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This paper explores the influence mechanism of the marketization process and financial technology on corporate investment preference using panel data from 2013 to 2019 for China's A-share listed companies. The study finds that both the marketization process and FinTech can facilitate increased R&D innovation and foreign equity investment by companies but discourage investment in their fixed assets, and FinTech has a "U-shaped effect" on corporate R&D and innovation. At the same time, the marketization process and FinTech show different threshold effects on corporate investment preferences with government subsidies as the threshold variable. It is found that market-based processes in small-scale enterprises are better able to promote investment in innovative R&D by companies—the marketization process for large enterprises has a greater impact on outward equity investment in the heterogeneity analysis. From the perspective of the nature of property rights, it is found that the marketization process and FinTech have a greater impact on non-state enterprises. As a result, in an era of rapid FinTech development, this paper enriches the relevant research on the impact of the marketization process on corporate investment preferences, which has important practical significance for policy formulation and corporate future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant corridor under the "Belt and Road Initiative" is announced by the government of China for numerous transport and energy projects. China focuses greatly on the sustainability of these projects, in accordance with Green Investment Principles. For this, environmental, social, governance, and technological considerations are taken into account. This paper offers a novel assessment of the impact of green sustainability under BRI and the current emission scenario in Pakistan. The question that needs to be addressed here is whether the projects under Belt and Road Initiative are as environment friendly as they claim. In the first phase of this study, we review theories establishing evidence based on existing literature to determine the influence of Belt and Road on economic development. In the next phase, we use Environment Kuznets Curve and apply estimates from Johansson's Cointegration Test to quantify the present environmental scenario of Pakistan and probable environmental risk portrayed by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This paper helps in determining the relationship between carbon emission and three major variables including energy consumption, economic growth, and foreign direct investment (FDI). Cointegration analysis is applied on time series data comprising of a 40 years' period from 1979 to 2019. The paper finds that (i) the belt and road corridors could substantially improve trade, foreign investment, and living conditions for citizens in participating countries; (ii) moreover, this study confirms the presence of one cointegrated equation suggesting the presence of a long term relationship between the CO2 and independent variables and a short run association running from EnC to CO2. The study also proposes a Green BRI Model which formulates a body that devises environmental performance standards, reviews procedures, and ensures that they get implemented on all CPEC projects. The Belt and Road Initiative increases emissions among participating countries. China and corridor economies need to adopt strict policy reforms that increase transparency, expand trade, improve debt sustainability, and mitigate environmental, social, and corruption risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the cross-sectional data of 40 large-scale international airports in China in 2019, this paper introduced natural and social factors into the calculation of airport operating efficiency and constructed a BCC-SFA-BCC-Tobit 4-stage analysis framework. Combining with the connotation of the "green, smart, humane, and safe" airport high-quality development, the paper applied the Tobit model to quantitatively analyze the influencing factors of the operating efficiency of airports, and the research shows that (1) the overall operating efficiency of the study airports is 0.734; in terms of the region, the operating efficiency of airports located in southwest and northwest regions is greatly affected by natural factors, while the operating efficiency of airports located in North China is mostly affected by social factors. (2) Under the perspective of human-earth relationship, the impact of natural factors on the operating efficiency of airports is greater than that of social factors, wherein PM2.5 and relative humidity have negative impact, while the actual foreign capital utilization of the city and domestic and foreign tourists have positive impact. (3) The regression results of the Tobit model indicate that green, smart, and safe indicators can promote the high-quality development of airports, while the humane indicator restrains the high-quality development of airports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a large developing country, China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) and its relationship to trade have always been subjects of extensive scrutiny in academic circles. With the continuous advancement of the "Belt and Road" initiative (BRI), the pace of overseas expansion by Chinese firms has accelerated. This paper theoretically constructs a firm heterogeneity model of China's OFDI and bilateral trade, and conducts research based on panel data of China's OFDI in countries along the BRI from 2003 to 2019. The results show that China's OFDI can substantially enhance the potential for bilateral trade, and this conclusion remains robust after overcoming endogeneity and economic fluctuations. In a heterogeneity test, China's OFDI in countries along the "Land Silk Road" is shown to have a greater effect on trade potential than in countries along the "Maritime Silk Road." In the controlled test, China's OFDI to BRI countries has a greater role in upgrading trade potential than investment in other trading powerhouses. China's OFDI can promote the economic development of host countries along the BRI by strengthening the potential for bilateral trade. The results of this study are not only conducive to the "going global" of Chinese enterprises but also of practical significance for host countries to achieve high-quality economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growth of Chinese economy and the improvement of its international status, Chinese enterprises foreign direct investment has ushered in new development opportunities. Although scale foreign investment continues to expand and has broad development prospects, it also faces huge risks that domestic investment has never had. China and Central Asia are highly complementary economically. Strengthening direct investment in the Central Asian countries can effectually drive China's economic development. Based on the quantitative evaluation and analysis from the perspective of big data, this paper uses a variety of methods to evaluate and explore the risks of China's direct investment in Central Asian countries, and gives some policy suggestions. The research shows that the motivation of Chinese foreign investment cooperation is different from the marginal industry transfer in the traditional international investment theory. The problem of country risks in Central Asia is prominent. Chinese government must rely on the build of the Belt and Road to strengthen intergovernmental communication and exchanges, and establish a good cooperation mechanism to deal with the increasingly prominent problem of country risks. Further we will improve trade facilitation and expand the trade openness of Central Asian countries to China. To avoid risks, Chinese companies should invest under the guidance of the government and establish a complete investment chain for large projects. At the same time, we also need to seize the opportunity of the development of digital economy, and gradually establish a scientific and efficient investment model to effectively avoid the risk of direct investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theoretically analyzes the direct impact of environmental regulation on carbon emissions and its indirect effects on carbon emissions through foreign direct investment (FDI), energy consumption, industrial structure, and technological innovation. Then, this paper constructs a spatial lag model to empirically test the dual effects of environmental regulation on carbon emissions based on the provincial panel data of 2003–2017 in China. The results show that the average Moran's I value of carbon emissions during 2003–2017 is 0.2506, passing the significance test at 1% level, and carbon emissions have spatial correlation characteristics. The direct impact of environmental regulation on carbon emissions is significant and positive. Environmental regulation could indirectly influence carbon emissions by influencing FDI, energy consumption, and technological innovation, and meanwhile, FDI, energy consumption, and technological innovation help to reduce carbon emissions under the constraint of environmental regulation, specifically. However, the impact of environmental regulation on carbon emissions through industrial structure is not significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the decline of China's economic growth rate and the uproar of antiglobalization, the textile industry, one of the business cards of China's globalization, is facing a huge impact. When the economic model is undergoing transformation, it is more important to prevent enterprises from falling into financial distress. So, the financial risk early warning is one of the important means to prevent enterprises from falling into financial distress. Aiming at the risk analysis of the textile industry's foreign investment, this paper proposes an analysis method based on deep learning. This method combines residual network (ResNet) and long short-term memory (LSTM) risk prediction model. This method first establishes a risk indicator system for the textile industry and then uses ResNet to complete deep feature extraction, which are further used for LSTM training and testing. The performance of the proposed method is tested based on part of the measured data, and the results show the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that pathwise outward foreign direct investment can promote the long-term economic growth of developed economies and some developing countries with sufficient technology, human capital, and financial efficiency. However, the contribution of inverse outward foreign direct investment from developing countries, especially China, on the economic growth of developed economies has not yet been demonstrated. Based on the endogenous growth theory, this article uses panel data of China's inverse outward foreign direct investment and economic growth indicators of 26 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries from 2003 to 2017 to empirically study the contribution of China's inverse outward foreign direct investment to the economic growth of developed economies and its mechanism, and furthermore to study the mediation effect of research and development capital and technological advances in the contribution. The empirical results show that China's inverse outward foreign direct investment has a significant contribution to the economic growth of developed host countries, with a contribution rate of 3.01%. The contribution rate of the mediating effect is 24.3% when only considering technological advances and 54.34% when considering the multiple mediators of research and development capital and technological advances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research mainly analyzes the influence of foreign investment in the era of big data on China's economic growth, in the process of analyzing the impact of foreign investment on the national economy, based on the analysis of the current situation of foreign investment and error-correction model, etc., through the correlation coefficient matrix to determine the variables data needed to fit the model; after fitting the model, the residual model is extracted, and the stationarity of the residual sequence is tested. On the basis of the above, this paper analyzes the difference of foreign direct investment in different regions, combined with the coastal areas and central region model and actual situation analysis, analyzes the two foreign direct investment (FDI) development speeds, base development speed, and average development speed, at the same time for the two regions in 2017; the specific direction of FDI do a detailed analysis. Finally, a series of conclusions are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of FDI (foreign direct investment) on the innovation of Chinese local enterprises have always been the focus of attention, but few studies have explored the impacts of foreign shareholding on enterprise innovation behaviors through the micro level. Based on the survey data regarding the manufacturing sector of China enterprises conducted by the World Bank in 2012, this paper conducts an empirical study on the relationship between foreign shareholding and enterprise innovation behaviors. The research findings include two aspects; that is, (1) foreign shareholding has significantly positive impacts on enterprise innovation behaviors; (2) technology introduction plays a complete mediating effect in foreign shareholding and enterprise innovation behaviors. On the basis of considering sample selective bias and endogenous problems, the propensity score matching (PSM) method is further applied to evaluate the impacts of foreign shareholding on enterprise innovation behaviors. After putting the endogenous problems and sample selective bias under control, the above conclusions are still robust. Thus, under the current complicated international situation, enterprises should be encouraged to attract foreign investment under moderate control, with a view to accelerating the promotion of enterprise innovation activities through the technology introduction brought about by foreign shareholding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an index to measure the cultural differences between countries, culture distance (CD) is a widely used construct in international business and postulated to be symmetric in previous studies. However, CD symmetry across different countries is been demonstrated to result in the national CD paradox. A new asymmetry index utility cultural distance (UCD) is proposed to replace the previous one in this study. The cultural utility function is applied to calculate the UCD for a particular country, where the cultural bias could cause the asymmetric change of cultural score. The index is verified to be a significant variable in the regression analysis of China's outward foreign directing investment to 17 other countries in 15 years. The UCD demonstrated in this paper corrects the fallacious symmetry assumption on cultural distance and can maintain a consistent and effective conclusion on cultural differences in international business studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the panel data of 30 provinces (except Tibet) in China from 2012 to 2019, this paper uses the ML index method and spatial econometric model to evaluate the impact and spillover effect of innovation investment on environmental total factor productivity. The study found the following conclusions. (1) Environmental total factor productivity showed a fluctuating upward trend as a whole, and the driving force of environmental total factor productivity growth mainly came from technological progress. (2) There is global spatial correlation and positive spatial spillover effect in regional environmental total factor productivity. There is a certain spatial correlation in provincial environmental total factor productivity, and the improvement of environmental total factor productivity in this region will promote the improvement of environmental total factor productivity in surrounding areas. (3) Innovation investment, economic development, and foreign investment level play a significant role in promoting the improvement of environmental total factor productivity, and energy structure and human capital level have a negative impact on the improvement of environmental total factor productivity. (4) Innovation investment, economic development, human capital, and foreign investment have positive spillover effects on the improvement of environmental total factor productivity in the surrounding areas, while the energy structure shows negative spillover effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, eco-efficiency is one of the most widely used comprehensive indicators in many fields and sectors. Understanding eco-efficiency is of great significance to implement sustainable socioeconomic development for decision makers. To assess the comprehensive performance of industrial investment, the eco-efficiency of industrial investment (EEII) is constructed under the comprehensive perspective of economic benefits, energy consumption, and environmental impact in this paper. Then, a new superefficient undesirable-output slack-based measure DEA (SeUo-SBM-DEA) model is proposed and applied to assess the EEII of 30 provinces in China from 2015 to 2017, and its influencing factors are analyzed using the Tobit regression. The empirical results show the following: (1) the eco-efficiency of China's industrial investment is generally low (0.613), and there exists a significant regional disparity; namely, the average value of EEII was the highest in the eastern regions (0.838), followed by the central regions (0.6) and western regions (0.397). (2) R&D expenditure, economic development level, and foreign direct investment all had a significant positive effect on the eco-efficiency of industrial investment, while investment in treatment of industrial pollution sources and total education funds all had a significant negative effect. Finally, this paper puts forward some suggestions to promote sustainable development of industrial investment based on our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the scale of China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) continues to expand, more and more scholars have begun to discuss the influence of OFDI on enterprise technological innovation. In order to be able to deeply explore the impact of enterprises' OFDI activities on enterprise technological innovation, this paper combines relevant enterprise data from 2015 to 2017 and uses the new method to test the "technological innovation effect" produced by the OFDI of Chinese enterprises. Finally, this paper concluded that the development of OFDI activities of enterprises can promote the improvement of the level of technological innovation of enterprises, and this promotion has a lag effect. R&D-type OFDI activities play a vital role in promoting the ability of technological innovation of enterprises. Compared with low-income host countries, investment in high-income host countries has a greater effect on promoting the ability of technological innovation of enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting green urban development has become a common consensus to address environmental pollution and ecological damage, but we know little about the measurement and drivers of urban green innovation efficiency (GIE). In this article, firstly, we established a framework for assessing urban green innovation efficiency through multidimensional data, then used the spatial econometric model to reveal the spatiotemporal evolutionary characteristics of urban GIE, and, finally, analyzed the influencing factors and spatial spillover effects of urban GIE. The results show the following: (1) The overall urban GIE in China was low and had significant spatial agglomeration, mainly concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions with spatial locking characteristics, while the GIE of cities in undeveloped regions does not change much. (3) There was much room for improvement in the input-output system of green innovation, considering that the sources of inefficiency in most cities were insufficient investment in scientific and technological innovation personnel and innovation environment, excessive environmental pollution, and limited technological output. (4) Foreign direct investment, financial development, and manufacturing industry agglomeration had positive effects on urban GIE. These research findings and policy implications are of certain reference value for other emerging developing countries to implement urban governance and green development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the implementation of the "Going Out" policy and the "Belt and Road" initiative, Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in the countries along the "Belt and Road" increased substantially in the past decade. This paper analyzes the impact of institutional distance on Chinese OFDI and whether Chinese OFDI exhibits institutional risk preferences, using data on Chinese OFDI in 41 countries along the "Belt and Road" for the period from 2003 to 2018. We find that political institutional distance and economic institutional distance are both positively related to China's OFDI scale, while cultural distance has a negative impact on the investment scale. We also find that institutional distance has an asymmetric effect on China's OFDI. In particular, the worse the host country's political environment, the larger the Chinese OFDI, indicating that Chinese OFDI exhibits the political institutional risk preference. On the other hand, Chinese multinational enterprises are more willing to invest in host countries with high economic freedom. Culture institution environment of the host country has a positive but insignificant impact on the Chinese OFDI scale, indicating that Chinese OFDI shows the characteristics of cultural distance proximity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental technology innovation is a crucial measure of the quality of China's economic development and sustainable environmental protection. Based on the 2009–2017 provincial panel data from China, this article used the modified projection pursuit model to measure the environmental technology innovation capabilities of various regions. Moreover, this article empirically investigates the threshold effect of outward foreign direct investment on China's environmental technology innovation under different intellectual property protection levels. The results are as follows. First, the environmental technology innovation capabilities of China's regions vary significantly, showing an "east-middle-west" gradient decline trend similar to levels of economic development. Second, outward foreign direct investment has a significant reverse environmental technology innovation effect, but this effect has complex nonlinear characteristics. Third, in the process of outward foreign direct investment affecting environmental technology innovation, intellectual property protection has a significant double threshold effect. As the level of intellectual property protection continues to cross the threshold value, the effect direction of outward foreign direct investment on environmental technology innovation undergoes a sudden change from inhibition to promotion. However, when intellectual property protection is too high, the promotion effect is relatively limited. This paper provides some reference points and insights that should aid in establishing a scientific intellectual property protection system and raising the level of environmental technology innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the driving mechanisms behind outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on regional green total factor innovation efficiency (GTFIE), focusing specifically on the external fiscal factor perspective. We measured the GTFIE using the super slacks-based model and established a threshold model using financial agglomeration and fiscal decentralization as moderating variables for empirical analysis. The findings indicate that the level of GTFIE in China is relatively low, with an average value of only 0.588 in the sample provinces. It is worth noting that there is a serious imbalance in China's regional green innovation development. The eastern region has an average GTFIE of 0.886 and is home to nine of the top ten GTFIE provinces. Moreover, regional financial factors exert a substantial moderating impact on the spillover of OFDI. OFDI exhibits a significant dual threshold effect on GTFIE under external fiscal moderation. Specifically, with an increase in the degree of financial agglomeration, the relationship between OFDI and GTFIE changes from being insignificant to a significant positive correlation, with a gradient enhancement. Meanwhile, the relationship between them exhibits an "inverted U-shaped" nonlinear dynamic pattern under fiscal decentralization moderation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese domestic firms engage actively in the cross-border merger and acquisition (CBMA) markets, which are crucial in China's foreign investment economics. Acquisition premium has attracted stakeholders' attention to determine whether the CBMA decision is optimal. This study employs a novel model to assess decision-making efficiency by overbidding based on a profit maximization assumption. Based on the Chinese CBMA transaction data from 2009 to 2019 of Chinese acquiring firms, the descriptive analysis indicates the widespread overbidding phenomenon in Chinese CBMAs. Moreover, empirical findings reveal that SOEs (vs. non-SOEs) experience less overbidding among acquiring firms. This study also shows that firms from the high-tech industry tend to be less overbidding (more efficient) in the CBMAs' setting. The findings may have policy implications for China's outward investment efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following decades of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation industry, most car companies will stop producing petrol cars and promote the development of new energy vehicles in the near future, even in China. This study is based on energy vehicle exports using China's 31 provinces' panel data from 2010 to 2020. Considering that China mainly engages in processing trade, this study analyzes the domestic energy vehicle's export sophistication after deleting intermediate goods, measuring the relationship between export sophistication and industrial upgrading with static and dynamic panel models. Then, heterogeneity tests were deployed to examine the domestic export sophistication of three major economic belts partition. The results revealed that improving export sophistication is conducive to realizing China's industrial upgrading. China's new energy vehicles industry is positively affected by export sophistication, R&D, foreign direct investment, average GDP growth rate, market factors, and human resources over the long run. Regarding regional stratification, domestic export sophistication in the eastern and western regions has more significant effects on promoting industrial upgrading than in the central region. In particular, in western regions, every increase in export sophistication by one unit will bring a significant industrial upgrading effect. Given this, China's new energy vehicles should increase export sophistication to help the country's industrial upgrading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study selected relevant data of China from 2006 to 2019 and adopted a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model to conduct an empirical analysis on the dynamic mechanism of a series of problems including "FDI (foreign direct investment), economic scale, and environmental pollution," "FDI, industrial structure, and environmental pollution," and "FDI, production technology, and environmental pollution." Our research results showed that there are differences in the optimal lag order under different conditions, such as under the action mechanism of economic scale and industrial structure, and the optimal lag order was 1, while under the action mechanism of production technology, its value was 2. FDI had a long-term effect on the environment; under the dual-action mechanism of economic scale and industrial structure, the environmental effect of FDI reached the maximum within 2 periods, the effect lasted a relatively long time, and the response of environmental pollution to the technological level reached the maximum between the fourth period and the sixth period. In terms of the overall situation in China, the FDI did not produce an obvious effect on environmental pollution; on the contrary, it exhibited a trend of environmental improvement, which varied with the action mechanism and the region; and also, the improvement of technological level can also significantly improve the quality of environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Dunning's eclectic theory, the location advantages play a key role in international investment mode choice, in which the country relations are important determinants. In some previous studies, the country relations and another bilateral factor, the country distance, are often confused, which can result in the inconsistency of conclusions. And excepting political factors, the economic dependence and other relations are insufficiently considered in the literature. This article makes a distinction between relation and distance, and puts forward a simplified analytical framework, the indicator system, and some quantitative methods for country relations. The indicators, including political, economic, and social factors, can better satisfy the horizontal analysis of the outbound investment. The economic and social indicators are determined by the magnitude of interaction as well as the share in the home country, and hence, the evaluation results can reflect the differences between the two countries. Finally, by evaluating the relations of other BRICS countries with China, the rationality is illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is widely recognized that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows have a dominant effect on economic growth of host countries, the determinants of FDI inflows are still unclear. Especially, about the effect of exchange rate on FDI inflow, the results reached by scholars vary across countries or regions. It is of great practical and theoretical significance to explore the influencing effects of exchange rate on FDI inflow and identify the mechanisms that underlie them in close association with regional economic characters so as to help local government implement targeted government policies to achieve sustainable FDI inflow and sustainable economic growth. For this purpose, the influencing effects and the influencing mechanisms of the exchange rate on FDI inflows are investigated for Zhejiang province, China, over 1985–2019 by employing the co-integration tests, vector error correction models, Granger causality tests, and impulse response tests. Empirical results indicate that there are long-term stable and unidirectional causal relationship between the exchange rate and FDI inflow. Continuous appreciation of RMB against USD discourages FDI inflow. The mechanism which underlies the long-term relationship is the wealth effect, rather than the cost effect or the demand effect. By contrast, in the short run, neither the exchange rate nor the three influencing mechanism has a significant impact on FDI inflow. These results suggest policy recommendations for improving FDI by accumulating human capital and improving infrastructure. These findings are also applicable for other countries or regions with similar economic characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the theoretical mechanism analysis of FDI, regional innovation, and green economic efficiency, this article uses China's provincial panel data to calculate the provincial green economic efficiency level based on the three-stage DEA method and uses the system GMM model, intermediary effect model, and threshold model to empirically test the specific effects and transmission paths of FDI on the efficiency of the green economy. Research shows that FDI is one of the important factors that promote the improvement of green economic efficiency. Subregional tests have found that FDI has a significant regional heterogeneity in promoting the efficiency of the green economy. The mediation effect test found that the mediation effect of regional innovation is significant, and FDI can significantly promote the growth of green economic efficiency through regional innovation. The threshold effect analysis found that there are significant and effective double thresholds for regional economic levels, and the impact of FDI on green economic efficiency is heterogeneous within different threshold intervals. The research conclusions provide new inspiration for China to allocate FDI more rationally and efficiently under the new development pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a new model of urban development, it is important to scientifically analyze the impact of smart cities on the quality of foreign direct investment (FDI). This article constructs a difference in differences' model to test the impact of foreign direct investment quality in smart city construction based on panel data of 226 prefecture-level cities from 2006–2017. Study shows the following. (1) The construction of smart cities has significantly improved the quality of FDI utilized in pilot cities. (2) Heterogeneity analysis shows that smart city construction significantly contributes to the quality of FDI in the western city subsample and a subsample of cities with low natural resource dependence. After a series of robustness tests and placebo tests, the above conclusions still hold. The results of the study suggest that China should further promote the construction of smart cities to optimize the quality of foreign direct investment and promote high-quality economic growth. The findings of the study also provide theoretical and practical references for the construction of smart cities in China and other countries around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]