Every year, the issue of “agriculture, countryside, and farmers” is noted as a priority in the Chinese Central Government's Policy Document No. 1. Agriculture in China is currently in a critical transition period. The mode of agricultural production is shifting from labor-intensive to a mode that is both capital-and technology-intensive, which means that funds must be efficiently invested to promote agricultural development. However, there has been a widespread lack of funding in rural areas, and asymmetrical access to information and the failure of rural financial markets are also serious problems. Agricultural loans, including agricultural credits, are the main policy tools for poverty alleviation in rural areas.
Over the years, the central government has promulgated a large number of fiscal and financial policies to support rural loans and the agricultural economy. Recently, a series of government decisions indicate that China is trying to use fiscal policies to guide the allocation of financial resources to rural areas. To encourage financial institutions to increase agricultural loans, the Ministry of Finance has since 2009 overseen a pilot reward policy for institutions making incremental agricultural loans. It is an important measure to integrate fiscal policy and financial policy.
Drawing on theories of rural finance and agricultural economic growth, this study assesses the impacts of the Reward Policy for Incremental Agricultural Loans on agricultural economic development in China. In addition, this study explores the mechanism through which the policy affects agricultural economic development. As 25 provinces successively entered the reward policy pilot program over the 2009 to 2014 period, this study establishes a time-varying difference-in-differences model to evaluate the effect of this exogenous incentive policy on the development of the local agricultural economy. The model uses relevant agricultural economic data from 31 provinces from the 2006 to 2018 period as the research sample. First, we construct an empirical model that uses grain output and farmers' income as the explanatory variables, and policy interaction terms as the core explanatory variables. Then we add control variables such as climatic conditions, input factors, fiscal expenditure on agriculture, local financial development, and agricultural industrialization. Second, to ensure the reliability of the empirical results, we conduct a robustness test. Third, to assess whether the incentive policy has heterogeneous impacts across provinces, we add the interaction terms of geographic location and policy variables to the model and then conduct a heterogeneity test. Finally, we identify the channels through which the incentive policy affects the agricultural economy by examining the impacts of the policy on the agricultural loan balance, power of agricultural machinery, fixed assets investment of rural households, transportation, and water conservation infrastructure construction. The data are from the China Statistical Yearbooks, Wind database, and CSMAR database.
The empirical results show that the Reward Policy for Incremental Agricultural Loans has significantly promoted the growth of grain output and farmers' income. This conclusion remains valid in the robustness tests. Furthermore, the impacts of the policy on the agricultural economy of provinces in different geographical locations is obviously heterogeneous, i.e., the central and western provinces have been more affected. This may be due to the lower proportion of primary industry and relatively mature financial market in the eastern region. Finally, the analyses of the mechanisms show that the policy mainly promotes local agricultural economies by promoting local agricultural loans, which in turn improve the level of agricultural mechanization and optimize rural infrastructure in areas such as transportation and water conservation.
Based on the empirical evidence, we put forward the following policy recommendations. At present, we should continue to encourage financial institutions to support agriculture. The coordination and cooperation of fiscal policies and monetary policy tools achieves a win-win situation for financial institutions and farmers. Differentiated fiscal policies (including targeted fee subsidies and tax incentives for loans) could also be used to encourage financial institutions to focus on the countryside and increase agricultural investment.

Budget deviation is defined as the difference between the government's budgeted and final account values. Since the reform of the national tax sharing system, the Chinese government has experienced large budget deviations. Although greater budget deviations are generally seen in low-income countries compared with high-income countries, China's provinces reported average budget deviations as high as 9.38% from 2000 to 2014. This rate is not only much higher than those in developed countries but is also much higher than the rates reported in many developing countries. As a budget is a plan for revenues and expenditures, a gap between the budgeted values and final accounts is expected. However, if the gap is too large, it causes a series of problems. If excessive budget deviations persist, government budgets may be considered unreliable and nonauthoritative, and modern budget and fiscal systems could be challenged. These negative outcomes could greatly alter the effects of fiscal regulation on the economy. Therefore, it is important to understand the causes of revenue budget deviation and develop targeted measures to establish a modern budget system, improve the performance of fiscal management activities and even promote the modernization of national governance.
Although the literature discusses the causes of budget deviations from the aspects of technology, economy and system, few studies focus on the impact of intergovernmental fiscal relations. Accordingly, this paper systematically analyzes the impact of intergovernmental revenue sharing on revenue budget deviation. First, it analyzes the institutional background of revenue sharing and budget management. On this basis, a simple static model is constructed and analyzed, revealing that against the background of the sharing method used widely by China's intergovernmental revenue division, a change in intergovernmental revenue sharing would have two opposite effects on budget deviation: fiscal pressure and fiscal expansion. The fiscal pressure mechanism means that the local government will face increased fiscal pressure as the ratio of shared fiscal revenue decreases. To alleviate this fiscal pressure, the local government must strengthen tax collection and management or vigorously develop its economy to increase its final revenue. This eventually leads to an increase in revenue budget deviation. The fiscal expansion mechanism means that the degree of tax effort decreases as the share of fiscal revenue decreases, resulting in a decrease in the final fiscal revenue. This eventually leads to a decrease in revenue budget deviation.
Using the manually collected budget reports of provinces at the People's Congress, this paper collates the budgetary and final account data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2013. Specifically, this paper considers the subprovincial governments as a whole and empirically analyzes the impact of revenue sharing on revenue budget deviation using a two-way fixed effect model. The results support the fiscal pressure mechanism: as the ratio of fiscal revenue sharing decreases by 1 percentage point, the revenue budget deviation increases by 0.3 percentage points. Further analysis shows that the impact of revenue sharing on budget deviation is not significant at the provincial level and decreases as the economic development level increases. This result holds through a full battery of robustness checks, which include changing the method of measuring revenue budget deviation and considering the effects of transfer payment and endogeneity, the influence of budget deviation in the previous period and the spatial influences of variables.
This paper makes several main contributions. First, research on budget deviation is limited by the available data. Previous studies suffer from a lack of in-depth data or inadequate data acquisition. This paper uses subprovincial budget deviation data collected from the budget report of the Provincial People's Congress. Second, the literature mainly discusses the influences on budget deviation at a theoretical level and therefore lacks in-depth analysis of specific factors and corresponding empirical testing. This paper systematically explores and tests both the theoretical and empirical aspects of the influence of fiscal revenue sharing on revenue budget deviation. Finally, most studies have explored either fiscal pressure or fiscal expansion as the outcome effect of a change of fiscal revenue sharing on local government behavior. This paper considers both effects, which oppose each other, on budget deviation.

According to China's 14th Five-Year Plan, it is necessary to consolidate and improve the basic rural management system to ensure the separation of rural contracted land ownership, contracting rights, and management rights. Land-renting is an important component of both the deactivation of management rights and the optimal allocation of rural land resources. The three-rights separation reform of agricultural land not only promotes the exchange of land management rights but also releases the value of the land and enables its full potential to be realized.
The financing problems faced by farmers are crucial in the land-renting process. Issues such as the scale of land-renting, the choice of transfer method, and the speed of transfer largely depend on the resolution of financing issues. Research on the issue of land-renting by rural households focuses on the factors affecting land transfer and its performance. The studies on credit provided to farmers mostly focus on credit behavior and the importance of credit to farming households. To address a gap in the research, this paper focuses on the relationship between land-renting and the credit behavior of farmers.
Using large-scale micro survey data from the nationwide China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) in 2015 and 2017, this paper conducts an in-depth study of the credit needs, credit constraints, and credit satisfaction of rural households from the perspective of land-renting. The findings are as follows: (1) Compared with farmers who have not transferred land, those who have transferred land express a stronger demand for agricultural credit, which is not accompanied by a significant increase in demand for non-agricultural credit. (2) Both the proportion of agricultural credit awarded to farmers who have transferred land and the proportion of farmers facing credit constraints have increased significantly. Further research on farmers who have obtained agricultural credit reveals that those who rent land have low credit satisfaction and identifies a relatively large gap in credit constraints. By analyzing the scale of farmers' land transfers, this paper finds that this phenomenon is more obvious in farmers who undertake larger-scale land transfers. The results suggest that during the process of land-renting, farmers face greater agricultural credit constraints; therefore, financial support for land transfer should be increased.
This paper makes the following academic contributions: (1) It enriches the literature on land transfer and farmers' credit behavior. The literature on credit among farmers mainly focuses on their credit behavior and the importance of credit to farming households. Research on land-renting also mainly focuses on the influencing factors and performance of land transfer. This paper studies the credit behavior of farming households during the process of land-renting and thus provides a powerful supplement to the literature. (2) The studies on the credit behavior of farmers mostly focus on their credit constraints and credit needs. This paper is the first to explore the credit satisfaction of farmers and thus extends the scope of research. (3) This paper uses nationwide sample survey data to study the credit behavior of farmers. Therefore, its conclusions are more representative of the general population.
This paper has two significant policy implications. First, the conclusions provide direction for the new-era government to promote reforms in agriculture and rural areas, increase the flow of more factors to the countryside, and enhance the vitality of agricultural and rural development. The construction of a land circulation system would not only be conducive to the deregulation of management rights but would also promote the optimal allocation of rural land resources. Although the state has recently introduced many rural financial policies, such as the microfinance policy for farmers, the findings in this paper show that credit remains a major problem for farmers who have transferred land. The conclusions in this paper can help the government and relevant departments understand the credit constraints faced by farmers during the process of land-renting and thus promote healthy development of the land transfer market.
Second, the conclusions can also help consolidate and expand the association between poverty alleviation and rural revitalization. Overall, our country has achieved victory in the decisive battle against poverty. Consolidating and upgrading the results of poverty alleviation is a primary task set forth in the 14th Five-Year Plan. The role of finance in this process cannot be ignored. This study finds that farmers face more serious credit constraints during the process of transferring land. The government should continue to increase the credit support provided to farmers who are transferring land to alleviate their credit constraints. It should also establish a stable system to help farmers invigorate rural development. Finally, it should consolidate and expand the long-term mechanism of poverty alleviation to further revitalize rural areas.

Foreign capital can enter the market of a host country through two main channels: greenfield investment and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. As the choice of foreign capital entry mode is one of the core decisions made by multinational corporations when they enter the market of a host country, it is not only directly related to the success or failure of the enterprise's own transnational operation, but also has a significant impact on the economy of the host country. Financial systems are the core of modern economies. Whether a host country can use a sound financial system to attract foreign investment, which can lead to the diffusion of cutting-edge technology and the promotion of the host's global value chain, has become a topic of interest in academic circles. At the same time, the host country's business environment, including current and expected policies and the institutional and behavioral environment, not only directly affects the returns and risks of transnational investment, but also indirectly affects the returns of foreign direct investment by affecting the allocation efficiency of financial resources under the condition of incomplete contracts (Antras and Helpman, 2004). A few studies have discussed the relationship between financial development and foreign investment entry, but very few have examined how the different business environments of different countries affect the relationship between financial structure and the choice of foreign investment entry mode.
Following Levine (2002), we construct a cross-country index of financial structures and then investigate the influence of different financial structures on foreign investment mode selection. We consider how the choice of financial structure affects the mechanism of foreign investment, and comprehensively investigate the relationship between the business environment and the choice of foreign investment mode. Our findings suggests that to promote financial supply side structural reform, China should improve its business environment and improve the quality of foreign capital introduction. The study uses transnational panel data on 65 countries from 2003 to 2017. The data are mainly from the databases of international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank.
This study draws the following conclusions. First, compared to a bank-dominated financial structure, a market-oriented financial structure makes it easier for foreign investment to enter through cross-border mergers and acquisitions, and the promotional effect of such a financial market is clearly stronger in developed countries than in developing countries. Second, the analysis of the transmission mechanism finds that technological innovation and national risk control are the important channels through which financial structure influences the choice of foreign capital entry mode; more generally, we find that the choice of financial structure is more strongly associated with economic risk, and has limited association with political risk. Third, improving the business environment not only directly promotes the entry of foreign capital, it also indirectly regulates the role of the financial market in improving the structure optimization of foreign capital entry. The role of the business environment is significantly greater in developed countries than in developing countries.
The findings of this study have clear policy implications. First, China should continue to extend the structural reform of its financial supply side by effectively promoting financial marketization, liberalization, and internationalization and reducing the entry and operation costs of foreign enterprises. Furthermore, China needs to adjust its policies for attracting foreign investment by improving the system for managing the pre-establishment of national treatment and negative list for foreign investment. It should consider policies that promote greenfield investment and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, which would improve the structure and quality of foreign investment. Second, the Chinese government should further strengthen technological innovation and guard against national risks. Its innovation incentive policies should promote the transformation from “quantity” to “quality,” enhance the ability of financial services to support the real economy, and adopt an innovation performance evaluation system that realizes the flexible nature of scientific research. Furthermore, in the context of increasing global economic uncertainty, China needs to improve its financial risk prevention mechanisms so that it can effectively control and defuse the systemic and non-systemic risks faced by domestic and foreign enterprises. Finally, China's investment policies should be committed to improving the business environment, following the principle of competitive neutrality for domestic and foreign firms, establishing and perfecting a foreign investment promotion mechanism, and creating a stable, transparent, predictable, and fair competitive market.

In the context of an increasingly uncertain international situation and the market-oriented reform of the RMB exchange rate, exchange rate fluctuations among countries have become the norm. The potential financial risks and the operational risks for micro firms associated with these increasingly unpredictable exchange rate fluctuations will have a profound impact on the sustainable development of China's economy. The international environment is becoming increasingly complex, characterized by growing uncertainty and instability. Firms engaged in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) face three additional uncertainties: (1) uncertainties caused by anti-globalization, trade disputes and protectionism, and geopolitical conflicts; (2) uncertainty in the relationship between the acquirer's and the target's countries; and (3) uncertainties in the economic, political, security, legal, and other spheres of the target country.Unexpected exchange rate fluctuations are related to these three uncertainties.
Based on the China's aim to achieve a high-quality opening up, we define Exchange Rate Uncertainty as the condition of being unable to accurately predict the direction, range, or distribution probability of future exchange rate fluctuations. In this condition, exchange rate fluctuations cannot be predicted based on historical trends and existing information. In general, Chinese firms join international markets through cross-border M&As. This study suggests two mechanisms through which fluctuations in exchange rates affect this process. (1) Real Option Effect. Exchange rate uncertainty constrains firms' cross-border M&A decisions by increasing transaction costs and earnings uncertainty and by aggregating external financing difficulties. (2) Risk Hedging Effect. Exchange rate uncertainty encourages firms to increase their market share and hedge exchange rate risks by engaging in cross-border M&As that enhance their market competition. Using a sample of cross-border M&As announced by A-share firms in the 2000 to 2019 period, we find that uncertainty in the nominal exchange rate of the RMB against the US dollar (NUTR) reduces the likelihood of cross-border M&As, indicating the dominance of the real option effect; while uncertainty in the nominal effective exchange rate of RMB (NEER) has a positive impact on the number of M&As, which reflects the risk hedging effect. Further cross-sectional analysis shows that the negative effect of NUTR uncertainty is more significant among firms with higher trading and translation risks and tighter financing constraints. In addition, firms in industries with intense competition and firms that face higher economic risk from exchange rate fluctuations are more likely to conduct cross-border M&As when NEER uncertainty intensifies. Tests of the mediating effects of financial friction and corporate risk further prove that both NUTR and NEER uncertainty affect firms' decisions to engage in cross-border M&As via the real option mechanism and risk hedging effect, respectively. Finally, the financial performance of cross-border M&As is better during periods when the exchange rate is uncertain. Cross-border M&As reduce the sensitivity of firm stock prices to changes in effective exchange rates (NEER); that is, they reduce the economic risks of exchange rates, but have no significant mitigation effect on the risk exposure created by bilateral exchange rates.
This study distinguishes the role of bilateral and effective exchange rate uncertainty and expands our understanding by considering the economic consequences of exchange rate fluctuations and uncertainty. At the same time, this study also supplements the literature on the factors that influence cross-border M&As. It provides a theoretical basis for regulators' guidelines for firms seeking active international economic cooperation. These guidelines could help firms to improve their core competitiveness and to participate in the reform of the global economic governance system. In particular, to obtain stability in an uncertain environment, firms must pay attention to exchange rate risk and improve the efficiency of cross-border M&As. This study explores the spillover effect of exchange rate uncertainty from the perspective of the stock market and provides a basis for the market-oriented reform of the RMB exchange rate system under the Dual Circulation development pattern.

Since the reform and opening up, foreign trade in China has experienced an unprecedented level of rapid development. China has ranked first in the world in terms of trade scale and volume for many consecutive years and has long benefited from economic globalization. However, in the context of a new round of trade protectionism, China faces increasingly serious trade barriers in overseas markets. Certainly, enhancing the competitiveness of export enterprises and their ability to respond to foreign antidumping investigations can help achieve the orderly development of high-quality export trade and “external circulation.” This paper attempts to answer the following related questions: What effect do antidumping measures have on the export activity and productivity of Chinese firms？ By what mechanism are these effects realized？
Theoretically, antidumping measures have a multifaceted effect on export enterprises. Encountering antidumping measures increases production costs, weakens the price advantage and reduces profits, and thus negatively affects exports. As antidumping measures threaten the survival of export enterprises and intensify the competitive pressure they face, antidumping measures force enterprises to change their transformation and upgrade strategies to improve efficiency and product quality, fundamentally enhancing the competitiveness of their products. Therefore, the effect of antidumping measures on China's export enterprises represents an empirical problem. By answering the questions posed above, we can evaluate the operating conditions of China's export enterprises and deepen our understanding of the mechanism by which antidumping measures affect export enterprises. The answers to these questions also have strong practical significance for China's transformation of its economic development mode, the innovation-driven manufacturing industry and enhanced international competitiveness against the background of the global value chain.
The results show that for Chinese multiproduct firms, encountering antidumping measures has a positive effect on export prices, the concentration of export products and export market diversification but a negative effect on export volume and scope (i.e., number and variety of export products). These effects are limited by the firm's downstream and upstream participation in the global value chain. Heterogeneity tests show that the effects of encountering antidumping measures on export activity differ significantly among multiproduct firms depending on characteristics such as the type of ownership and mode of trade. Finally, by constructing a firm-level product competitiveness index, we find that Chinese multiproduct exporting firms tend to export a broader product mix, giving such firms a competitive edge and raising their productivity. This effect increases gradually as procedures for responding to antidumping measures are promoted. These conclusions indicate that encountering antidumping measures leads firms to focus on exporting core products and thus promotes the efficiency of Chinese export firms in the long run.
This paper makes the following innovative contributions. First, it combines the heterogeneous trade theory of manufacturers and products with micro data from Chinese multiproduct export firms to explore the effects of antidumping measures on the export behavior of these firms from the perspective of the internal export product structure. In contrast to most of the literature, this paper not only examines the effects of encountering antidumping measures on the scale of the quantity and types of export products but also examines the effects on export prices, the concentration of export products and the diversification of the export market. Thus, this paper not only enriches the literature on the effect of antidumping measures on exports but also deepens our understanding of how antidumping measures affect a firm's export behavior. Second, in addition to using the propensity score matching-difference-in-differences (PSM-DID) method to investigate the average effect of antidumping measures on firms' export behavior, this paper incorporates the global value chain into its analytical framework. By measuring upstream embeddedness, downstream embeddedness and global value chain status, this paper investigates the role of global value chain status in the effect of antidumping measures on firms' export behavior. Few studies address the role of the global value chain in the effect of antidumping measures on trade. Third, this paper further explores the effect of antidumping measures on the productivity of multiproduct firms from the perspective of intra-firm export product reallocation, and thus it enriches the literature on the effect of antidumping measures on exports.

With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization in China, ecological environment problems become more prominent, seriously hindering the inclusive growth of humans and nature. In recent years, China's green finance policies have led to a group of particular institutional investors—green investors. As the main body of social responsibility investment, they aim to choose the investment responsibility for the society, guide the enterprises to carry out the green concept into the social behaviors such as clean operation and promote the enterprises to pursue economic benefits and pay more attention to social responsibility and public interests. Whether and how green investors affect the participation of enterprises in green governance have become the critical issue of our research. To this end, our study first examines the impact of green investors on firms' participation in green governance, and then explores heterogeneity on the pollution level, the nature of property rights, and regional environmental awareness. Finally, we investigate the social and economic benefits of firms' participation in green governance.
Using a sample of A-share listed firms from 2006 to 2016, we explore the impact of green investors on firms' participation in green governance. Our findings suggest that green investors play an active role in the promotion of corporate green governance. Further investigation indicates that the promotion effect of green investors on green action is more substantial in enterprises with weak environmental awareness, the impact on green expenditure is more substantial in heavy polluting enterprises and state-owned enterprises, and the effect on green governance performance is more substantial in non-heavy polluting enterprises and state-owned enterprises and enterprises in weak environmental awareness. Finally, we find that the enterprises with more green governance participation are more likely to be recognized by green investors; although the green expenditure reduces the performance(Roa), the green action and green governance performance increase the performance(Roa).
The contributions of this paper are as follows: First, we explore the influencing factors of green governance from the enterprise level, which provides a new perspective for the research on corporate green governance. Second, starting from the investment purpose and green concept of green investors, considering the influence ways of “voting with hands” and “voting with feet”, we explore the influence mechanism of green investors on firm's participation in green governance, which is a useful supplement to the existing research.
Our findings also have important policy implications. First, China should not only actively guide the investment of green investors and play an effective role in the implementation of sustainable development strategy, but also establish a sound green financial system, create an excellent external financing environment for corporate green governance. Second, from the perspective of its long-term sustainable development, enterprises should fully realize the scientific nature of incorporating green investors, corporate green governance, and long-term business performance into the framework of enterprise performance management, actively cooperate with and strive to practice the investment intention of green investors, establish a good corporate image to build a relationship network worthy of investors' trust. Moreover, enterprises should also strive to identify the cognitive requirements and expectations of social participants for the sustainable development of enterprises to obtain more green financing.

The importance of highly skilled human capital in China's economic transformation is self-evident. Since 2008, China's central government and local governments have implemented a large number of talent introduction policies, making competition for talent increasingly fierce across regions. However, whether talent introduction policies, especially at the local level, promote innovation is still a controversial issue. On the one hand, such policies can introduce advanced concepts and technologies to a region and accelerate local innovative upgrades and industrial transformations. Furthermore, the policy subsidies can increase firm profits and productivity, thereby promoting regional innovation. On the other hand, some local governments may enact talent policies for the purpose of maintaining demographic dividends and performance projects. The introduction and implementation of policies are often accompanied by problems such as inefficient investment and fiscal waste, which may have a negative effect on regional innovation. Therefore, this study uses data on local governments' talent policies to conduct a systematic empirical study of whether the policies significantly improve regional innovation and whether there are incentive distortions. It also explores the underlying mechanisms and provides guidelines for optimizing local talent introduction policies so that they better achieve innovative development.
We take the local talent introduction policies enacted in 39 cities between 2009 and 2012 as a quasi-natural experiment and use the multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) method to explore the impact of local government talent introduction policies on regional innovation. First, using the “Guidelines for the Introduction of Overseas Technological and Innovative Talents in China's Provinces and Cities” compiled by the Department of International Cooperation of the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2013, we determine the time at which each city implemented its talent introduction policy. We consider this an appropriate setting for a quasi-natural experiment. To simplify our inter-city comparisons, we adopt the propensity score matching method (PSM). Applying one-to-one nearest neighbor matching to the cities' characteristic variables, we construct a control group of cities that are similar to those in the experimental group. Through the above process, we obtain a sample with 39 cities in the experimental group and 39 cities in the control group for the period 2006-2015. Further, we use two indicators to reflect a city's innovation level. The first is the number of valid patent applications in a city over the sample period, collected from the Soopat database. This indicator measures regional innovation capabilities from the perspective of patent quantity. The second indicator is a city's score on the China City Innovation Index, issued by the Industrial Development Research Center of Fudan University, which measures regional innovation capabilities on the basis of patent value.
Based on the above specifications, we implement a multiple-period DID regression to investigate whether there are significant differences in the innovation capabilities of the experimental and control cities before and after the enactment of talent introduction policies. We draw the following conclusions. Local government talent introduction policies increase both the quantity and value of patents in the region. Specifically, the policies increase innovation by expanding the scale of R&D investments rather than by enhancing innovation efficiency. In regions with poorer business environments and less protection of intellectual property rights the main effect of the policies is an increase in the quantity of patents, but in regions with better business environments and more protections the policies improve the value of patents. Furthermore, we find that the policies are more effective in regions with lower fiscal investment in science and education than in regions with higher investment.
This study makes three contributions. First, previous research focuses on the role of talent policies at the national level and concentrates on qualitative analysis. In contrast, this study focuses on city-level talent polices. Through rigorous empirical analysis, we explore the impact of talent introduction policies on innovation at the local level. Second, we not only examine the direct effects of the policies but also discuss the underlying mechanisms, thus providing a more comprehensive and in-depth description of how the policies function. Third, China is currently facing a reduction in labor force and a slowdown in economic growth. Talent has become a new driving force that is urgently needed for local economic development. Hence, our conclusions have important policy implications for local governments seeking to optimize talent incentive policies and implement innovation-driven development strategies.

The development zone is a typical feature of the reform and opening up process that China has undertaken over the last 40 years. Development zones play a critical role in promoting system innovation and assembling production factors. China's development zones are divided into national and provincial development zones. The two types of zone are superficially different in their approval organizations. They differ more significantly in scale, facilities, policy support, and management systems. Accordingly, their impact on enterprises in the region may also differ. Compared with national development zones, provincial development zones are more susceptible to economic and industrial competition between regions. However, few studies address the heterogeneity in the influence on firms of national development zones and provincial development zones.
Innovation activities are an important factor enabling enterprises to gain market competitiveness and achieve sustainable development. They are a driving force for regions to achieve high-quality development. It is therefore important to clarify what effects development zones have on innovation behavior at the micro-enterprise level.
We construct a multi-time differences-in-differences model to conduct the research. We use non-financial listed companies from 2007 to 2018 as a sample, combined with the manual collection and collation of enterprise information in various development zones. Our results show that national development zones can significantly promote innovation in enterprises within the domain, while provincial development zones inhibit enterprise innovation. Mechanism research shows that national development zones encourage enterprises to increase innovation through policy effects and aggregation effects. Provincial development zones, however, are vulnerable to short-term behaviors such as GDP tournaments. They therefore inhibit corporate innovation activities. Our paper also finds that the impact of development zones on corporate innovation activities is heterogeneous in the areas of market environment and property rights. The promotion effect of national development zones on enterprise innovation is more obvious in regions with a higher degree of marketization. This reflects the complementary effects of the visible hand of the government and the invisible hand of the market in national development zones. Regarding ownership heterogeneity, the promotion effect of national development zones on enterprise innovation activities is more obvious in central state-owned enterprises than in non-state-owned enterprises. The extrusion effect of provincial-level development zones on enterprise innovation is also more obvious in state-owned enterprises, especially local state-owned enterprises.
This paper's contributions are as follows. First, we advance the literature on enterprise innovation by examining the effects of different types of development zone on enterprise behavior. Most existing studies focus only on regional-level evidence. Our paper addresses the impact of development zones on the innovation activities of enterprises in the region and reveals the mechanism of this impact. Second, we offer in-depth and extensive insights into development zone construction based on a comparative study of national development zones and provincial development zones. Previous research largely focuses on national development zones. No relevant empirical evidence has been provided regarding the differential impact of national and provincial development zones or the reasons for such differences. Our comparative study of national and provincial development zones also sheds light on aspects of regional GDP competition. Finally, our research expands the literature on government intervention and enterprise innovation from the perspective of development zones.
The paper's main policy implications are as follows. China should highlight the exemplary role of national development zones when constructing development zones. They should also promote the management and institutional mechanisms of provincial development zones to bring them on a par with the mechanisms of national development zones. In particular, the government should speed up the optimization and upgrading provincial development zones. Some should be given stronger foundations and developed into national development zones. Upgrading provincial development zones will enhance regional innovation by providing a more reasonable business environment and management system.

Due to the complexity of the business and economic environment, managers are faced with a large amount of complex and vague information, leading to a serious problem of information overload. However, managers have bounded rationality, which makes them unable to fully process and interpret environmental information. Managerial Macro-Cognition (MMC) refers to the managerial macro cognitive structure and cognitive process used by managers to process, interpret and apply macro environmental information in decision-making processes. Although they face the same changes in the macro environment, different managers make highly personalized interpretations and judgments, affecting their corporate policy choices and decisions. As a result, managers' perception of macro environmental information is affected by their personal experience, personality, thinking and values, thereby reflecting clear personal management styles.
This study investigates whether MMC involves a management style and its mechanism. Taking all Chinese listed firms as our sample, we use natural language processing technology to extract their macroeconomic vocabularies from the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) section of their annual reports and construct an MMC measurement index to test whether MMC has a management style. The results show a clear form of individual “imprinting,” that is, a management style, in MMC. Furthermore, this management style is significantly affected by the personal characteristics of managers. We find that managers' academic qualifications and overseas experience are positively correlated with the effect of management style and that the government background of managers is significantly negatively correlated with the effect of management style. Moreover, their managerial ability is significantly positively correlated with the effect of management style in MMC.
Our study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, previous studies identify a firm's management style in its investment decisions, risk preference, tax avoidance, earnings performance and information quality. This study demonstrates that MMC also has a management style, indicating the differences in the effect of management style between different companies. This finding enriches the literature on the impacts of management style on the decision-making of Chinese enterprises. In addition, this study provides a new research perspective on managers' personal characteristics and related attributes. It provides an important reference for companies to choose suitable managers and offers empirical evidence to better understand the decision-making process of Chinese companies.
Second, previous studies have measured managerial ability in terms of individual education level, test scores, etc. (Borghans et al., 2008; Almlund et al., 2011). Firm-level research traditionally uses managers' personal experience to construct a managerial ability index, which quantifies the level of executive capability in terms of general purpose skills or professional skills (Custódio et al., 2013; Mishra, 2014; Zhao Ziye et al., 2018). From the new perspective of managers' ability to interpret and respond to changes in the macro environment, our study uses the macro environmental information contained in the MD&A section to construct the MMC index, which enables us to examine the specific reasons for the formation of managers' macro cognitive abilities.
Third, this study expands related research on managerial cognition. Prior studies have mainly focused on managers' cognitive abilities from the perspective of individual demographic characteristics. In contrast, this study measures managers' cognition of macro environmental information from the perspective of the macro environment, enriching research on managers' cognition.
Finally, this study has practical significance. In a complex and changing economic environment, managers with higher MMC benefit their firms by allocating limited resources to more profitable projects. At the same time, giving the information asymmetry in the labor market, companies can screen senior managers based on their personal characteristics and hire managers with high MMC to improve the efficiency of enterprise decision-making.

Entrepreneurs who serve as board directors or CEOs play an important role in the development of enterprises. Traditionally, they influence enterprise value mainly through back-stage behaviors, such as mapping the firm's strategy, making financing and investing decisions, or conducting operational management. With the development of information transmission in the Internet era, a revolution is occurring in business models and the management of enterprises. Increasingly, entrepreneurs are moving from the back stage to the front stage and actively interacting with the public.
With the rapid development of the Internet, the influence of we-media has increased dramatically. We-media is becoming a powerful method for transmitting information. Sina microblogs is an example of we-media that has been popular since 2010. Some entrepreneurs have registered their own Sina microblog account and use it to post news or express their viewpoints. Microblogs offer a rapid, comprehensive, and low-cost channel through which to engage with the public. However, it is a significant time investment for entrepreneurs to write or maintain a blog. Entrepreneurs are busy, and the time cost is higher for an entrepreneur than for a regular employee. There is also a reputation risk for an entrepreneur writing a blog. Considering the benefits and costs of microblogs for entrepreneurs, is it beneficial for entrepreneurs to disclose or share information or viewpoints on a microblog？ There is no clear answer to this question in the literature.
Some studies focus on firms' official microblogs and find that they can effectively promote communication between enterprises and investors. Although a few papers investigate the behavior of entrepreneurs on we-media platforms and attempt to explain the effect of this behavior from the perspective of the entrepreneur's image or spirit, the impact of an entrepreneur's personal microblog on his/her firm's valuation remains unknown.
Based on the theory of information transmission, we investigate the impact of the release and content of entrepreneurs' microblogs on their firms' valuation. We use a Python script to search and process entrepreneurs' microblog data from the Sina microblog platform. Other data come from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research Database. The empirical results reveal the following. (1) The front-stage behavior of an entrepreneur, which is defined as the release of a microblog, has a positive impact on the firm's value in terms of operating cash flow and reduced systematic risk. (2) Text analysis of entrepreneurs' microblogs reveals that enterprise value is increased when the proportion of a microblog's content that is personal, frequency of the use of “@,” and proportion of text with a positive tone are higher. (3) The higher the degree of information asymmetry, the more likely the entrepreneur will be to choose to open a microblog account.
The findings in this paper fill a gap in the literature and have important implications for entrepreneurs deciding how to behave when facing the public. This paper makes four main contributions. First, we analyze the front-stage behavior of entrepreneurs through an information asymmetry framework and clarify the channels through which entrepreneurs' front-stage behavior impacts firm value. This not only enriches the literature on the economic consequences of entrepreneurs' front-stage behavior, but also expands the literature on we-media from the perspective of information disclosure and information transmission. Second, in the Internet era, the internal and external information environment of enterprises has changed in important ways. The modes of information collection and transmission must also change to match this evolving environment. Entrepreneurs need to re-examine the modes and channels of information disclosure. The findings of this study have important implications for entrepreneurs hoping to understand whether and how to make use of we-media. Third, the present literature on the impact of we-media on enterprises mainly focuses on enterprises' official microblogs. In contrast, we address entrepreneurs' personal microblogs, which is a more interesting perspective as they contain more diverse information about entrepreneurs. Understanding entrepreneurs' characteristics, viewpoints, and outlooks on life and the world is critical for helping investors to interpret or predict their strategies or decisions. Fourth, This study finds that entrepreneurs can directly or indirectly transmit information related to enterprise value via their personal microblogs, which is an efficient, fair, low-cost, and sustainable method that is also in line with the development concept of modern China.