve the unity of environmental friendliness and economic development by changing the green investment strategy of enterprises, which verifies the Porter hypothesis. Therefore, the People’s Bank of China can use the framework of structural monetary policy collateral to guide enterprises to improve the green investment structure, promote high-quality economic development, and help the green development of the small and medium-sized enterprises.

Business Administration

Research on Corporate Leverage Manipulation Decision in the Context of Macroeconomic Policy Uncertainty

HU Liu-fen, ZHOU Ze-jiang

2024, 0(12):  83-97. 

Asbtract ( 74 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Studying the specific manifestations, internal logic, and economic consequences of corporate leverage manipulation decisions in the context of China’s uncertain macroeconomic policies not only helps deepen our understanding of corporate leverage manipulation decisions in China’s special institutional environment, but also provides theoretical and experiential references for how to actively respond to economic policy uncertainty risks and resolve corporate leverage manipulation issues. This paper conducts an empirical study using the data of A-share listed companies in China between 2008 and 2022, the results indicate that economic policy uncertainty has a significant negative impact on corporate leverage manipulation. When economic policies change frequently, companies will reduce the degree of leverage manipulation and release debt risks in response to fluctuating external environments. The more complete the internal control, the better the external information environment, or the higher the level of regional marketization, the more significant the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on leverage manipulation. The information asymmetry and future cash flow shortage risks caused by buffering economic policy fluctuations constitute the main motivation for enterprises to reduce their leverage manipulation during periods of economic policy uncertainty. Reducing leverage manipulation in an uncertain external environment not only helps companies obtain more external financing, but also reduces the probability of bankruptcy in the future. The above conclusion indicates that strict control of leverage manipulation behavior is not only an important strategy for enterprises to actively respond to economic policy uncertainty, but also a key measure for enterprises to obtain stakeholder support and achieve sustainable and stable development under uncertain backgrounds.

The Staggered Tenure of Independent Directors and the Effectiveness of Their Performance

JIANG Yao-ming, LIANG Mei-rong

2024, 0(12):  98-110. 

Asbtract ( 48 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

In China, independent directors can serve up to two consecutive tenures, and there is a common phenomenon of staggered tenure for independent directors in listed companies, where there are both the first tenure and the second tenure independent directors in the company. It is worth exploring the impact of this staggered tenure on the effectiveness of independent directors in fulfilling their duties. Taking 12390 observation values of independent directors-companies-year, who have raised objections in A-share listed companies from 2005 to 2022, as the research sample, this study empirically examines the impact of staggered tenure of independent directors on their dissenting behaviors. The research results indicate that the staggered tenure of independent directors has both informational and supervisory effects, which increases their probability and quantity of expressing dissenting opinions. The staggered tenure of independent directors has an information effect on the first tenure independent directors. When there are more multiple positions, the tenure of CEO and the first tenure independent directors are not synchronized, the information effect of staggered tenure of independent directors is greater. The staggered tenure of independent directors has a supervisory effect on the second tenure independent directors. When there are rookie independent directors, fewer multiple positions or the tenure of CEO and the second tenure of independent directors are synchronized, the supervisory effect of the staggered tenure of independent directors is stronger. In addition, the staggered tenure of independent directors increases the possibility of independent directors expressing dissenting opinions on different proposals to different tenure independent directors. It can be seen that forming a personnel structure with staggered tenure of independent directors in a company can enhance the effectiveness of independent directors’ performance. Therefore, in the context of the comprehensive registration system reform, the Stock Exchanges and investors should pay more attention to the tenure structure of independent directors when evaluating the quality of company information disclosure. This not only helps stock exchanges reduce audit inquiry costs, improve audit efficiency and quality, but also helps investors identify high-quality information and make more accurate investment decisions.

Industry & Trade

Measurement of the Level of Autonomy and Control in China’s Manufacturing Supply Chain: From the Intermediate Goods Perspective

WANG Xia, FU Yuan-hai, LIN Yong

2024, 0(12):  111-125. 

Asbtract ( 62 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Enhancing the level of autonomy and control of the manufacturing supply chain is an inevitable requirement for the construction of a modernized industrial system in China. From the perspective of intermediate goods, this paper adopts the trade network analysis method to measure the level of autonomy and control of the manufacturing supply chain in China from the two dimensions of autonomy and security controllability on the basis of clarifying the connotation of autonomy and controllability. Researches have found that, from a holistic perspective, industries with low to high levels of supply chain autonomy are labor-intensive, technology intensive, and capital intensive industries. In terms of safety and controllability, capital intensive industries are higher than labor-intensive industries, while technology intensive industries have the lowest level. The heterogeneity of the four-digit code industry segments shows that the level of autonomy and security control in China’s high-technology-intensive industries shows a“double-low”characteristic and a declining trend, among them, the new generation of information technology and aerospace equipment industry is particularly evident, while the level of autonomy and security control in most other industries has a divergence, and the evolutionary characteristics have a convergence. From a product perspective, although the autonomy and safety controllability of most intermediate products have been improved, the increase in the autonomy of high-risk products is accompanied by a decrease in safety controllability; the number of high-risk product categories in key industries is showing a downward trend. To this end, strengthening the construction of supply chain warning and response mechanisms, breaking through the bottleneck of key core technologies through technological innovation, and building a diversified trade network are important ways to enhance the independent and controllable level of the supply chain.

The Impact of Digital Economy Development on Carbon Emission Efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta Region: The Threshold Effect Based on Industrial Agglomeration

PENG Wen-bin, SU Xin-yi

2024, 0(12):  126-139. 

Asbtract ( 66 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

In the context of different types of industrial agglomeration, exploring the impact of the development of the digital economy on carbon emission efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta region holds crucial theoretical and practical significance. Based on the city panel data in the Yangtze River Delta region from 2011 to 2021, and taking the specialized industry agglomeration and diversified industry agglomeration as threshold variables, this paper constructs a systematic generalized moment estimation model and a dynamic threshold model to conduct an in-depth investigation into the impact of digital economy development on carbon emission efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta region. The findings show that the development of the digital economy in the Yangtze River Delta region exerts a promoting effect on enhancing carbon emission efficiency. However, the promoting effect significantly varies under different types of industrial agglomeration. The impact of digital economy development on carbon emission efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta region has a single threshold effect under specialized industrial agglomeration, that is, when the level of specialized industrial agglomeration is low, the development of digital economy has a negative impact on carbon emission efficiency. When the concentration level of specialized industries crosses the threshold value, the digital economy development has a positive impact on carbon emission efficiency. The impact of digital economy development on carbon emission efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta region has a dual threshold effect under diversified industrial agglomeration, that is, when the level of diversified industrial agglomeration is lower than the first threshold value, the development of digital economy inhibits the improvement of carbon emission efficiency; when the level of diversified industrial agglomeration is higher than the first threshold value but lower than the second threshold value, the role of digital economy development in suppressing the improvement of carbon emission efficiency is weakened. When the level of diversified industrial agglomeration exceeds the second threshold value, the development of the digital economy can promote the improvement of carbon emission efficiency. Therefore, the governments in the Yangtze River Delta region should increase their efforts in developing the digital economy based on the actual situation, plan the scale of regional specialization and diversified industrial agglomeration reasonably, and better utilize the digital economy to improve carbon emission efficiency.

Modern Accounting

Data Asset Information Disclosure and Capital Market Pricing Efficiency: An Analysis Based on Stock Price Synchronicity

XU Hai-wei, LIU Hua

2024, 0(12):  140-152. 

Asbtract ( 121 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

As a strategic resource for enterprises in the digital economy era, the disclosure of data assets has attracted widespread attention from society. However, there are still limited empirical researches on the disclosure of data asset information. Taking China’s A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2022 as samples, this study empirically examines the impact of data asset information disclosure on the pricing efficiency of the capital market. The findings show that disclosure of data asset information can reduce a company’s stock price synchronicity. The analysis of the intermediate mechanism reveals that the disclosure of data asset information can reduce the degree of asymmetry between internal and external information of a company and increase investors’ attention to the company, thus reducing the synchronicity of stock prices. The heterogeneity testing reveals that in companies with higher institutional investor participation and analyst attention, the effect of data asset information disclosure on reducing stock price synchronicity is more significant. Therefore, in order to improve the pricing efficiency of the capital market, enterprises should actively promote the development and utilization of data assets. The relevant departments should strengthen the supervision of data asset information disclosure.

Corporate ESG Performance and Supply Chain Risks

YU Dian-fan, LI Xin, ZHANG Yu

2024, 0(12):  153-164. 

Asbtract ( 110 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

With the increasing complexity of global supply chain networks, quantifying the supply chain risks faced by enterprises and effectively managing them has important practical significance. This paper uses the Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency algorithm in machine learning to mine the textual information in the annual reports of listed companies. It constructs supply chain risk indicators at the enterprise level and examines the impact of corporate ESG performance on supply chain risks from the perspective of fulfilling social responsibility. The findings show that good ESG performance of enterprises can promote the establishment of long-term cooperative relationships with upstream and downstream enterprises, and can enhance the discourse power of enterprises in the supply chain. Therefore, good ESG performance of enterprises can reduce their supply chain risks. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that if companies face high competitive pressure, or if they are heavily polluting enterprises, or if they are located downstream of the industrial chain, their ESG performance has a more significant effect on reducing supply chain risks. Therefore, enterprises should actively practice ESG concepts and reduce supply chain risks.