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  • How Can the New-type Information Infrastructure Promote Urban-rural Integration:A Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis Based on 31 Provinces
    WANG Yaoqi, LU Chang, LI Yuhan WU, Guobin, LI Yulong
    2026, 0(5): 5-17.
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    As digitalization accelerates worldwide, new information infrastructure is becoming an important foundation for economic transformation and regional development.In China's current stage of urban-rural integration, such infrastructure can facilitate factor mobility and improve resource allocation across urban and rural areas, while supporting the growth of the digital economy and structural upgrading. Against this background, we construct an index system to measure new information infrastructure and urban-rural integration in China and examine how different combinations of infrastructure-related conditions are associated with higher levels of urban-rural integration.We apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis(fsQCA)to cross-sectional data from 31 provincial-level regions in 2022(excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan). The configurational results highlight multiple pathways through which new information infrastructure may support urban-rural integration, indicating that no single factor is sufficient on its own.These findings offer evidence for place-based infrastructure planning and provide policy-relevant implications for promoting urban-rural integration.
  • Does Budget Digitalization Improve Fiscal Expenditure Efficiency? A Quasi-natural Experiment Based on the Integrated Budget Management Reform
    LIN Gaoyi, CHEN Lesi, LIU Shiyuan
    2026, 0(5): 18-33.
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    Faced with the current contradiction between fiscal revenue and expenditure, can fiscal digitalization represented by the integrated budget management reform play a role in improving the efficiency of government budget expenditure? Using prefecture-level city data from 2015 to 2022, this paper explores the impact of budget digitalization on fiscal expenditure efficiency based on the quasi-natural experiment of the integrated budget management reform.The results show that:The integrated budget management reform can significantly increase fiscal expenditure efficiency by 2.89%.Mechanism tests reveal that the“vertical centralization”and“horizontal integration”characteristics of the reform help alleviate information asymmetry between superior and subordinate departments and integrate fiscal resources horizontally, thereby improving fiscal expenditure efficiency.Heterogeneity analysis finds that budget digitalization has more significant policy effects in regions with the“subcontracting construction”model, strong construction implementation capabilities, and backward fiscal expenditure efficiency before the policy implementation.Extended analysis shows that the integrated budget management reduces local governments' demand for borrowing and eases fiscal pressure, but has no significant impact on budgetary tax and non-tax revenues.This study provides policy implications for promoting fiscal budget reform and supporting the construction of budget digitalization.
  • Informal Institutions, Digitalization, and the Construction of a Unified National Market: A Study on the Role Mechanism of Social Networks
    YU Yuxin, LIU Weihao
    2026, 0(5): 34-50.
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    We develop a partial equilibrium model that incorporates social network externalities, information attenuation effects, and institutional coordination costs to examine how informal institutions, specifically“strong-tie”networks, along with digitalization, shape the construction of a unified national market.Using panel data from 30 Chinese provinces between 2010 and 2023, we find that strong-tie networks hinder market integration by increasing the elasticity of institutional coordination costs and undermining the effectiveness of formal institutional arrangements.These effects operate through enhanced information homogeneity and network closure.In contrast, digitalization disrupts the path dependence on strong-tie networks, serving as a lever for institutional efficiency by reducing transaction costs and facilitating cross-regional factor mobility.Furthermore, regionally integrated policies mitigate the constraining role of informal institutions on market integration, thereby promoting a transition from a relationship-based to an institution-based governance model.Theoretically, this study contributes an integrated analytical framework that embeds informal institutions, digital technology, and regional policy interventions.From a social network perspective, it systematically uncovers the micro-level mechanisms through which informal institutions impede the construction of a unified national market and identifies dual pathways to mitigate such impediments.
  • The Impact of Residents' Digital Literacy on Household Debt: An Empirical Analysis
    LI Jiandong
    2026, 0(5): 51-67.
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    This paper finds that digital literacy affects the household debt of residents through three channels: educational consumption expenditure, entrepreneurial aspiration, and job satisfaction.Higher digital literacy will increase educational consumption within the family, and it is accompanied by an enhancement of entrepreneurial aspiration, thus generating capital demands and increasing the likelihood of households incurring debt other than housing loans.Higher digital literacy can also bring about greater job satisfaction.However, higher job satisfaction, on the contrary, reduces the likelihood of household debt. By using‘the frequency of browsing current political information online’as an instrumental variable, this paper verifies the exogeneity of the impact of digital literacy on household debt of residents.The results of this paper provide an empirical basis for understanding the relationship between residents' digital literacy and household debt.
  • Research on the Peer Effect of Corporate Share Repurchases from the Perspective of Operational Network Similarity
    LAN Faqin, LI Guodong, HU Xiaomin
    2026, 0(5): 68-83.
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    Share repurchase is a powerful tool to maintain corporate investment value and boost investor confidence, and has gradually become one of the important means of capital operation for listed companies.In recent years, China's share repurchase market shows obvious similarity, synchronization and clustering characteristics.Focal enterprises will pay attention to and follow the share repurchase behaviors of the same group of enterprises out of the rational motive of seeking profit and avoiding harm as well as the proxy pressure.This paper takes the share repurchase of enterprises as a major financial strategic decision as an entry point, selects the financial data of A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2022, and deeply explores the existence of the cohort effect of share repurchase of enterprises and its internal mechanism from the perspective of similarity of operational network.We find that there is a significant share repurchase cohort effect among firms under similar operational networks, and this finding remains significant after replacing the cohort factor, considering the endogeneity due to the reflection problem, and other robustness tests.Mechanism analysis shows that focal firms maintain similar and synchronized strategic interactions with their cohort firms due to information learning, pressure competition and ability concealment mechanism, which triggers the cohort effect of share repurchases by focal firms. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the cohort effect is more pronounced for private focal firms, focal firms with higher institutional shareholdings, and focal firms with severely undervalued share prices.The findings of this paper enrich the research on the motivation of share repurchase from the perspective of the cohort effect, provide a brand new entry perspective for understanding the wave of share repurchase in China's capital market in recent years, and enhance the empirical evidence and value references for the government and organizational groups to enhance the effectiveness of regulation and the strategic interaction and cooperation of the cohort firms.
  • How Do Equity Incentives Influence the Data Assetization of Companies?
    CAO Xin, YI Zhigao
    2026, 0(5): 84-98.
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    We select A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2024 as the research sample, Adopting a text analysis method, we construct a dictionary using the text2vec-base-chinese model capable of identifying word polysemy to empirically investigate the impact of equity incentives on corporate data assetization.And we find that equity incentives contribute to enhancing the level of data assetization.Mechanism tests reveal that equity incentives can promote corporate data assetization by curbing managerial myopia, attracting talents, and fostering technological innovation.The results of the heterogeneity analysis show that the positive impact of equity incentives on enterprise data assetization is more pronounced when CEOs have higher education backgrounds, are younger, and have no financial background.However, when the CEO possesses a financial background, the promotional effect of equity incentives on corporate data assetization is not significant.Therefore, in designing equity incentive schemes, it is recommended to link the long-term interests of management with the implementation effectiveness of corporate data assetization businesses, set flexible and diversified performance appraisal indicators, and fully evaluate and supervise equity incentive tools, so as to promote the sustainable development of corporate data assetization.
  • Research on the Optimization of Government Budget System Based on Effective Fiscal Rules
    MA Caichen, ZHU Wenying, BAI Bo
    2026, 0(5): 99-111.
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    Effective fiscal rules require the robust support of a sound budgetary system.The organic integration of fiscal rules and the budget system is mainly reflected in procedural controls within budget laws, aggregate budget constraints during the budget preparation process, the incorporation of a medium-term perspective in budget management, and the application of data from government financial reports. Looking forward to the“15th Five-Year Plan”period, proactive fiscal policies will be more effective and efficient.To enhance fiscal sustainability, it is necessary, at the institutional level, to improve the system of binding fiscal indicators, strengthen the legal guarantees within the budget framework for implementing these constraints, and reinforce overall fiscal discipline through the optimization of budget preparation procedures.At the technical level, it is essential to effectively improve the predictive level and binding force of medium-term fiscal planning, continuously improve the measurement standards and application mechanisms of comprehensive government financial reports, and then conduct scientific measurement, early warning, and correction of fiscal risks.
  • Which Employee Groups Should Be Given Priority to Purchase IPO Shares?Evidence from the STAR and ChiNext Market
    LI Yanru, LI Yige, LU Jun
    2026, 0(5): 112-127.
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    In 2019, the Shanghai Stock Exchange's Science and Technology Innovation Board(STAR Market)innovatively allowed internal employees of issuing firms to participate in IPO strategic placement and subscribe to new shares.This institutional arrangement has been continuously promoted with the reform of the registration system, but there is little literature examining it.Based on this, this paper takes companies listed under the registration system on the STAR Market and ChiNext from 2019 to 2023 as research samples to explore the incentive effects of different groups participating in strategic placement. The study reveals:The senior management gets relatively more opportunities to subscribe to new shares.Compared with the management subscription, core employee subscription significantly improves firms' post-IPO operating performance.This effect is more pronounced in firms with large internal salary gaps. A closer examination of functional departments reveals varying impacts of employee participation in strategic share placement and subscription.Among core employees in Production, Research and Development(R&D), Finance, and Sales, production staff demonstrate the most significant positive effect on improving operating performance.Further analysis reveals that core employee subscription enhances the firm's operating performance by increasing productivity and playing a supervisory role, curbing excessive perk consumption by management.In contrast, management subscriptions may lead to the second-type agency problems.These findings provide a reference for optimizing strategic placements and refining subscription rules under the registration-based IPO system.
  • Too Much Is as Bad as Too Little: Performance Goal Difficulty and Corporate Innovation
    MA Fuqi, DOU Huan
    2026, 0(5): 128-142.
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    This paper selects China's A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2021 as the research sample to empirically examine the impact of performance target difficulty on corporate innovation and its underlying mechanisms.The findings reveal a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between performance target difficulty and the level of corporate innovation.This indicates that a moderate level of performance target difficulty generates an optimal incentive effect, effectively stimulating corporate innovation vitality. Conversely, excessively low or high target difficulty suppresses corporate innovation initiative, producing counterproductive outcomes.Mechanism test results suggest that performance target difficulty primarily influences corporate innovation through two channels: managerial myopia and risk preference. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that this inverted U-shaped relationship is more pronounced in high-tech firms and samples with stronger executive compensation stickiness.This study deepens the theoretical understanding of how performance target difficulty affects corporate innovation and provides empirical insights for leveraging the positive incentive effects of performance target setting, thereby contributing to the further implementation of China's innovation-driven strategy.
  • Does the Industrial-financial Cooperation Pilot Program Improve Corporate Labor Investment Efficiency?
    GUO Jie, HU Sheng
    2026, 0(5): 143-160.
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    Promoting industry-finance cooperation is a key initiative to enhance financial support for the real economy, and improved access to financial resources can provide new impetus for firms to optimize resource allocation.Using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2023, this paper exploits the staggered establishment of national industry-finance cooperation pilot zones as a quasi-natural experiment to examine how this policy affects labor investment efficiency at the firm level.We find that the pilot policy significantly improves labor investment efficiency, and this finding remains robust across a battery of sensitivity tests.Our mechanism analysis reveals that the policy operates through two channels: empowering firms at the micro level and optimizing industrial structure at the regional level.We further show that the positive effect holds for both over-investing and under-investing firms, while exhibiting heterogeneity across ownership types, factor intensity, and firm life-cycle stages.Additional analysis indicates that the observed improvement in labor investment efficiency is not simply achieved through cost compression or workforce downsizing.We contribute to the literature on the determinants of labor investment efficiency and offer empirical evidence and policy implications for how supply-side structural reform in the financial sector can more effectively serve the real economy.