Establishing a promotion assessment system for local officials that aligns with the main theme of economic and social development is of great significance for improving the incentive and restraint mechanisms for promoting high-quality development.This is an effective measure to help high-quality regional development through institutions, and also an important reform task set out at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Party of China.Therefore, we first quantitatively measures the level of high-quality regional development using a hierarchical dynamic factor model, and then introduces it into the study of official promotion, deeply explaining the objective change rules of the official promotion assessment system.We find that remarkable achievements have been made in high-quality economic development in recent years, showing a trend of“steady progress”.We also find that high-quality development has become the core indicator in the promotion evaluation for officials at this stage.Besides, the“GDP championship”type of official promotion system has disappeared, replaced by high-quality development goals.At the same time, healthy competition aimed at high-quality development does not lead to the phenomenon of“beggar-thy-neighbor”.Although the“high-quality development competition”is a healthy competition, it may lead to some contradictions.According to these findings, governments at all levels should rationally pursue high-quality development goals, anchor the continuous promotion of high-quality economic development, and comprehensively assist in the construction of a modern socialist powerful country.

As a critical fiscal policy instrument, local government special bonds play a vital role in strengthening infrastructure, shoring up weak links, benefiting the people, and expanding investment. Under the background of China's implementation of a comprehensive debt resolution package for local government liabilities, large-scale swaps of implicit liabilities, and the planning of a new round of fiscal and taxation system reforms, further deepening the reform of the special bond system holds significant implications for mitigating local debt risks, enhancing the efficiency of special bond fund utilization, and promoting sustainable development of Chinese-style modernization.This paper systematically reviews the evolution of China's local government special bond system across three phases: the pilot phase in 2009, the formal issuance stage in 2015, and the standardization phase post-2017. It analyzes the problems existing in the current special bond system from the perspectives of bond issuance velocity, maturity structures, investor composition, project repayment mechanisms, issuance documentation, and project management practices.Furthermore, it dissects the root causes of these issues through lenses of institutional design, exceptional period, interdepartmental coordination, and intermediary agency. Building on this analysis, the paper proposes policy recommendations, including modifying the basic system of special bonds to better align with China's socio-economic realities, substantially scaling down special bond issuance while expanding general bond issuance, and establishing a new debt risk control mechanism to maintain liability-to-GDP and debt-to-revenue ratios within a reasonable range.

The State Council Document No.20 〔2022〕articulates the proposition of“adjusting the inter-governmental revenue division among provincial and sub-provincial governments in a timely and steady manner”.Currently, the division of sub-provincial tax revenues presents a fundamental structure characterized by“two major models with province-specific policies”.The first model adopts the tax category-based sharing approach, while the second encompasses total tax revenue sharing, incremental tax revenue sharing, and total (incremental) general public budget revenue sharing.The primary operational distinction between the two models lies in the fact that the first model exhibits a significantly higher degree of provincial fiscal centralization compared to the second.Such a discrepancy arises from the interplay of multiple factors, among which the balance of economic and fiscal development within provincial jurisdictions and differences in resource endowments stand out as prominent determinants influencing provinces' adoption of distinct sharing models(specifically reflected in the varying degrees of provincial fiscal concentration). This paper conducts an average-level test utilizing provincial panel data, and the empirical findings indicate that the greater the disparity in fiscal and economic development within a jurisdiction, the higher the degree of provincial fiscal concentration; furthermore, the more favorable a province's resource endowments and the larger the proportion of resource tax in local tax revenues, the higher the provincial fiscal concentration.In light of the aforementioned differentiated sharing models and their key influencing factors, it is imperative to take the State Council Document No.20〔2022〕as the guiding principle, integrate the differentiated economic foundations, resource endowments, and fiscal revenue and expenditure situations of each province, and construct a systematic reform framework from four dimensions: regional equilibrium, green transformation, matching of powers and responsibilities, and governance effectiveness. This will facilitate the formation of a modern sub-provincial tax revenue sharing mechanism characterized by“classified implementation, dynamic adjustment, and incentive compatibility”.

In the context of deep integration between financial markets and the real economy, building effective economic risk monitoring and early warning indicators is of great practical significance for maintaining financial market stability and promoting high-quality economic development.This article first uses data containing financial text emotions to construct China's Financial Condition Index(FCI) based on a time-varying parameter multi-layer factor augmented vector autoregression(TVP-MFAVAR) model, and then incorporates it into the research framework of Economic Growth at Risk(GaR) to measure China's GaR.Finally, a Markov regime transition skewed normal model containing FCI is constructed to identify its warning information for economic risks.Research has found that: Firstly, FCI containing financial textual emotions can more timely and accurately reflect the time-varying characteristics of financial markets, and has stronger foresight and stability compared to traditional FCI.Secondly, based on the perspective of financial markets, GaR can effectively capture the dynamic evolution characteristics of economic risks under the impact of major events.Especially under the impact of extreme events, the influence of financial markets on economic risks has significantly increased.Thirdly, the probability distribution of China's economic growth presents two states: high-risk and low-risk, with significant“inertia”characteristics and“ratchet”effects.As the risk state shifts from high to low, economic growth expectations increase, the fluctuation range narrows, and downward pressure decreases.Fourthly, FCI's early warning capability for economic risks has a state dependent characteristic, exhibiting stronger warning effects in high-risk areas.This study constructs a new paradigm for economic risk measurement and early warning based on the perspective of financial markets, providing a theoretical basis for preventing financial risks and maintaining macroeconomic stability.

With the development of the digital economy, commercial banks are actively engaging in the wave of digital transformation.This paper explores how digital transformation influences the non-interest income of commercial banks.It elaborates on the mechanisms through which digital transformation affects non-interest income.Based on data from 135 commercial banks from 2011 to 2021, the study examines the impact of digital transformation on non-interest income and analyzes the moderating roles of banking industry competition and net interest margin in this relationship.The results show that digital transformation significantly increases the level of non-interest income in commercial banks.Both banking competition and net interest margin serve as moderators: the positive effect of digital transformation on non-interest income is more pronounced in regions with higher banking competition, and the effect is also enhanced as the net interest margin declines.Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the impact of digital transformation on non-interest income is more significant for state-owned banks.Banks with lower capital adequacy ratios are more affected by digital transformation in terms of non-interest income, and the effect is particularly evident in fee and commission income.Therefore, banks should seize the opportunities brought by digital transformation and leverage digital technologies to promote diversified business development.

Using the“two modernizations”integration and standard implementation pilot of the Ministry of industry and information technology as the exogenous impact of enterprise digital transformation, we construct a difference in difference model to explores the impact of customer digital transformation on auditors' allocation in CPA firms, based on data of China's A-share manufacturing listed companies during 2010-2020.The results show that the probability of assigning auditors with IT background to customers is significantly increased after the digital transformation of customers, especially auditors from the headquarters and less busy.The effect is more pronounced in companies that undergo financial or management digital transformation, locate in regions with weaker digital environment, and in accounting firms with better quality management.Further research reveals that assign IT background auditors to digitally transformed enterprises can not only improve audit quality, but also increase disclosure of key audit matters and enhance client-auditor relationship.This study reveals digital audit risk response strategies of accounting firms from the perspective of human resource allocation, providing decision-making references for firms to address digital technology disruptions and cultivate digital audit talents.

Firms' financing constraints are influenced by the external environment.Whether government digital transformation can improve the local market environment and thereby alleviate firms' financing constraints is an issue worthy of attention.This paper uses the county-level e-government pilot program which launched at the end of 2011 as a quasi-natural experiment and employs the difference-in-differences(DID) method to examine the impact of local governmental digital transformation on enterprises' financing constraints.Our findings indicate that government digital transformation significantly alleviates firms' financing constraints.Mechanism analysis suggests that corruption reduction and regional financial development are key channels.Moreover, the mitigation effect is more pronounced for firms receiving industrial policy support.Further investigation reveals that government digital transformation facilitates corporate access to financing through multiple channels, such as commercial credit, and leads to an increase in the proportion of long-term loans.This study extends the literature on the microeconomic consequences of government digital transformation from the perspective of corporate financing constraints and provides valuable insights into the deepening of digital government construction and administrative system reform.

This paper examines the incentives to acquire and disclose unknown cost information for duopolies that produce heterogeneous products.We compare three different information disclosure regimes in a Cournot competition framework: full concealment regime, full disclosure regime, and strategic disclosure regime.In the case of continuous information acquisition, we find the equilibrium information acquisition and disclosure strategies under each of the three regimes.The results show that the ranking of incentive to acquire information for Cournot duopolies under the three regimes is: strategic disclosure regime≥full disclosure regime≥full concealment regime.Furthermore, when the cost of information acquisition is not very high, the preference of Cournot duopoly for information disclosure regimes is as follows: strategic disclosure regimefull disclosure regimefull concealment regime.Welfare analysis indicates that consumers prefer firms to acquire cost information but disfavor their sharing such information; furthermore, strategic disclosure may induce excessive investment in information acquisition when market demand is excessively high.

The purpose of this study is to conceptualise the decoupling phenomenon occurred in supply chain carbon reduction emission practices.Drawing upon middle-range theory and much of the work related to the issue, in particular, supply chain carbon reduction emission, supply chain decoupling, supply chain governance, this paper applies a “top-down” deductive approach to middle-range theorising and the paradigm of “context+mechanism=outcome” to develop a research framework of decoupling on carbon reduction emission in supply chains.The framework extends the application of middle-range theory to a specific phenomenon, i.e.decoupling in supply chain carbon reduction emission,addressing key issues including the identification of context-specific factors of decoupling, the mechanism underlying the phenomenon, and the knowledge advancement of supply chain carbon emission reduction as well.The research findings provide theoretical grounds for practitioners and policymakers to identify and resolve the issue in respect to the decoupling on carbon emission reduction in supply chains.