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This study investigates whether and how social security contributions affect corporate financing decisions. Treating the 2011 Social Insurance Law in China as a quasi-natural experiment, our difference-in-differences framework utilizes two-dimensional variations: initial social security contribution rates across firms (i.e., high vs. low) and year (i.e., before and after 2011). We find that more social security contributions cause firms to issue less debt in their capital structure, particularly firms with more severe labor market frictions, greater labor intensity, unhealthier financial status, tighter financial constraints, and those located in low-income areas with less developed financial systems and greater fiscal pressure. Mechanism tests show that firms’ operating leverage, bank credit default risk, and profitability volatility increase, while the supply of trade credit decreases, which is consistent with the financial distress hypothesis. The findings suggest that firms tend to choose conservative financing policies to mitigate the likelihood of financial distress caused by increasing social security contributions.

Badminton lunge requires rapid coordination between the knee and ankle joints and it is accompanied by fast contact between the shoe’s sole and the floor. Phase angle analysis is a protocol with high resolution and relating to the coordination, but how the shoe’s sole would affect the lunge performance was not clear in terms of coordination. Thereby, the aim of this study was to applied phase angle analysis to insight the lunge process, then to disclose the effect of badminton shoe’s sole on the lunge skill performance. Eleven elite badminton players performed five left-forward maximum lunge trials with wearing Rounded Heel Shoe (RHS), Flattened Heel Shoe (FHS), and Standard Heel Shoes (SHS). The motion capturing system was used to measure the knee and ankle kinematics information. The Phase Angle (PA), continuous relative phase (CRP) and variability of continuous relative phase (VCRP) between the knee and ankle joints were then calculated for both forward lunge phase and recovery phase in each of the three shoes. Current findings indicated that players wearing RHS had certain advantages on better movement coordination than other shoes, as indicated by better PA and CRP. The findings of this study would be helpful to understand the coordination of badminton lunges and explain the synergy between the lower extremity ankle and knee joint to minimize the possibility of injury in badminton. Furthermore, the coordination between the knee and ankle joints was greatly affected by the structure of the shoe heel design.

When exploring the logic why some economies grow faster than others, previous studies commonly assume that all economies follow a universal growth path. This paper explores the heterogeneity of growth regimes across economies and then investigates the decomposition bias of growth sources in traditional methods. Using a panel data of China's provinces, the empirical results show that a finite mixture model with three classes is best to describe the data, revealing that there are multiple growth regimes across provinces. Also, some provinces switch regimes over time while the others remain stable. Further, neglecting heterogeneous regimes overestimates the importance of factor endowment and underestimates the importance of sector productivity, while it does not greatly influence the importance of of factor market efficiency. In particular, the decomposition bias embodies in physical capital and energy input rather than labor. Our findings indicate that the existing literature may underestimate the contribution of sector productivity. Thus, it is critical to account for heterogeneous regimes when exploring the sources of economic growth.

This paper investigates whether China’s provincial economies follow the same growth path by adopting a finite mixture model in which provinces are sorted into groups according to the similarity in the conditional distribution of their growth rates. The method is flexible in that it accounts for (i) endogenous classifications other than given priori, (ii) heterogeneous marginal effects of determinants, (iii) the possibility of growth path transformation, and (iv) the roles of geographic location and institutions in the growth path. The results reveal that all provinces do not follow a common growth process, but rather two distinct growth regimes. Particularly, one is dominated by foreign direct investment and financial depth, while the other is dominated by trade openness. The growth process of provinces in the central region evolves around the year 2004 from the former to the latter. More importantly, geography and institutions help sort provinces into groups, and institutions are more predominant.

The existing studies on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) primarily explain its impact on China’s trade or foreign direct investment, whereas its impact on node countries’ export performance to Ch...

In this paper, we employ multi-region input–output model to investigate China’s embodied energy trade in 1995–2009, and then we use hypothetical extraction method to explore the effect of Chinese f...

Whether and how the design and enforcement of laws exerts a profound influence on innovation activities has been the central subject of study in a wide spectrum of disciplines. This paper examines the role of the social insurance law in driving corporate innovation. We consider a simple model wherein inventors transfer knowledge from one firm to another by job hopping and argue that mandatory social insurance contributions may decrease the mobility of inventors. This could implicitly incentivize firms to invest more in research and development (R&D), resulting in more patent output. To identify the incentive effect of social insurance law empirically, we examine data from China's A-share publicly listed firms for 2007-2017 and conduct a difference-in-differences estimation based on the enactment of China's Social Insurance Law in 2011. The empirical results were found to be consistent with the predictions of our theory.

This paper proposes an extended Solow decomposition framework with a finite mixture model, which is incorporated to account for heterogeneous regimes. The model decomposes green economy into two different components, namely, green total factor productivity and factor endowment. Then, we reestimate the growth sources of green economy and especially the importance of energy consumption in China's provincial industries over 2000ý2015. The empirical results suggest that there are three green growth regimes across Chinese provinces for overall economy and different industries. Specifically, some provinces switch regime over time, while the others maintain the same regime. Furthermore, when controlling for regime heterogeneity, the contribution of factor endowment decreases and that of green total factor productivity increases. With respect to energy consumption, traditional methods overestimate its importance in the primary and tertiary industries and underestimate that in the secondary industry. In addition, the reliance of Chinaýs overall economy and the secondary and tertiary industries on energy consumption decreases as economy develops.

Using the semi-annual data of listed nonfinancial corporations from 2007 to 2015, this paper investigates the effect of financialization on capital accumulation in China. The results show that increased financial profit crowds out real investment, especially for small and private firms. Furthermore, the effect of financialization reverts to be positive in the long run, and its cumulative effect manifests a “U-type” pattern.

Using the semi-annual nonfinancial listed companies from 2007 to 2015, this article investigates the impacts of financial asset allocations on R&D activities in China. Specifically, the ratio of fi...

This study examines how human capital in the financial sector affects corporate debt maturity. To illustrate the mechanisms underlying the effects, we propose a theoretical framework that highlights the effects of human capital in the financial sector on mitigating the information asymmetry between financial intermediaries, households, and firms. Using the Chinese National Economic Census in 2008 and the Industrial Enterprises Database over 2011–2013, we find that the financial sector's human capital plays a significant and positive (negative) role in short-term (long-term) debt and this effect is more pronounced for firms with greater information asymmetry. Further analyses demonstrate that the baseline findings are consistent with the credit supply hypothesis. Our study indicates that human capital in the financial sector strengthens its renegotiation capacity for corporate borrowing, which is consistent with China's financial repression policy and leads to increased exposure of firms to credit and liquidity risks.

Whereas numerous studies have evaluated the effects of public research and development (RD thus, enhancing regional innovation capacity. Our findings document that China's land resource is a curse for its innovation-driven growth as it impedes local governments' fiscal incentives for R&D.

This paper investigates how asset reversibility affects the sensitivity of firm’s cash holding to economic policy uncertainty in China. Using the 2012 national input-output table for 139 industries, we measure the industry-level asset reversibility and match them with nonfinancial publicly listed firms over 2007−2017. The results show that asset reversibility has a significant and negative effect on the positive uncertainty-cash holding sensitivity, especially for firms with more severe financial constraints. Furthermore, we find that firms with higher asset reversibility invest more in fixed assets, suggesting that real investment is an important mechanism. In addition, baseline results are robust to potential endogeneity and alternative measures of asset reversibility and economic policy uncertainty. Our findings reveal that asset market friction is a critical determinant of firm’s cash holding.

On the basis of development accounting techniques and a factor misallocation framework, we use panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2013 to assess how factor allocation affects economic growth and unbalanced regional development in China. In particular, we decompose economic growth into three parts, namely sector productivity (SP), factor market efficiency (FME) and factor endowment (FE). We then conduct counterfactual analyses to investigate the short and long‐run roles of factor allocation in the income distribution across provinces. The results show that SP, FME and FE can explain 23%, 8.5% and 68.5% of economic growth, while labour, capital and energy reallocation account for aggregate productivity growth of about 47%, −4.8% and −0.1%. Furthermore, when the factors are efficiently allocated, transferring labour (capital, energy) from agriculture (service, industry) to the other sectors will increase the income per capita by 29.5% and 42.5% in the short and long term. Meanwhile, efficient factor allocation accounts for 32% and 29.7% of aggregate productivity and reduces the income variation across provinces by 25.5% and 23% in the short and long run, respectively.

This paper investigates whether social security contributions affect corporate financing decisions. Treating the 2011 Social Insurance Law in China as a quasi-natural experiment, our difference-in-differences framework utilizes two-dimension variations: initial social security contribution rates across firms (i.e., high relative to low) and year (i.e., before and after 2011). We find that more social security contributions lead firms to decrease capital structure, particularly for firms with greater labor intensity and tighter financial constraints as well as those located in areas with greater fiscal pressure. Furthermore, consistent with the financial distress hypothesis, a firm’s operating leverage and profitability volatility increase, and the supply of trade credit decreases. Specifically, we exclude several alternative explanations, including firms’ other motivations and creditors’ strategic behavior. Our findings demonstrate that firms tend to choose conservative financing policies to partially mitigate the likelihood of financial distress caused by increasing social security contributions.

A key aspect of Chinese-style institutions is that the growth of the economy can be severely restricted by the adjustment and implementation of policy, leading to serious uncertainty in business practices. This paper investigates whether political connections help private firms obtain policy information ahead of public disclosure that would allow them to hedge against policy uncertainty. Using the quarterly data on non-financial private listed companies over 2007:Q1–2017:Q4, we find that the negative effect of policy uncertainty on fixed-asset investment is lower in politically connected firms than in non-connected firms, especially in industries with low asset reversibility and regions with a high degree of marketization. Further, a positive mitigation of policy uncertainty exists in firms whose top executives served as officials rather than deputies, and higher administrative as well as finance-related political connections show more information advantage. In addition, robust evidence is provided that controls the impacts of political connections on financing constraints, business performance and policy burdens, overcoming potential endogeneity, and the cash-holdings perspective. Our findings suggest that political connections are conducive to mitigate information asymmetry between private firms and policymakers in China.

Using panel data of 23 provinces during the period 1996–2012, this paper investigates the impacts of financial development and structure on income inequality in different administrative districts (urban, rural and overall) in China. The results produced by the dynamic generalised method of moments estimator provide some evidence for a linear and inverse ‘U-shape’ relationship between financial development and income inequality, and increasing the relative importance of financial markets to banks helps to reduce income inequality. Furthermore, the results of panel threshold regressions show that the benefits of financial development only occur if the stock market activity has reached a threshold level and disappear if the stock market capitalisation has reached a certain scale. Meanwhile, the impact of the financial structure weakens as the financial development expands and the proportion of financial markets increases. We also find that the impacts of financial development and structure on rural income inequality are stronger than those on urban income inequality.

Employing panel cointegration analysis and a panel VAR model with system GMM estimator, this paper investigates the long- and short-run dynamic linkages between insurance activities and banking credit for 45 countries within three income levels from 1980 to 2011. The estimation results indicate that there is a significantly positive cointegration relationship between the two financial sectors in most countries, but the specific relationship varies across income levels and sample periods. The panel Granger causality tests further reveal that there is a bidirectional causality between life insurance activity and banking credit in the high-income group, and a unidirectional causality running from banking credit to life insurance activity in the low-income group, while there is a unidirectional causality running from non-life insurance activity to banking credit in the high-income group. These results indicate that the dynamic interactions between insurance activities and banking credit vary strikingly across different income levels.

This study investigates whether the state-owned enterprise group inhibits banking sector expansion, thus impeding competition in China, as depicted in the interest group theory. To address potential endogeneity, our identification scheme employs a Chinese bank-deregulation policy for joint-equity and city commercial banks implemented in 2009. We collect Chinese bank branch data manually and use the difference-in-difference estimation method to explore two-dimension variations in the interest group theory: state-owned shareholding and year. The results show that higher state-owned shareholdings lead to fewer commercial bank entries, especially in regions with more intensive industry and bank competition. A further counterfactual analysis indicates that a 24% loss of the observed increase in the number of small- and medium-sized banks from 2009 to 2013 is attributed to impediments of state-owned capital. These findings suggest that mitigating the influence of state-owned enterprises is likely to simultaneously promote financial development and capital allocation efficiency.

This paper designs a quasi-natural experiment for the identification of causal relationships between economic policy uncertainty and firms' investment-financing decisions using China's supply-side structural reform in 2015. We construct measures of asset reversibility across industries using China's national input–output flow table and match them with nonfinancial firms listed in China's A-share stock market from 2013 to 2017. We then use the difference-in-difference estimation strategy to investigate two-dimensional variations in periods (i.e., before and after 2015) and asset reversibility (i.e., high- and low-reversibility industries). The empirical results show that economic policy uncertainty significantly impedes real investment and reduces net debt issuance for private firms, whereas no such effects exist in state-owned firms. Interestingly, however, economic policy uncertainty has no significant impact on firms' cash-holding decisions.

Based on an extended neoclassical growth model, this paper explores the endogenous mechanism between financial structure and economic growth. Our theoretical analysis shows that there exists an optimal financial structure evolving to meet different demands of the real economy in the process of economic development. We then investigate whether financial structure matters for economic growth using a panel data of 29 provinces across the eastern, central, and western regions in China from 1996 to 2013. The empirical results show that financial structure has a significant impact on economic growth. However, the effect of financial structure on regional economic growth varies and presents an inverse U-shape. These results confirm the evolving effect of financial structure on economic growth at different stages of economic development.

This paper investigates the long-run and short-run linkages between insurance activity and banking credit for G-7 countries. To minimize the pretest bias and overcome the structural changes, we adopt the bootstrap Granger causality test applied to full sample and subsamples with a fixed window size. The Johansen cointegration test with GMM-IV estimator finds a long-run positive relation between the series. The full sample results of bootstrap Granger causality test show that there is predictive power from life insurance activity to banking credit only for France and Japan, while the short-run causal relationships between nonlife insurance activity and banking credit are country-specific. However, parameter stability test results suggest that the short-run results in full sample are unreliable. The results of rolling VAR models report that the causal linkages between them are time-varying across various subsamples. These findings offer some useful insights for achieving the co-evolution between insurance and banking credit markets.

The present study was concerned with the karyotype of a humpbacked fly, Megaselia spiracularis (Diptera: Phoridae). Chromosome preparations of neuroblasts isolated from male and female pupae uniformly showed two pairs of metacentric chromosomes and a telocentric chromosome pair. All chromosomes were homomorphic. The analysis of ultrathin serial sections through spermatogonia in metaphase using transmission electron microscopy, confirmed the presence of 3 regular chromosome pairs. In ultrathin sections, the centromeres could be detected as individual elements owing to their lesser electron density in comparison with the chromosome arms. In addition, the spindles contained two tiny elements structurally reminiscent of the centromeres of the regular chromosome pairs. Chromosome arms were, however, missing in the supernumerary particles. In keeping with previous observations in another humpbacked fly, M. scalaris, which showed the same trait, the tiny particles are referred to as ‘centromere-like elements’. With M. spiracularis and M. scalaris a total of 2 representatives of the Phoridae were found to carry centromere-like elements in their karyotype, and it is possible that this is a conserved trait of the genus or the family.

The paper proposes a new nonlinear dynamic econometric model with fractional derivative. The fractional derivative is defined in the Jumarie type. The corresponding discrete financial system is considered by removing the limit operation in Jumarie derivative’s. We estimate the coefficients and parameters of the model by using the least squared principle. The new approach to financial system modeling is illustrated by an application to model the behavior of Japanese national financial system which consists of interest rate, investment, and inflation. The empirical results with different time step sizes of discretization are shown, and a comparison of the actual data against the data estimated by empirical model is illustrated. We find that our discrete financial model can describe the actual data that include interest rate, investment, and inflation accurately.

The present study deals with the fine structure of the shell in the main body of deposited eggs of 2 humpbacked flies Megaselia scalaris and M. spiracularis (Diptera: Phoridae). Eggs deposited within a period of 3 h were embedded for transmission electron microscopy. In ultrathin sections, the overall architecture of the egg-shell was qualitatively similar to that of Drosophila melanogaster . There were, however, a series of quantitative differences. A prominent vitelline membrane bordered the plasma membrane. The chorion consisted of a thin inner layer, pillars, and a thin outer layer. There was a prominent external layer consisting of finely granular material. A 6–7 layered crystalline layer, and an amorphous electron-dense layer separated the vitelline membrane and the chorion. Hypochlorit treatment was used in order to determine the nature of this electron-dense layer. While all chorionic elements were removed, the layer in question was resistent to hypochlorit treatment, and therefore corresponds most probably to the wax layer found in Drosophila eggs.