Using the firm-level micro date from 2000 to 2007, we empirically investigate the relationship between the fluctuation of RMB and markup dispersion of Chinese manufacturing firms in order to analyze the effects of RMB fluctuation on resource allocation. The results show that the appreciation of RMB significantly reduce the markup dispersion within a narrowly defined industry, and both the appreciation of export exchange rate and import exchange rate increase the efficiency of resource allocation. And, the much of the RMB appreciation effect on markup dispersion stems from different markups among new exit/entry firms, rather than surviving firms. Moreover, the effect of RMB appreciation on markup dispersion is heterogeneous for firms with other different characteristics, including factor intensities, ownerships. Finally, we also find RMB appreciation significantly reduces the dispersion of firm price and firm productivity, suggesting the response of costs and prices to RMB appreciation.

Since the 1980s, the monetary policy framework in developed countries and many middle-income countries has realized the transition of the intermediate targets from monetary aggregates to interest rates. During or after this transition, many countries adopted the interest rate corridor. This paper developed several theoretical models to describe the mechanism of interest rate corridor. We found that: (1) A interest rate corridor can reduce the market interest rate volatility by guiding market expectations more effectively; (2) a interest rate corridor can reduce the "hoarding demand" of market liquidity, and reduce the open market operating cost of central banks; (3) the optimal width of an interest rate corridor is a function of interest rate sensitivity, the policy operating cost, as well as the frequency and amplitude of external shocks. We suggest that China should establish an interest rate corridor during the process of the monetary policy framework transition, in order to reduce interest rate volatility, enhance the market acceptance and benchmark of the policy rate in the future, and provide a foundation for the effective transmission of the policy rate.

Based on the panel threshold model by Hansen, this paper studies on the non-linear effects of financial channel from the perspective of heterogeneity with short-term imbalance index and G20 data. The results show that:the domestic private sector bank credit/GDP、equity investment net inflow/GDP and bank loan-to-deposit ratio, which represent the differences in financial market structure, and the total reserves/GDP that represents differences in financial interventions, these four cause a threshold effect about financial channel regulating imbalance, but the effect caused by financial openness is non-significant. Conclusion above can be used to explain the differences of financial channel utility between China and the U.S. China should adjust the financial market structure, lower financing of banks, improve return on outflow investment, appropriately reduce official reserves, to enhance the effectiveness of financial channels.

With “capital-skill complementarity” hypothesis and heterogeneous workers, this paper states how financial development determines the regional disparity of skill intensity. Financial development, by facilitating capital deepening, improves the relative demand for skilled labor and results in higher skill premium, which in turn encourages workers (especially those with skill) to immigrate. The skill intensity, therefore, rises. Census data demonstrates the huge and persistent regional disparity in skill intensity across Chinese cities. Empirical analysis based on city-level data shows the high correlation between financial development and skill intensity, which is robust to different proxies and alternative specifications. The channel through which financial development improves skill intensity is also testified. Our study contributes to understanding region disparity of skill intensity and the structural internal migration.

Based on panel data of 65 countries from 1990 to 2014, from both the theoretical and empirical aspects, this paper investigates systematically the impact of financial structure on a country's technological progress and examines the mediating effect of two-way FDI. It comes to several results as follows. Firstly, market-oriented financial structure is more advantageous to promote a country's technological progress and the conclusion remain robust after overcoming the effects of endogenous and economic fluctuations. In addition, there is increasing trend for the promoting effect of financial market with the rise of the technical level of a country, but it is not as high as possible, a country needs the optimal financial structure to adapt to the development stage. Secondly, the mediation effect in the overall test shows that the two-way FDI is two kinds of channels when market-oriented financial structure promotes a country's technological progress, and OFDI plays a greater mediating effect than FDI. Thirdly, in the subgroup tests, the promoting effect of financial market on technological progress is more effective in developed countries than in developing countries, and the two-way FDI in developed and developing countries both have mediating effect, the mediating effect of two-way FDI in developing country is more significant in the total effect of technological progress.

Digital currencies may lead the future development of currency issuance and payment method, as banknotes are facing unprecedented challenges by new technologies like mobile payment, trustworthy cloud computing and block-chain, etc. Theoretically, this article introduces the definition and evolutional paradigms of digital currency,then characteristics of ideal digital currency are concluded.Technologically, after analyzed the potential advantages and unsolved problems of block-chain technology,we think CBDC system should adopt all kinds of mature technologies including block-chain. On the level of implementation, this article summarizes key points of issuing CBDC in China.

We use expected utility theory to explore the rational sense of P2P investors with the transaction data from a P2P loan website. We find that there exists an optimal interest rate that investors prefer most when they face the benefit and risk simultaneously. Moreover, the optimal interest rate will be affected by other information provided on the P2P loan subject. These results show that investors in P2P loan have rational sense to balance the benefit and risk from a loan subject, which means they are not irrational and is a precondition for P2P loan to play a role in infomediary and promote the efficiency of supply matching.

The paper studies the information content and information quality of bank credit rating and their reflections in the risk pricing or ex ante discipline of subordinated debt market. It shows the risk pricing of subordinated debt reflects bank credit rating, which partially embeds the implicit government bailout expectation and risk characteristics of issuer simultaneously. Compared with credit rating, the market measures of bank risk can more significantly explain the risk premium of subordinated debt issued by listed commercial banks, but the signs are opposite to the intrinsic requirement of market discipline. It indicates relevant investors not only don't constraint the risk-taking behavior of issuers, but may also encourage the greater risk-taking propensity of banks in the future. The study tends to support that it's unreasonable to attribute the lack of ex ante discipline of subordinated debt market to improper external credit rating and non-efficiency market which cannot provide valuable risk information or warning signals.

This paper aims to investigate the mechanisms underlying the dynamic co-movement between commodity and stock markets based on the funding liquidity theory. Our results show that the correlation between commodity and equity markets experiences huge fluctuations since 2000 and 17% of variation in correlation can be explained by changes in the liquidity index constructed in this paper. When the liquidity situation deteriorates, the correlation between commodity and stock markets significantly increases. Moreover, the impact of market status on the correlation is also driven by liquidity factors. Our findings indicate that liquidity shocks have become an important channel to connect the commodity market with the external financial markets. This study not only sheds lights on the correlations between commodity and stock markets, but also provides new evidence for the integration of commodity markets with external financial markets.

Market extreme risk is an important issue in academia and industry. This paper examines stock heterogeneous risk and extreme risk through the perspective of institutional investor's information network. We find that stocks with a larger network density demonstrate stronger overall risk, heterogeneous risk and extreme risk as well. Especially, compared to the extreme upside risk, the network density has larger influence on the extreme downside risk, which means the information between the mutual funds more easily lead to black swan. Besides, under different liquidity level, there is an alternative effect on the market extreme risk between the liquidity factor and mutual funds information sharing mechanism. Our conclusions help to understanding the role of institutional investors in China, shedding light on market risk management and enriching investment trading strategies.

This paper investigates the investment value of revisions provided by security analysts. Using calendar time portfolios based on public available data, we find both earnings revisions and recommendation revisions have incremental information, and the market prices fail to fully reflect the information content as well as the differences in abilities between star analysts and ordinary analysts. Hedge portfolios based on earnings revisions and recommendation revisions can earn monthly three-factor model adjusted returns of 1.34% and 0.92%, respectively. Furthermore, we find the investment value of analyst revisions derives from their ability of fundamental analysis. Both earnings revisions and recommendation revisions can predict future profitability, unexpected earnings, and abnormal returns around earnings announcement days. Our findings shed lights on the information role of analysts as well as market efficiency.

This paper extends Belleflamme et al. (2014) and Kumar et al. (2016) by incorporating the roles of reputations of the crowdfunding platform and entrepreneur as a novel angle to study how they influence the entrepreneur's choice between the pre-sale crowdfunding and equity crowdfunding and its economic mechanism. Based on our first finding of the positive impact of reputations on the launch of pre-sale crowdfunding and equity crowdfunding, we further propose the choice criteria between two crowdfunding patterns: (1)when the product quality is high but the equity crowdfunding investors do not prefer the product itself, the pre-sale crowdfunding will be a dominant strategy regardless of the crowdfunding platform's reputation, and the entrepreneur's reputation will strengthen this dominance; (2) when the equity crowdfunding investors prefer the product itself and the initial start-up capital requirement is relatively smaller, the entrepreneur's choice will be influenced by platform reputation, i.e., equity crowdfunding with low barrier to entry dominates when platform's reputation is weaker; otherwise, pre-sale crowdfunding dominates;(3) when the equity crowdfunding investors prefer the product itself but the initial start-up capital requirement is relatively larger, equity crowdfunding with low barrier to entry will always dominate regardless of the reputations; (4) when the equity crowdfunding investors prefer the product itself and the initial start-up capital requirement is moderate, equity crowdfunding with low barrier to entry will dominate either if both platform's reputation and entrepreneur's reputation are weaker or if entrepreneur's reputation is stronger despite the platform's reputation, while pre-sale crowdfunding will dominate if entrepreneur's reputation is weaker but platform's reputation is stronger.

Under the theoretical framework of Keynesian beauty contest, this paper provides some new explanations for the dual characteristics of analysts, i.e., “changed face” phenomena and herding behavior, and expands a new understanding of the source of analysts' earnings forecasts biases. The evidence based on China indicates that analysts rely heavily on the average opinion of other participants, i.e. higher-order expectations, demonstrating that Keynesian beauty contest phenomena also exist in security analyst industry. The results also show that the effect of beauty contest is strongly associated with the herding behavior of analysts. The further evidence indicates that the star analysts depend less on high order expectations and presents less herding behavior due to the effect of beauty contest.