The spectrum of Internet finance is defined by two boundaries. The first boundary consists of traditional financial intermediaries and markets such as commercial banks, securities firms, insurance companies, and stock exchanges. The other boundary corresponds to walrasian general equilibrium where neither financial intermediaries nor markets exist. We propose that all the types of financial transactions and organizational structures that lie between those two boundaries and embody the impacts of Internet on finance activities belong to Internet finance. We further discuss the theoretical pillars, key characteristics and policy implications of Internet finance.

This paper focuses on explaining the demographic transition. We show that with the capital accumulation, the output share of mental labor increases and the wage gender gap narrows. In the early stages of economic development, gender discrimination is more prevalent and the substitution effect of capital accumulation is dominated by the income effect, so that the growth rate of the population increases with income. When the degree of wage gender discrimination starts to decline, the increased cost of child rearing induces families to invest more in human capital and the growth rate of the population falls.

This paper theoretically explains how infrastructure investment affects private investment, and conducts empirical tests using China’s provincial-level panel data. In the empirical analysis, we find that: on average, China’s infrastructure investment is not oversupplied or used inefficiently. Infrastructure investment has rather strong crowding-in effect on the private investment, and the improvement of market environment and openness can further strengthen this positive effect. If market environment is not friendly to investment and openness level is low enough, the crowding in of private investment can be overlooked. Regionally, the crowding-in effect in eastern areas is stronger than that in central and western areas. Especially in western areas, infrastructure investment even crowd out private investment. Overall, the positive impact of market environment and openness on the marginal utility of infrastructure increases from the east to the west. Based on theoretical and empirical researches, this paper contributes some important policy suggestions.

This paper estimates China's capital stock in detail. On this basis, employing the production function method to estimate potential output of China in 1978-2012 ,which considering capital, labor force, labor quality and total factor productivity and using the state space model to estimate the dynamic output elasticity of factor inputs.Then based on the characteristics of China's economic new normal, analysing the trend of main factors which would impact the future economic growth and predicting the economic potential growth rate of China in future, which will be about 7% in 2016-2020 under the baseline scenario according to estimates. The contributions to economic growth of the capital and labor inputs will decline in future. Great attentions should be paid to the role of total factor productivity.

The paper theoretically indicates that under the conditions of a representative agent utility maximization and the government indefinite budget constraints, the tax rate and the inflation rate is not only a positive correlation, negative correlation may also exist. At the same time under the government's fiscal target cost function minimization and the government indefinite budgetary constraints, there is not only a positive correlation, but also a negative correlation, which is different from "Mankiw principle" analysis. Based on the sample data from 1952 to 2013, the GMM empirical results display that the tax rate and the inflation rate is positively related, but the effects on government tax are positive by the government spending, the effects of the government spending are positive on the slope of the government tax and the inflation rate, and negative are the effects of the resources endowment on the slope. From the impulse response functions of the VAR model, there also shows a positive correlation between the tax rates and the inflation rate, the impact of the government expenditure is positive on the slope of the tax rate and the inflation rate, the resource endowment influences the slope negatively, which are consistent with the conclusions of GMM analysis.

The transmission mechanism and the stylized facts of the volatility of domestic and international oil prices are analyzed. The multivariate stochastic volatility model of dynamic correlation coefficient with Granger causality test (DGC-MSV), combining the multivariate stochastic volatility model of dynamic coefficient with the volatility Granger causality model of fixed coefficient, is constructed. And the tests are given based on the future and spot oil prices of China, USA and British. The following conclusions are gained mainly: First, the correlation coefficients of volatility between the future and spot oil price of China, USA and British are changing dynamically. Second, there are significant spillover effects from USA spot prices to Chinese spot prices, and meanwhile, from Chinese spot prices to USA and British futures prices. Third, there are two-way volatility spillover effects between the oil spot prices,and between the oil futures prices of Britain and USA.Forth,financial attributes of Chinese oil market are less than those of Britain and USA oil markets. Finally, some suggestions are put forward.

Based on more extensive financial variables selected from Chinese macro economy, this paper employs dynamic factor model to extract their common factors which are used to construct China’s financial conditions index (FCI) with the support of the reduced aggregate demand equation. Then, using Cross-spectrum Analysis, the correlation between China’s FCI and output and price are tested from the prospective of frequency domain and time domain, respectively. After that, FCI is taken as transfer variable to build the factor-extended logistic smooth transfer vector auto-regression (FALSTVAR) in which FCI, output and price are contained, and then using FALSTVAR model, this paper analyzes whether financial market reflected by the FCI has an asymmetric impact on the output and the price in different financial conditions. The empirical results show that: first, FCI not only shares the same main cycle with macro economy, but changes ahead of output and price; second, When in a good financial condition, financial markets have a significantly positive contribution to the output, while in a deteriorating financial condition, financial markets have an apparently negative or harmful effect on output, so as to hinder the growth of the real economy.

This paper believes that business cycle can influence the firms’ external financing by the channel of financing-Q sensitivity and financing-cash flow sensitivity. The empirical results confirm that, the effect of investment value on the external financing is positive, and that of the internal cash flow is negative. During the business cycle, both of the coefficients of Tobin-Q and internal cash flow will change. During the period of economic expansion, the positive effect of Tobin-Q on the debt financing will become stronger, and the negative effect of cash flow will become weaker. Moreover, the positive effect of Tobin-Q on the equity financing will become weaker, and the negative effect of cash flow will become stronger. So the debt financing and the ratio of liabilities to assets are pro-cyclical, while the equity financing is counter-cyclical. The effect of business cycle among the companies in different sizes, different property rights and different industries are also different.

Since China launched its ‘Go Global’ policy, there is a magnificent trend of Chinese firms conducting foreign direct investment. But Chinese firms face severe financial constraints with undeveloped financial market. So as an important source of firm heterogeneity, do financial constraints have significant effect on Chinese Firms’ Outward FDI Behavior? Through detail theory and empirical analysis under micro perspective, we show that: Chinese firms generally face financial constraints when they invest abroad; for firms in highly dependent on external financing industry, this effect is more severe; but for firms with productivity advantage, the negative effect will be less severe.

Using a sample of A-share listed firms in China for the period 2004-2013, this paper investigates the relationship between corporate over-investment and stock price crash risk from the perspective of agency theory and managerial overconfidence. Our results show that, first, firms with more over-investment behavior face higher future stock price crash risk. Second, we find that the positive relation between over-investment and crash risk is attenuated when firms have lower agency cost, but CEO overconfidence has no impact on this relationship. This indicates that the manager’s bad news hoarding behavior due to conflict of interest between manager and shareholders, rather than managerial overconfidence, is the main driver for the above result. A further study shows that the predictive ability of over-investment for future crash risk is robust to longer measurement window of crash risk. However, corporate over-investment cannot predict future stock price positive jumps risk. Our paper not only contributes to the literature on stock price crash risk and corporate over-investment, but also has important practical implications for the development of capital market in China.

From the perspective of Chinese listed companies during 2003 to 2011, this paper investigate the governance role and its mechanism and boarder of tax enforcement in the process of investor protection.We find that, the stock crash risk is significantly decreased by stronger tax enforcement by inducing the listed companies realease bad news in a more timely manner, so as to play the role of investor protection.While further study also finds that the governance role of tax enforcement only exist in the private firms and the areas with higher marketization degree. This paper indicates the important role of tax enforcement for investor protection, and emphasises the feasibility of taking the tax enforcement as an external governance mechanism.

There were many changes made towards the education system since the founding of People’s Republic of China (PRC), which caused the same degree of the same subject from different years may result in containing different knowledge. This research is aimed at studying the effect of the education background to the investor’s participation in the stock market, separating the differences caused by diverse ages. We arranged our samples into three groups base on the changes throughout the years after the founding of PRC, and have found out that group 2 has the most sensitivity comparing to group 1 and 3. By dividing the cause of the effect of the education background to the investor’s participation in the stock market into finance cognition and the stability of income, we have reached a further conclusion. Also by comparing the financial cognition level of the ones from the same education level with different ages, we have discovered that to develop the participation of investors in the stock market, it is better to educate the highly educated seniors and the young and middle-aged separately rather than giving universal education.

This paper explores the impact of national risk conception on pricing and completion of merger and acquisition (M&A). Our sample consists of M&A deals whose acquirers are Chinese enterprises. We use power distance, uncertainty avoidance and collectivism respectively to proxy for national risk avoidance. The empirical results show that power distance, uncertainty avoidance, collectivism of target’s nation and overall risk avoidance all correlates negatively to premium paid by acquirer and positively to completion of M&A, both statistically significant. In addition, mediation analyses show that premium paid by acquirer mediates the relationship between power distance, uncertainty avoidance, collectivism and overall risk avoidance of target’s nation and completion of M&A. Chinese enterprise that are prepare to merge or acquire other enterprises are enlighten by these results that target’s national risk avoidance should be took into consideration when they make their decisions.