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The past few years have been marked by significant global uncertainties triggered by continuous "black swan" events. This symposium examines economic uncertainties from these events, policy risk, and the role of digital finance in surmounting these uncertainties. The main themes comprise digital finance and economic resilience; blockchain and corporate performance; digital finance and risk; digital financial services and pandemic; Fintech and economic resilience; and sustainable digital finance. The findings have significant research and policy ramifications on the role of digital finance in dealing with global economic uncertainties resulting from both natural and human-made crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transformation towards greenness, focusing on consumer environmental awareness within a circular city model characterized by elastic demand. Our findings reveal that the equilibrium investment in environmentally friendly initiatives falls short of the socially optimal level for a given market structure. The degree of excess or insufficient market entry is influenced by the level of environmental awareness. Further, we delve into the role of environmental delegation, demonstrating that heightened environmental awareness can mitigate underinvestment in the environment and reduce inefficiency in market entry. From a policy perspective, we expand our analysis to include the "Green Product Policy." This extension aims to explore the impact of such a policy on environmental awareness and assess the applicability of the "excess entry theorem" in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the transfer pricing decision of the multinational firm. There are differences in profit tax rates between home‐country and host‐country. The multinational firm determines the transfer price to its overseas affiliate and delegates the responsibility of deciding on the final sales to its affiliate manager. We find that: (1) The multinational firm will set a higher transfer price if its affiliate hires a manager. If the host‐country firm also hires a manager, the managerial delegation may lead to an asymmetry "prisoner's dilemma". (2) When home‐country's tax rate is higher than that in the host‐country, multinational firm tends to set a lower transfer price relative to the marginal production cost. (3) When host‐country's tax rate is higher than that in the home‐country, an increase in the host‐country corporate tax rate decreases multinational firm's profit and the consumer surplus, while its impact on the host‐country firm's profit is non‐monotone; an increase in the home‐country tax rate decreases host‐country firm's profit, increases consumer surplus, but has a non‐monotone impact on multinational firm's profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a new reason for Bertrand‐Cournot profit reversal. In a symmetric oligopoly, we show that firms get higher profits under Bertrand competition compared to Cournot competition under non‐commitment process innovation if the products are sufficiently differentiated and there is positive knowledge spillover. As the number of firms increases, the degree of product differentiation over which the profits are higher under Bertrand competition can increase. Higher outputs under Bertrand competition compared to Cournot competition generate higher R&D investments under the former than the latter, which is responsible for our result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we set up a mixed duopoly competition model between state-owned and private firms in order to compare specific and ad valorem taxes. Assuming that the total output under specific and ad valorem taxation remains unchanged, we find that if the public firm is completely privatised, the output of the private firm under the two tax schemes will be the same. If the public firm is not completely privatised, the output of the the private firm under specific taxation will be greater than that under ad valorem taxation. If the private firm is a pure local one, the social benefits will be the same under the two tax schemes. However, if the private firm is a joint venture that involves domestic and foreign entities, social welfare under ad valorem taxation will be greater than that under specific taxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the impacts of cross‐ownership structure on double marginalization problem (DMP) and social welfare under downstream the Bertrand and Cournot competition. We find that in the Bertrand competition, DMP is more serious under backward cross‐ownership than under forward cross‐ownership. Under forward cross‐ownership, because the upstream firm internalizes part of a retailer's profit, it alleviates the DMP. However, for the whole society, forward cross‐ownership is beneficial with respect to backward cross‐ownership. The mark‐up ratio under forward cross‐ownership is the largest, followed by that under vertical separation. The lowest one is under backward cross‐ownership. The results hold under Cournot competition as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine when the owners negotiate union bargaining and delegate production to managers, showing that an increasing degree of cross ownership exacerbates the conflicting interests between the owners and consumers. If the bargaining power of the union is weak, the owners will choose to bargain with the union and delegate to managers simultaneously. Otherwise, the owners will bargain with the union first and then set delegate incentives to managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates privatization policy in mixed oligopoly when partial privatization changes a technological difference between semi‐public and private firms. It shows that when the degree of privatization is partial, privatization is insufficient. Furthermore, privatization is more likely to be insufficient as the market becomes more competitive. If the cost efficiency gain is captured by decreasing the degree of privatization, privatization is insufficient regardless of whether entry by private firms is restricted or free. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the firms' strategic choice of financing mode in both Cournot and Bertrand competition with pollution externalities. We show that, if the environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) firm does not abate, loan commitment financing will be used for ongoing dirty production, and the optimal interest rate is decreasing in the firm's ECSR concerns. However, when the ECSR firm voluntarily chooses a one‐shot abatement‐technology investment, the optimal choice is spot‐market financing. Compared with the case without abatement investment, the firm's finance for the green investment yields higher net consumer surplus and welfare unless the market size is sufficiently small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the impact of vertical cross‐ownership with input price discrimination on social welfare. A higher degree of product differentiation will raise industry profit, consumer surplus, and social welfare; under forward cross‐ownership, a higher degree of cross‐ownership has the same effect, in addition, it will reduce rival firm's profit and increase upstream firm's profit; however, under backward cross‐ownership, a higher degree of cross‐ownership has an opposite effect. Furthermore, under Cournot and Bertrand competition, forward cross‐ownership will incentivize downstream firms to produce more via a lower input price, achieving the above effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide a general equilibrium analysis of corporate profit tax on income distribution, unemployment, and wage inequality. With firm dynamics in industrial sector, we identify a new channel through which profit tax affects income and wage inequality: profit tax cut will widen not only the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor, but also exacerbate the wage inequality of unskilled labor among different sectors. The welfare effect of profit tax cut depends on unemployment deepening (labor‐distortion effect) and more manufacturing firms enter the market (business‐creation effect), eroding the market share of incumbent firms (business‐stealing effect). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we formulate a mixed oligopoly model with many public firms and the consumer's cognition of the CSR activity of private firms. We show that the privatization wave will be beneficial for incumbent firms while harming consumers; more importantly, from the perspective of social welfare, consumer cognition on CSR will suppress any privatization wave, while whether the degree of "Cheap‐Talk" CSR suppresses or boosts the privatization wave depends on the degree of "Cheap‐Talk" CSR and the number of incumbent public firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impacts of downstream CSR on upstream tacit collusion. Considering an infinitely repeated game with trigger strategy punishment, we find that how consumer‐oriented CSR affects the stability of upstream collusion basically hinges on the downstream competition modes. Specifically, CSR behavior facilitates (hinders) upstream collusion under downstream quantity (price) competition. For given degree of CSR and product substitutability, upstream collusion is always less stable under downstream price competition. In addition, higher degree of product substitutability obstructs collusion, regardless of downstream competition mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of the crowd effect and financing constraints on pricing strategy by constructing an intertemporal model and introducing the crowd effect into a monopolistic home team's decision‐making framework. The results demonstrate that a stronger crowd effect and a larger depreciation rate are always beneficial to the expected profits of the home team and the home team may price along the inelastic portion of the static demand curve in periods 1–3, as long as the expected deferred marginal revenue and the additive price from the performance of the preceding match are sufficiently large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the upstream public firm's desirable option of production timing in the vertically related upstream market. We find that multiple equilibria may exist, including the Cournot‐type and Stackelberg‐type, with different degrees of privatization in the presence of upstream firms' efficiency gap. These equilibrium outcomes are also influenced by the intensity of downstream market competition. We further show the corresponding optimal degree of privatization in different phases of gradual privatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]