The digital economy has brought extensive and profound changes to social and economic activities, which in turn have important and far-reaching effects on macroeconomic operations. A global low inflation occurred almost at the same time as the emergence of the digital economy. In recent years, the international literature on the impact of the digital economy on inflation has gradually increased, but unfortunately there is a dearth of relevant domestic literature. Studying how the digital economy affects China's inflation is of great practical significance for judging the long-term trend of China's inflation and improving macro-adjustment policies. Based on the literature, this paper explores the mechanism through which the digital economy affects China's inflation and analyzes the short-term dynamic characteristics of China's inflation against the background of the digital economy. Compared with the literature, the main contributions of this paper are as follows. First, Chinese data are used to empirically test the relationship between the digital economy and inflation, enriching the relevant empirical literature. Second, this paper empirically tests the channels and verifies the mechanism through which the digital economy affects China's inflation. Third, this paper analyzes the characteristics of the short-term dynamic response of inflation to monetary policy shocks under the digital economy, and provides a reference for improving macro-policy adjustments.
Based on the theoretical framework of Riksbank (2015) and the actual situation of China's digital economy, this paper summarizes and determines that the digital economy suppresses inflation through three channels: the low price growth of digital products and services, improved productivity, and e-commerce platform competition. The fixed-effect panel model is used for empirical testing. This paper uses the CPI and PPI growth rates released by the National Bureau of Statistics to measure inflation, and uses the annual digitalization degree index in the Peking University Digital Financial Inclusion Index as the proxy variable of the digital economy. The change rate of the Zhongguancun electronic product price index, the change rate of total factor productivity in each province, and the proportion of e-commerce enterprises in each province are used as the proxy variables of digital product price, productivity, and e-commerce platform competition, respectively. The empirical results show that the inhibitory effect of the digital economy on inflation and its three influence channels are basically confirmed in China. Among them, the digital product channel mainly acts on the annual growth rate of the PPI, the e-commerce platform channel mainly acts on the annual growth rate of the CPI, and the productivity channel has an effect on the annual growth rate of both the CPI and PPI.
To explore the short-term dynamic characteristics of inflation in the context of the digital economy, this paper takes the CPI released by the National Bureau of Statistics as the offline price index, the consumer price index based on online data constructed by Liu Taoxiong et al. (2019) as the online price index (iCPI), and the weighted average of the CPI and iCPI to construct a comprehensive price index (JCPI) based on the proportion of online retail sales to the total retail sales of consumer goods. The VEC model is used to simulate the response of the CPI, iCPI, and JCPI to monetary policy shocks. It is found that the iCPI has the shortest response time to interest rate shocks, the CPI has the longest response time, and the JCPI is in between. The iCPI has the greatest response to money supply and interest rate shocks, followed by the JCPI, and finally, the CPI. As a result, the expansion of online sales has increased the sensitivity of overall inflation to monetary policy. However, due to the sample size, this conclusion needs to be viewed with caution.
The conclusions of this paper have three policy implications. First, in view of the significantly different operating characteristics of online and offline prices, the need to construct a broader range of price indices that cover the characteristics of the digital economy is increasing, and it is necessary to improve the statistical accounting of China's price indices as soon as possible. Second, monetary policy needs to pay attention to the new characteristics of and changes in inflation in the era of the digital economy. As the scale of online sales is continuing to expand, the overall price is more sensitive to monetary policy shocks, and the timing and rhythm of policy operations may need to be adjusted accordingly. Third, in the face of the current global threat of high inflation, the digital economy, as one of the few important long-term factors with an inflation-suppressing effect, continues to accelerate innovation through digital technology itself, and applies it more vigorously and on a larger scale.

Since the 1980s, global value chains (GVCs) have changed the pattern of international trade by decomposing production across borders. With the development of technology, the servitization of manufacturing has become an important trend in the development of the manufacturing industry. Services not only act as intermediate inputs in the manufacturing industry's production process (creating value added for the manufacturing industry) but also increase the market value of manufacturing products along with sales of the industry's final products. Therefore, services may positively affect GVC production in the manufacturing industry. A report issued by the World Bank points out that due to the increasingly close connection between the commodity and service economies, researchers should pay more attention to a series of business services, such as communication, finance, and transportation, that support the manufacturing industry. In 2022, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission proposed that “to improve the professional level of financial services, banking and insurance institutions should combine their market positioning and development planning, and incorporate better services to the manufacturing industry into corporate strategy.” In the manufacturing value chain, financial services act like glue that is used to optimize the allocation of resources and plays a vital role in the overall operation of the manufacturing value chain. There is a need for more research linking financial services with manufacturing GVCs and exploring their impact mechanisms. Accordingly, this paper explores the direction and mechanism of domestic financial services' impact on the upgrading of the manufacturing industry's GVC with different input intensities of financial services. Based on the above-described research, we further explore the impact of the opening of financial services on upgrading of the manufacturing industry's GVC.
By constructing a theoretical model with sectoral linkages, this paper incorporates financial services and the GVC of manufacturing sectors under a unified framework and studies the impact of domestic financial services on the upgrading of the GVC of manufacturing and its impact mechanism. Next, we use the Asian Development Bank's input-output data of 14 manufacturing sectors in 45 countries from 2007 to 2018 to conduct an empirical test. Improvement in the development of domestic financial services has a positive effect on the GVC position of the manufacturing industry with high input intensity of domestic financial services, mainly through the mechanisms of accelerating the digital transformation of manufacturing production processes and encouraging the manufacturing industry to increase its engagement in research and development and design-related production. For industries with a high input intensity of domestic financial services, the increase in the degree of the opening of financial services has a significant negative impact on their GVC position. The higher the degree of the opening of financial services, the stronger the role of domestic financial services in improving the industry's GVC position. For manufacturing industries with a low input intensity of domestic financial services, the impact of domestic financial service development on its GVC position is non-significant, and the increase in the degree of opening of financial services can help improve their GVC position. Foreign financial services can help compensate for this industry's lack of domestic financial services.
Our marginal contributions are as follows. First, we provide a theoretical basis for studying how domestic financial services affect the global value chain position of the manufacturing industry. We incorporate financial services into the model framework of GVC production, construct a production theory model with sectoral production linkages, and describe the impact mechanism of domestic financial services on the upgrading of the manufacturing industry's GVC. Second, we improve, at least to an extent, how the input intensity of service in the manufacturing industry's GVC activities is measured. Because the value added of the manufacturing industry cannot fully reflect the characteristics of its GVC activities, we measure the internal relationship between financial services and the manufacturing industry's GVC activities by using the proportion of the input of value-added in financial services to the value added of the manufacturing industry's GVC activities. Third, we analyze the impact of domestic financial services and the degree of openness of financial services on the manufacturing industry's GVC position with different input intensities of financial services. We explore the impact mechanism of domestic financial services on the manufacturing industry's GVC position. To a certain extent, we enrich the conclusions in the research on how domestic financial services affect the upgrade direction of manufacturing global value chains.

Since 2020, China's bond market has experienced unexpected defaults of AAA-rated bonds and defaults by real estate companies. This abnormal fluctuation in the bond market presents a huge threat to the stability of the financial system. In this context, the Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China states that “we will reinforce the systems that safeguard financial stability, place all types of financial activities under regulation according to the law, and ensure no systemic risks arise.” Thus, preventing systemic shocks caused by default events is crucial to ensuring the development of the capital market and the macroeconomy.
We use the credit spreads of municipal investment bonds and enterprise bonds to construct multilayer networks of debt risk. We identify the source of turbulence in multilayer networks based on the leave-one-out method (Hué et al., 2019). Furthermore, considering the heterogeneity of the bond markets, we apply the latest network combination technology proposed by Bonaccolto et al. (2019) to integrate risk information in linear and nonlinear networks and examine the cross-regional and cross-industry contagion effects of debt risk. Finally, we provide empirical evidence for the trade channel of debt risk contagion.
We contribute to the research on the contagion effect of financial risk. First, the literature pays less attention to the debt-risk contagion of the Chinese corporate sector. However, as the debt scale of non-financial enterprises in China continues to rise, bond default has a significant negative impact on the stability of the financial market. This requires us to analyze the potential risk of municipal investment bonds and enterprise bonds. Second, bonds with different credit ratings and bonds from different issuers may have various risk characteristics, so analyzing debt risk in China based on multiple networks could be very valuable. This paper makes an innovative attempt to do so. Third, our work has strong policy implications. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to show the path of debt risk transmission in China using network combination technology. This approach provides a practical scheme for the measurement and early warning of debt risk.
Our sample consists of municipal investment bonds in 25 provinces from January 1, 2017 to June 30, 2021, and enterprise bonds in 22 industries from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2020. All of the data are from the Wind Database and the China Statistical Yearbook.
We find that China's central and western regions have higher systemic importance in the bond market than other regions because of the weak economic foundations. Nevertheless, the eastern regions, which are densely populated and highly export-oriented, have been significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a consequence, the systemic importance of China's eastern provinces in the nonlinear enterprise bond network increased dramatically after 2020. Additionally, in the enterprise bond market, the real estate sector is an important source of risk. The recent default of AAA bonds is another important factor affecting market sentiment. Finally, we show that debt risk may be transmitted through regional trade relationships. Good economic fundamentals are the key to preventing debt risk contagion. These real economic factors mainly play a role in affecting the enterprise bond market.
Based on the findings mentioned above, we provide several suggestions for improving the debt default disposal mechanism and preventing debt risk contagion. First, for the municipal investment bond market, China should closely monitor the risk dynamics in its central and western regions. The regulatory authorities should guide local financing platforms to improve the efficiency of their capital use and the profitability of the platform. In addition, local financing platforms should improve their information disclosure mechanisms to maintain investor confidence. Second, for the enterprise bond market, China should pay close attention to the risk dynamics of the real estate and transportation industries and implement stricter rules for bond issuance in high-risk industries. It is also important to ensure the independence of credit rating agencies by developing an investor-payment model. Third, China should establish a regional debt-risk monitoring system based on interprovincial trade flows. When trading partners default, local governments should take measures to boost market sentiment, create a stable and efficient capital market, and contribute to the high-quality development of the real economy during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period.

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China took “promoting high-level opening up” as an important content of “accelerating the construction of a new development pattern and focusing on promoting high-quality development”, and pointed out that it is necessary to “strengthen the financial stability guarantee system” and “guard the bottom line of not occurring systemic risks”. In view of this, China especially needs to balance development and security in the two-way opening of the financial system. However, the present monetary policy of the US and other developed economies in a tightening cycle, the continuous contraction of global liquidity, and geopolitical risk events such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict lead to continuous accumulation of global risk factors and more complex and severer external economic environment, posing great challenges to the smooth operation of China's economy and finance. Given the importance of the US dollar in the international monetary and financial system, US monetary policy has obvious spillover effects on other economies around the world. Loose monetary policy stimulates banks and other financial institutions to actively increase risk-taking, but when monetary policy turns tight, the risk tolerance of financial institutions may decline. The existing research on the spillover effect of US monetary policy mainly focuses on its impact on other economies' monetary policy, trade, capital market and other macro aspects, but studies on the spillover effect of US monetary policy from the micro perspective are relatively scarce. In addition, channel studies of how monetary policy affects risk-taking mainly focus on the impact of a country's monetary policy on the risk-taking of domestic lenders, but rarely pay attention to its cross-border spillover effect.
Using global syndicate loan-level micro-data provided by the Dealscan database, this paper conducts a detailed and in-depth study of the above issues. The database not only includes specific information at the lending level, but also provides detailed micro-level data of rich lending participants in many countries or regions, which facilitates the combination of relevant data at the bank, corporate, country or regional levels and a deep investigation into the spillover effect of US monetary policy on the risk-taking of lenders in other economies. The results show that changes in US monetary policy have global spillover effects, i.e. loose (tight) US monetary policy can push up (pull down) the risk-taking level of lenders in other economies. This finding remains robust after controlling for multiple fixed effects and substituting variables and samples. Channel analysis shows that US monetary policy affects the risk-taking level of lenders in other economies by affecting the liquidity of the offshore dollar market, the interest rate and exchange rate of the borrower's economy, and the borrower's asset price. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the easing or tightening of US monetary policy significantly affects the risk-taking level of lenders in other economies, but the global spillover effect of US monetary policy during the tightening period is more acute. Furthermore, the tightening of macroprudential policies in the borrower's economy can effectively curb the risk-taking level of lenders in other economies when US monetary policy eases, but the relaxation of macroprudential policies in the borrower's economy cannot significantly increase the risk-taking level of lenders in other economies when US monetary policy tightens.
The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows. First, it expands the study on the impact of US monetary policy spillovers on the risk-taking level of lenders in other economies at the micro level. Second, in terms of data selection, this paper uses global syndicate loan micro-data, matches the characteristic variables of lenders and borrowers as well as the macroeconomic data of the economies of the participants, and finally obtains a bilateral sample of loans covering lenders from 72 countries or regions and borrowers from 79 countries or regions during 1986-2019. The sample data features long cycle, wide span and fine data granularity, which enables us to control for fixed effects in multiple dimensions and helps to improve the reliability of our conclusions. Third, we discuss the role of offshore dollar market, interest rate and exchange rate, and asset price as mechanisms in the process of US monetary policy spillover. Finally, the paper discusses the heterogeneous impacts of the easing and tightening of US monetary policy, and the effectiveness of macroeconomic prudential policies in various economies to cope with the heterogeneous influence of US monetary policy shocks. The conclusion of this paper has important enlightenment for improving the two-pillar regulatory framework of China's monetary policy and macro-prudential policy, the quality of financial supervision, and the risk management of financial institutions.

Promoting high-quality entrepreneurship is important to Chinese-style modernization. Finance is the blood of the real economy. Therefore, giving full play to the role of digital technology in financial services and accelerating the development of digital finance will help to improve the quality of entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, the literature lacks studies on the relationship between digital finance and high-quality entrepreneurship. This paper is committed to studying how digital finance affects high-quality entrepreneurship, which is important for promoting the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, high-quality entrepreneurship, and Chinese-style modernization.
This paper theoretically and empirically analyzes how digital finance influences entrepreneurship, especially high-quality entrepreneurship, and further explores the external conditions necessary to guarantee that digital finance will promote high-quality entrepreneurship. First, from the theoretical perspective, this paper analyzes the impact of digital finance on entrepreneurship, especially high-quality entrepreneurship, and puts forward the research hypotheses about the mechanism through which digital finance affects high-quality entrepreneurship. Then, from the empirical perspective, this paper combines the index of digital financial inclusion with the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) and analyzes the impact of digital finance on entrepreneurship, especially high-quality entrepreneurship, based on the definition of high-quality entrepreneurship. To strengthen the robustness of the conclusion, this paper also uses the instrumental variable method to carry out endogenous analysis. Further, based on the connotation of the payment business and credit business, this paper comprehensively analyzes the mechanism through which digital finance promotes high-quality entrepreneurship using the subsample regression method or interaction model. Finally, this paper discusses the external conditions for high-quality entrepreneurship from the perspective of government support policies.
This paper finds that digital finance not only promotes entrepreneurship but also contributes to high-quality entrepreneurship in China. As for the mechanism through which digital finance promotes high-quality entrepreneurship, the direct factor through which the payment business promotes high-quality entrepreneurship is the digitalization of consumption. The direct factor through which the credit business promotes high-quality entrepreneurship is supplementing and supporting traditional financing and thus easing the constraints of traditional credit. In addition, for entrepreneurial enterprises, the development of the payment business and credit business has increased the demand for highly skilled talent, promoted technological progress, and realized the effective integration of capital, talent, and technology, thus promoting high-quality entrepreneurship. Therefore, the increasing demand for highly skilled talent and technological progress is the deep factor through which digital finance promotes high-quality entrepreneurship.
This paper has important policy implications. First, we should continue to promote the development of digital finance to drive high-quality entrepreneurship. Second, to promote the digitalization of consumption and ease the constraints of traditional credit, it is necessary to optimize the network and power infrastructure, support the development of direct finance, and reduce enterprises' tax burden. Finally, to increase the demand for highly skilled talent and promote technological progress, we need to increase investment in science and education. These external conditions not only help to promote high-quality entrepreneurship but also contribute to high-quality economic development and the realization of Chinese-style modernization.
The innovations of this paper are as follows. First, as for the theoretical contribution, this paper defines high-quality entrepreneurship from the perspectives of business effect, entrepreneurship sustainability, entrepreneurs' ability, and the innovation level of the industries, which lays a theoretical foundation for the study of the role of digital finance in promoting high-quality entrepreneurship. Second, as for the empirical contribution, by considering the endogenous problems in detail, this paper deeply studies how digital finance affects high-quality entrepreneurship from the perspectives of the payment business and credit business, and analyzes why digital finance promotes high-quality entrepreneurship by analyzing the relationships between capital, technology, and talent. Finally, as for the policy implications, this paper not only discusses how digital finance promotes high-quality entrepreneurship, but also studies the external conditions needed for this, which makes the findings more meaningful for policymakers.

Carbon trading is a major institutional innovation that uses market mechanisms to control and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thus enabling green and low-carbon development. Compared with other financial markets, the carbon market has unique characteristics and functions. It also has more uncertainties and higher risks than other financial markets. Different risk factors are interdependent and interactive, resulting in potential losses for investors. Therefore, it is urgent to identify various kinds of risks in the carbon market and build a carbon market risk-assessment system.
In the carbon market, liquidity risk and market risk affect investors' potential losses. In addition, the two risks have a close relationship with one another, affecting the market efficiency of the carbon market. The traditional concept of market risk assumes that market price is not affected by market participants' liquidation of assets. However, it is relatively common in the carbon market to see a large number of carbon quotas traded simultaneously, which is likely to cause large fluctuations in the market price, increase the market's liquidity, and affect the market's efficiency. Therefore, an analysis of risks from a single source cannot effectively measure the potential trading losses suffered by participants in the carbon market. Furthermore, it is necessary to explore the interaction between liquidity risks and market risks in the carbon market to better reveal the risk linkage mechanism of the carbon market and to comprehensively and effectively manage the market's risks.
The literature on the single risk of the carbon market is deep, but it has two deficiencies. First, studies tend to ignore the multiple sources of carbon market risks, and the effects and costs of carbon market risk management are not explored in a manner that is adequately comprehensive. Second, in the study of superposition risks in the carbon market, scholars only consider risks such as price, exchange rate, and interest rate and do not consider the important factor of liquidity risk.
Our results show negative dependence on liquidity risk and market risk in China's carbon pilot, and the liquidity premium theory is applicable to China's carbon market. Therefore, ignoring the risk dependence between risk factors can lead to an overestimation of the overall risk of carbon pilot projects and increase the cost of risk management. Measurements of the superposition risk of China's carbon pilot projects reveal regional differences between projects in Fujian, Shenzhen, Hubei, Guangdong, and elsewhere. In addition, our empirical results, which should not be ignored, show that liquidity risk plays a dominant role in the superposition risks of China's carbon pilot projects.
Our main innovative contributions are as follows. First, we find that the level of carbon pilot liquidity in China does not completely correspond to the liquidity risk. Specifically, we use the GARCH-VaR method to find that the Hubei carbon pilot project has the lowest liquidity risk, whereas the Fujian and Shenzhen carbon pilot projects have the highest liquidity risks. There are differences in the order of the liquidity risk of carbon pilot projects under different confidence levels, indicating that the liquidity risk of the carbon market is more complex. Second, we find that the risk of China's carbon market is generally overestimated if only market risk is considered. We select the optimal Copula function system to analyze how different risk factors interact with each other in China's carbon market. Our results show that the correlation between liquidity risk and market risk in the carbon market is negative and the two risks offset each other, thus reducing the overall risk of carbon pilot projects. Third, this paper includes liquidity risk in the scope of superposition risk management in China's carbon trading market and constructs an assessment model of superposition risk in China's carbon market. The results show that liquidity risk dominates superposition risk in China's carbon market. Fourth, our study theoretically expands the research literature on carbon market risks, providing a practical basis for the unified and coordinated management of multiple risks in China's carbon market.

The introduction of the green credit policy has provided important opportunities for the development of green enterprises. The original intention of the green credit policy was not only to internalize environmental costs to restrain the expansion of highly polluting and energy-consuming industries but also to support the development and expansion of green industries by guiding the flow of credit funds. So, as a structural financial policy, has the green credit policy had a good policy incentive effect in promoting the development of green enterprises？ Has the green credit policy improved the risk-bearing level of green enterprises？ So far, no literature has discussed this issue. In view of this, this paper explores the issue of green credit policy promoting the development of green enterprises from the perspective of risk-taking.
The study finds that the introduction of the green credit policy has significantly improved the risk-bearing level of green enterprises, and that strengthening the incentive for enterprises' substantive green innovation and improving the willingness of banks to supply credit are important mechanisms through which the green credit policy affects the risk bearing of green enterprises. The heterogeneity test finds that the enhanced effect of the green credit policy on risk-taking is more prominent in enterprises with a low cash level, small-scale enterprises, and highly market-oriented industries. Further research shows that the environmental regulation policy, regional innovation atmosphere, and market development vitality play an important regulatory role in the process through which the green credit policy promotes green enterprise risk-taking. The incentive effect of the green credit policy on risk-taking will be significantly enhanced with an increase in environmental regulation, the enhancement of the regional innovation atmosphere, and the acceleration of market clearing.
Compared with the existing literature, the marginal contribution of this paper is mainly reflected in the following aspects. From the research perspective, according to our limited research horizon, this paper creatively analyzes the relationship between the green credit policy and enterprise risk-taking, which is a useful supplement to previous research. In terms of research and design, this paper improves the method of identifying green enterprises and refines the identification standard of green enterprises to the business and project level of enterprises, overcoming the broadness of simple division by industry attributes, and avoids the interference of “green drift” behavior on the identification of green enterprises. With regard to the research conclusion, this paper explores the transmission mechanism through which the green credit policy affects enterprise risk-taking, which helps to further open the black box of how the green credit policy affects the behavior of micro-enterprises and can provide empirical evidence for the effective connection of macro-policies with micro-enterprises.
This paper has the following policy implications:
First, we find that the green credit policy has a significant incentive effect in promoting the development of green enterprises. Next, we can give full play to the “baton” role of the green credit policy, strengthen the substantive innovation incentives of green enterprises, and further stimulate the innovative and creative vitality of green enterprises. At the same time, it is necessary to accelerate the innovative promotion of green credit mortgage and pledge means, explore financing risk control technology that is more suitable for green industries, and continue to improve the willingness of banking financial institutions to provide credit to green enterprises.
Second, the research in this paper also shows that the incentive effect of the green credit policy cannot be achieved without the support of environmental regulation policies, a regional atmosphere of innovation, and market development vitality. Therefore, it is necessary to continuously deepen the cooperation and coordination between different departments and different links, and further improve the synergy of the whole society to support green development.
Third, this study finds that as a structural financial policy, the green credit policy will make a significant difference to the level of risk-taking of different types of enterprises. Therefore, we should pay close attention to the transformation risks in the process of economic green transformation, make rational use of various green credit policy tools, and guide the credit funds to support the stable and orderly transformation of high-carbon enterprises to low-carbon while helping green enterprises grow.

Currently, China is committed to pursuing all-round green economic transformation and high-quality development. In addition to relying on a variety of terminal environmental governance measures, it is necessary to establish an effective green finance support system to substantially improve the ecological environment, achieve green development, and stabilize economic growth. The green credit policy is now the dominating green finance policy in China. This policy focuses on restricting bank credit by means of intervention, emphasizing the unbalanced allocation of financial resources among different sectors. This may not be conducive to the overall green transformation of the economic system and the smooth transition of the economic growth rate in the short term. In the existing green finance system, the capital market is an important place to realize financing and information disclosure, and it can play an important role in regulating and improving efficiency and quality through the price mechanism. Therefore, it is particularly necessary to test the efficiency of green finance from the perspective of the capital market. This paper chooses green bonds, a market-based green financial instrument, as the research object, to investigate whether green finance supporting green transformation can positively interact with the capital market at the enterprise level.
Studies have investigated the effects of green finance policies from macro and micro perspectives and showed the important function of green finance. However, few studies have explored the effectiveness of green finance from the perspective of the market. With regard to green bonds, scholars have focused on the issuance stage of green bonds and their impact on financial and environmental performance after issuance, but they have not fully realized and explored the positive interaction between green bonds and the capital market. For the first time, this paper discusses the relationship between green bond issuance and stock market performance from a relatively long-term perspective. Green bonds not only have the basic attributes of environmental regulation and resource allocation but also enhance the requirements of information disclosure. By issuing green bonds, enterprises can not only collect green resources and promote green governance but also optimize the enterprise information environment and reduce the degree of information asymmetry. Therefore, green bond issuance may not only affect market returns through performance but also change the possibility of stock price collapse from the information level. This paper studies whether enterprises issuing green bonds can obtain market incentives through the two dimensions of stock returns and crash risk.
Taking non-financial A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2020 as the research sample, and green bond issuers and ordinary bond issuers as the treatment group and the control group, respectively, a staggered difference-in-difference model is constructed to study the market incentive results companies achieve when they issue green bonds for green governance transformation and the mechanism. The results show that green bonds can significantly increase the excess return and reduce the risk of stock price crashes. There is an obvious asymmetry in the level of market incentives achieved by heavily polluting industries and non-heavily polluting industries. The market incentives are also affected by the credit risk and governance level of enterprises. The mechanism studies show that the improvement of green governance performance and the easing of financing constraints are the internal and external motivations through which green bonds promote enterprises' market incentives. Meanwhile, the attention and governance of professional market subjects triggered by information channels also plays an important role.
This paper's contributions are as follows: First, exploring the efficiency of green finance from the perspective of the capital market broadens the theoretical research boundaries of green finance. This study indicates that the capital market plays an important role in the way that green finance promotes economic transformation and high-quality development. Second, based on the two dimensions of return and risk and four measurement indicators, this paper fully proves that there are market incentives for green bond issuance. In particular, heavily polluting enterprises that issue green bonds can obtain more significant market incentives, which is in sharp contrast to the effect of green credit policies. At the same time, this paper also enriches the related literature of market green incentives from the perspective of finance. Third, based on the internal and external perspectives, this paper reveals that the potential mechanism through which green bond issuance affects the stock market are the three channels of green governance, financing constraints, and the information effect. This finding is a useful supplement to the existing green finance theory and has policy implications for improving the green finance system and capital market construction.

The stability of the capital market is vital for economic growth, and the substantial drop in the stock price of listed firms will reduce the operating efficiency of the capital market and weaken its financing function for the real economy. The Central Economic Work Conference in 2020 pointed out that it is necessary to “promote the healthy development of the capital market and improve the quality of listed firms.” Therefore, it is important to identify the determinants of listed firms' stock price crash risk to prevent systemic financial risk.
In this paper, we manually collect the resume data of senior executives of A-share listed firms in China in 2010-2019, identify their working experiences, and examine the impact of senior executives' media experience on stock price crash risk from the perspective of executives' media experience and corporate information disclosure. The results show that senior executives' media experience will increase corporate stock price crash risk. We conduct multiple tests to address the endogeneity concerns, including the use of propensity score matching and a treatment effect model. The results of these tests confirm the robustness of the conclusions. We find that the effect of executives' media experience is more pronounced in firms with poorer operating performance, with executive shareholding, with poorer external auditing, and with analyst following. We further investigate the mechanisms through which executives' media experience affects stock price crash risk, and find that executives' media experience can increase stock price crash risk through a reduction in the quality of corporate information disclosure and negative information being covered up.
This paper contributes to the literature in three aspects. First, this paper expands the studies on the determinants of corporate stock price crash risk. Existing studies have focused on management behavior, investor behavior, and the external environment, but have rarely looked at executives' media experience, which directly affects information asymmetry. Second, this paper deepens understanding of media governance and examines the impact of employing executives with media experience on corporate stock price crash risk. The important role of the media in firms has been widely recognized; however, contemporary studies have mainly discussed the corporate governance role of the media and few studies have discussed firms' connection with the media and the impact of this connection on firm behavior. Third, this paper enriches the literature surrounding the impact of executives' characteristics on firm behavior. In recent years, there have been many studies focusing on the role of executives' characteristics on firm behavior, including political connections, academic experience, financial experience, and military experience, but media experience has rarely been included. Although several studies have discussed the economic consequences of executives' media experience, there is a lack of studies on the impact of executives' media experience on corporate stock price crash risk.
The conclusions of this paper have reference significance for firms, investors, and regulators. For firms, this paper confirms that executives' media experience will increase corporate stock price crash risk and damage to the stakeholders. Therefore, when deciding whether to hire executives with media experience, firms should comprehensively consider their own operating conditions and governance mechanisms to avoid the negative effect of executives' media experience. In addition, investors need to pay attention to the media experience of corporate senior executives when making investment decisions. For firms with executives with media experience, investors should actively contact the firms' investment relation management department to obtain more information and reduce the information asymmetry caused by their information management. For regulatory authorities, it is necessary to strengthen both the regulatory requirement for information disclosure by listed firms and the punishment for the violation of information disclosure.

Information manipulation by listed companies is not rare in the stock market. The signals about such manipulation are usually transmitted to investors through various forms, including quantitative performance and qualitative tone. As accounting becomes more stringently reviewed, the violation cost of traditional financial performance fraud has conspicuously increased, which makes disclosure tone a popular object for companies to manipulate. Further, the deviation between performance and tone becomes a disclosure strategy.
The core issue we hope to discuss is how the disclosure strategy of a company's tone deviating from its performance (abbreviated as tone deviation) affects investors' judgment of a company's true earnings and then their investment decisions, eventually resulting in short-term stock price fluctuations. The literature often treats performance and tone as two isolated parts of information transmission, arguing that irrational investors are easily misled into adopting irrational investment strategies by an abnormally positive tone. However, this can hardly explain the decline in stock price usually observed when a company's tone is extremely inconsistent with its performance. In this regard, different from the assumption of irrationality, we believe that investors are rational enough to adopt a cross-validation strategy in the face of multi-information. Based on a quick cross-validation of the company's performance and tone, an investor will consider the authenticity of the information disclosed to be higher if the performance and tone are relatively consistent; however, if the tone, the performance, or both deviate from the reality, the investor will reduce their evaluation of the stock and become more inclined to sell.
We construct a novel linear regression model to test the views above. The A-share listed companies in mainland China on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2020 are selected as our research sample. Using an event study framework, we characterize the investors' decision-making by the cumulative abnormal return (CAR) within a period of time after the issuance of the annual report. In terms of the core explanatory variable, we first analyze the text data of MD&A in the annual report to obtain a standardized index of net tone. On this basis, the net tone and performance indices are separately divided into 10 grades at the year and industry level, and a difference index can thus be obtained to examine the impact of the tone deviation strategy.
Through the benchmark model and a series of robustness tests, we reach three main conclusions. First, the benchmark results based on the full sample show that tone deviation leads to a significant short-term decline in stock returns, and the difference between a company's tone and performance level has a nonlinear relationship with CAR. Second, the grouped test results by the dominant investor type show that retail investors who are at an information disadvantage rely more on cross-validation to assist themselves in making decisions. Third, with the deterioration of the quality of disclosure and the whole market information environment, the credibility of performance indicators will apparently decline, which impels institutional investors to adopt the same cross-verification strategy, resulting in the phenomenon of institutional retail.
Based on the conclusions above, we put forward two policy recommendations. First, listed companies should pay attention to the rationality of investors and try to ensure that the tone of any information that may be sent to investors is consistent and fair, to reduce the possibility of misleading investors. Second, regulatory authorities should issue guidelines to regulate the tone of information disclosed by listed companies as soon as possible to strengthen the supervision of excessive tone deviation.
The contributions of this paper consist of three aspects. First, this paper provides a new theoretical basis for market effectiveness in a multi-information environment. It indicates that stock prices can still reflect the real state of operation of listed companies to a considerable extent given the existence of cross-validation, which means that an efficient market is still established. Second, this paper proposes a new perspective to understand investors' rationality. By cross-verifying two types of information, investors can make more reasonable decisions and judgments at a lower cost of information cognition. Third, this paper improves the quantitative method of measuring tone deviation. Different from traditional methods that use the residuals of tone regressed on performance, we synthesize tone and performance into a quantitative index by grading and differencing. This method intuitively reflects the subjective information gap perceived by investors when they receive diverse information, and eliminates the common ambiguity found during tone analysis, providing a methodological contribution to follow-up research in this field.

The balance of payments plays an important role when studying the internal economic process of an economy and is an important indicator for understanding the macroscopic situation of an economy. By analyzing China's balance of payments, we can better understand how China's social economy is related to the global market. The formation of the balance of payments requires two basic conditions. The first condition is large-scale economic exchanges at home and abroad. The second condition is a unified settlement medium.
In 1513, the Portuguese came to China for the first time to engage in trade, and they began to engage in normalized trade in China 20 or 30 years later (Li Longsheng, 2005). After the middle and late Ming dynasty, with the continuous development of social economy, silver settlement became more common. In view of this, combined with various trade statistics, we selected the starting time for the study of China's balance of payments as the twenty-ninth year of Jiajing in the Ming dynasty (1550). International trade is the foundation of the balance of payments. In different historical periods, China's international trade scale, trading partners, and trade policies have differed. These differences have affected China's balance of payments. Therefore, starting from 1550, this paper divides China's balance of payments into four historical stages based on the scale and characteristics of China's international trade in different periods. The first stage was from 1550 to the demise of the Ming dynasty in 1644. During this stage, China's trading partners included Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and other Western countries in addition to neighboring countries. Silver was widely used in international settlements during this period, and the scale of trade began to grow and gradually form a statistically valuable relationship with the balance of payments. The second stage was from the entry of the Qing army in 1644 to the outbreak of the first Opium War in 1840, when the government limited opening up to international trade, and the current account in the balance of payments expanded slowly. The third stage was from 1840 to the demise of the Qing dynasty in 1911. At this stage, China quickly integrated into the world economic system, and international trade expanded rapidly. In addition to trade in goods and services, international capital began to enter China on a large scale. The balance of payments was affected by not only the current account but also the capital and financial accounts. The fourth stage was from 1911 to 1949. On the one hand, the domestic financial industry, manufacturing, and other industries developed rapidly during the period of the Republic of China, and international economic and trade exchanges reached unprecedented heights. On the other hand, political turmoil and frequent wars, particularly the more than 10 years of war after 1937, had a serious impact on the national economy, and the balance of payments also showed the distinct characteristics of this period.
There have been some previous studies on China's balance of payments. In terms of statistics about the balance of payments, the research before 1840 was limited to the discussion of the flow of silver and seldom analyzed and discussed each item in the balance of payments. Since 1840, Chinese and foreign scholars have conducted a great deal of research on the balance of payments based on old customs data, modern foreign treaties, foreign debt contracts, and other materials. However, there are still several problems in the current research about China's balance of payments.
Compared with previous studies, this paper makes three main contributions:
First, through data mining, analysis, comparison, and estimation, the balance of payments data before 1890 and after 1936 were completed, spanning the period from the 29^th year of Jiajing in the Ming dynasty (1550) to the night before the founding of New China in 1948. A complete and continuous balance of payments was established, advancing the beginning of the balance of payments by 340 years. Second, the unified balance of payments project framework and standards of the International Monetary Fund were adopted to achieve the dynamic comparability of the balance of payments over the 398-year time span. The factors of changes in expenditures were analyzed and researched, and the data on the balance of payments before 1948 can be unified with the data on the balance of payments after the founding of New China to the present. Third, we verified and corrected the important problems of predecessors in terms of the basic data, statistical caliber, and project classification, and further improved the accuracy of the basic data.