This paper empirically examines the impact of government debt expansion on corporate trade credit supply and its underlying mechanisms based on hand-collected and compiled comprehensive data on local government debt and financial data of non-financial listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2019. The findings show that government debt expansion has a significant inhibitory effect on corporate trade credit supply, and the effect is more pronounced in enterprises that are non-state-owned, small-scaled, and exposed to less industry competition. The mechanism test reveals that the expansion of government debt scale aggravates the financing constraints, operational risks, and tax burdens of enterprises, thereby reducing their trade credit supply. Further research shows that government debt expansion shortens the supply period of trade credit and lowers its quality. This study provides reference and guidance for strengthening government debt governance and preventing systemic financial risks.

In China’s bond market, government regulation is the basic force to maintain the orderly development of the bond market, and is the top-level foundation behind many factors affecting the bond market. Using samples of medium-term notes, corporate bonds and enterprise bonds issued by Chinese listed companies from 2014 to 2021, this paper examines the impact of regulatory penalties on credit rating agencies. The results show that the credit rating level decreases significantly after the regulatory punishment event, as the regulatory punishment has “deterrent effect”; further, this effect is more significant for non-state-owned credit rating agencies and bond issuers with poor information environment, while warning penalties and penalties from National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors do not have “deterrent effect”. An examination on the economic consequences of “deterrent effect” shows that although the regulatory penalty increases the second type of errors of credit rating agencies, it reduces the first type of errors and the overall rating errors, indicating that although the “deterrent effect” causes the rating agencies to be overly cautious, it improves the rating accuracy on the whole. In addition, regulatory penalties significantly increase the information content of bond credit rating and improve the mismatch between bond credit rating and default risk. Finally, the dynamic test results show that the “deterrent effect” of regulatory penalties does exist, but only in short term and unsustainably. Finally, this paper has important implications for credit rating agencies to improve bond rating behavior and for bond market regulators to improve regulatory governance measures.

This study uses a Multi-Regional Input-Output Model (MRIO) to calculate the transfer of high-energy-consuming industries and carbon emissions among 30 provinces in China for the years 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017. It compares the inter-provincial and inter-industry transfer paths of industries and carbon emissions. Multi-Scale Geographically Weighted Regression Model (MGWR) is applied to examine the impact of environmental regulations, industrial structure, energy intensity, and urbanization on carbon transfers. The results show that the pathways of transfer for high-energy-consuming industries and carbon emissions are similar but not completely linked. The trend of industrial transfer shifting northward is gradually weakening, but carbon transfer continues to move in the same direction. There are significant differences when examining specific industries. The construction industry is the largest transferring industry, primarily transferring out from Shanghai. The province with the most carbon transfer from the construction industry is Zhejiang. The study on factors influencing carbon transfers indicates that environmental regulations and energy intensity have a positive impact on carbon transfers, while urbanization and industrial structure have a negative impact.

China urgently needs to help enterprises “going global” by improving the development level of intellectual property. Using the provincial intellectual property development indexes and enterprise OFDI data, this study investigates the impact and mechanism of China’s intellectual property development on the enterprises’ OFDI probability based on Probit model and intermediary effect model. The results are as follows: (1) The intellectual property application and service development can both increase the enterprises’ outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) probability. The above conclusions are still valid after the robustness test and endogeneity treatment. (2) The mechanism tests show that the intellectual property application and service development increases OFDI probability by alleviating the enterprises’ financing constraints and reducing the enterprises’ business risks respectively. (3) The moderating effect tests find that there is no moderating effect of financial development on the relationship between intellectual property application development and enterprises’ OFDI probability. Whereas the business environment positively moderates the promoting effect of intellectual property service development on enterprises’ OFDI probability. Selecting the perspective of intellectual property application and service development in the home country, this paper makes up for the defect that the existing researches mainly focus on the perspective of the host country, and only pay attention to the intellectual property protection while ignoring the economic effects of other intellectual property aspects.

From the perspective of inter-regional mergers and acquisitions (M&As), this paper empirically investigates the influencece of non-local chambers of commerce on inter-regional capital flows and its mechanism by constructing a staggered difference-in-differences model. The results show that non-local chambers of commerce can significantly increase the number and value of inter-regional M&As, and this effect is not a short-term effect but an increasingly important long-term effect. After considering endogeneity and a series of factors that may cause estimation bias, the above conclusions still hold significantly. As for impact mechanisms, by weakening information barriers between regions, setting up effective communication platforms for companies and local government, and enhancing trust between regions, non-local chambers of commerce can effectively alleviate the adverse impact of market segmentation caused by institutional and non-institutional factors on inter-regional M&As. The conclusions of this paper have important guiding significance for better use of non-local chambers of commerce to promote inter-regional capital flows, and further promote the construction of a solid and unified domestic market and domestic economic circulation.

Given the weakening expectation of corporate growth against the backdrop of supply shock, demand contraction and lowering expectations, this paper takes Chinese A-share listed enterprises in 2017—2019 as the research object, and empirically studies the impact of growth expectations on corporate M&As and the mechanism underlying the impact. The study shows that: (1) the weakening expectation of corporate growth intensifies M&A activities; (2) the intensification is realized mainly through moderate debt expansion; (3) by intensifying M&As, the enterprises exposed to weakening growth expectation suffer less fluctuations in operating performance and achieve a significant increase in total factor productivity; (4) the influence of weakening growth expectation on M&A activities is more significant in mature and private enterprises. This paper enriches the research on the influencing factors and economic consequences of M&A activities, and provides empirical evidence and policy inspiration from the perspective of stable expectation for M&A behavior.

Open source stimulates technological innovation by fostering a trustworthy open collaboration model, and the commercialization of open source has led to a shift in individuals’ motivations to engage in creative collisions within this community-driven mechanism. Consequently, this study constructs a theoretical framework for driving factors termed the “Carrot-Rainbow” from the perspectives of self-determination theory and social practice view. These factors are categorized into short-term economic rewards (Carrot) and long-term, valuable pursuits (Rainbow). Utilizing GitHub’s open source survey data, a comprehensive approach employing both multiple regression analysis and fsQCA is applied to explore the interrelations and inherent complexities among the antecedents of individuals’ future contributions to digital technology open source communities. The findings suggest that future contribution likelihood may be significantly and positively related to financial rewards, career advancement, intellectual property agreements, external efficacy, user value, and community support, respectively. When the carrot and rainbow dimensions of factors are combined, no evidence of extrinsic factors crowding out intrinsic factors is found, but rather external efficacy enhances the rainbow dimension and plays the most important driving role. The driving factors of carrot and rainbow dimensions can form three configurations leading to a high future contribution likelihood, that is “rainbow-occupational”, “rainbow-IP”, and “carrot” types. The theoretical and practical contributions derived from this study provide essential guidance for future research, relevant contributors, and managers.

Research based on the behavioral theory agrees that firms adjust their organizational practices based on the gap between the level of expectation and actual performance, but the organizational practices of concern are limited to resource-consuming activities. In this study, the allocation of innovation resources is categorized into two opposite types: resource-releasing and resource-consuming, and both are included in the analysis of the performance feedback model. It is found that positive discrepancy stimulates resource-releasing innovative activities induced by problem search, while negative discrepancy promotes redundant search-oriented resource-consuming behaviors. Second, organizations are influenced by peer behavior when adjusting resource allocation decisions based on performance feedback, with managers tending to amplify positive signals from peers in positive feedback situations and negative signals from peers when performance feedback is negative. Finally, peer effects are further moderated by executive overconfidence and technological uncertainty.

Based on the knowledge-based theory, this paper discusses the mechanism of how industry-university-research cooperation (IURC) and internal R&D (IRD) influence the breakthrough innovation of enterprises, and focuses on the internal and external integration mechanism in breakthrough innovation. The results show that: First of all, both IURC and IRD have an inverted U-shaped influence on breakthrough innovation, the underlying mechanism lies in their nonlinear influence on the firm’s knowledge base and the mediating effect of the knowledge base. Secondly, enterprises suffer from “NIH syndrome” in IURC, as plenty of IRD reduces the persistence and peak value of the positive effect of IURC. The internal mechanism is that IURC can improve the breadth of knowledge, while IRD will narrow the knowledge of enterprises, as a result of which, IRD makes IURC less able to promote the breadth of knowledge base. Based on the sample of China’s listed companies and patents’ information, this paper provides empirical evidence for the theoretical hypotheses, and provides new ideas for enterprises to achieve breakthrough innovation from the perspective of balancing and coordinating internal and external innovation.

Exploring the influence mechanism of supply-side and demand-side policy tools, and analyzing the effect of differentiation by applying localization theories such as new structural economics is an important attempt to optimize the innovation-driven mechanism based on China’s context. In this paper, we explore the mechanism of how policy tools influence regional technology innovation from the perspective of new structural economics using provincial-level data from 2001 to 2019. Based on quantile regression method, this paper describes the differential effects of R&D subsidies and government procurement on regional technology innovation, examines the heterogeneous effects of government procurement on regional technology innovation by subdividing item structure, and analyzes the moderating effects of factor endowment structure on the relationship between policy tools and regional technology innovation. The results show that there is a significant difference between the supply-side and demand-side policy tools, R&D subsidy has an inverted U-shaped impact on regional technology innovation, and government procurement has a significant positive impact on regional technology innovation. Two policy tools have significant effects on technology innovation of regional differences. Seen from the perspective of new structural economic theory, factor endowment strengthens the inverted U-shaped relationship between R&D subsidy and technology innovation in eastern China, but negatively moderates the positive relationship between government procurement and technology innovation in central and western China. The coupling degree between procurement items and factor endowment affects regional technology innovation performance. The research conclusions of this paper provide a deeper insight into the mechanism of how policy tools influence regional technology innovation, and enrich the technology innovation research based on new structural economics.

In the process of accelerating digital transformation, enterprises may go to two extremes: one is to restrain R&D manipulation by using data advantages to alleviate information asymmetry and the other is to intensify R&D manipulation by worsening information asymmetry. Based on the data of China’s A-share listed manufacturing companies from 2012 to 2020, this paper examines the effect of digital transformation on R&D manipulation and the mechanism underlying the effect. The results show that the digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises can effectively restrain R&D manipulation, as evidenced by s significant decrease in their abnormal R&D investment. The mechanism test shows that digital transformation can exert “information effect” and “signal effect” to optimize information supply and strengthen market supervision, alleviate information asymmetry from inside and outside, and then restrain R&D manipulation; Heterogeneity analysis finds that this restraining effect is more significant in state-owned enterprises and high-tech enterprises where innovation information is highly asymmetric and enterprises whose executives have R&D background. Digital transformation can help manufacturing enterprises improve innovation quality by restrain R&D manipulation. This study enriches the understanding of the microeconomic results of digital transformation, and provides a reference for the government to better implement industrial policies to stimulate enterprise innovation.

There are regional differences in the process of government data opening in China, and the lack of mobility and coordination of government open data in different regions seriously hinders the aggregation and utilization of cross-regional heterogeneous data. Therefore, it is necessary for multi-party participants to collaborate in data governance and promote cross-regional government data co-governance in order to further explore the value of open data. This paper constructs a quadrilateral evolutionary game model of data co-governance that includes the central government, two cross-regional government data open platforms at the same administrative level, and data utilization groups to explore the equilibrium strategy and strategy stability of multi-party participation in government data co-governance. It also combines the simulation analysis of data related to two local governments in 2022 to study key factors such as policy differences and data utilization groups’ behavior on the evolutionary path. This paper finds that: the central government’s subsidy mechanism for data utilization groups can promote their information feedback, which in turn promotes data co-governance of open government data platforms in the two regions, and as the satisfaction level of co-governance increases, the central government shifts from the punishment mechanism to the subsidy mechanism for platforms; the cross-incentive mechanism under the subsidy mechanism can alleviate the free-rider behavior of platforms in government data co-governance and realize collaborative data co-governance in the two regions; the implementation of differential incentives under the penalty mechanism under specific conditions can avoid the prisoner’s dilemma of the two regional platforms and realize the collaborative data co-governance. Finally, policy and management suggestions are put forward from the perspective of each government data co-governance participant to provide a reference for cross-regional local governments to implement government data co-governance on open data.

E-commerce platforms, as the most dominant form of organization in the era of the digital economy, have developed rapidly, but also generated many negative problems. The rise and application of blockchain technology provides new ideas and methods for platform governance. Based on the technology embedding theory, this paper discusses the logic of blockchain technology-enabled platform governance from the two dimensions of “structure-function”. On this basis, an evolutionary game model of businessmen, consumers and platform enterprises is established. The implementation mechanism of blockchain-enabled platform governance is clarified by discussing the stability of the strategy and the evolutionary stability of the system, and the conclusions are verified by numerical simulation. The results show that in the process of blockchain technology-enabled platform governance, relying on the technological characteristics of blockchain can achieve a platform governance mechanism that “upholds the good and the truth while restraining the evil and the false in a moderate manner”. The initial intention of the three parties, the on-chain effect and the cost of regulation are important factors affecting the governance effectiveness of blockchain-enabled platforms, while merchant opportunistic behavior is the cause of platform dilemma. Therefore, this paper proposes to build a blockchain-based platform governance system, encourage merchants to use blockchain technology to improve the transparency and traceability of their own business, and guide consumers to participate in the construction of a blockchain online evaluation system, so as to promote the modernization, intelligence and efficiency of platform governance and high-quality development of e-commerce platform.

This study focuses on the effects of regional social trust on the stability of the enterprise top management team (TMT). As the levels of social trust vary greatly between regions in China, this paper develops a theoretical logic of the effects of social trust on the enterprise TMT stability, based on the institutional theory and viewing from the perspective of social norms, and empirically tests the effects of social trust on the enterprise TMT stability as well as the moderating effect of performance below the aspiration level and market environment by using the data of social trust and Chinese A-share listed firms. The results show that: the higher the level of regional social trust, the stronger the TMT stability; performance below the aspiration level negatively regulates the positive relationship between social trust and enterprise TMT stability; and the market munificence and market instability in the market environment positively and negatively affect the relationship between social trust and enterprise TMT stability, respectively. Based on the above conclusions, management implications are provided for the enterprise TMT governance and the enhancement of regional trust levels.

The traditional Chinese concept of “harmony but diversity” has promoted the development of cooperative conflict management methods within teams. Does such conflict management method affect team creativity? Based on the action learning theory, this study constructs a dual-moderation mediation model. Through an empirical research and analysis of 412 questionnaires from leaders and employees in 77 teams, it explores and tests the influence of cooperative conflict management on team creativity and the mechanism underlying the influence. The research results indicate that cooperative conflict management positively predicts team creativity, and team reflection plays a mediating role between cooperative conflict management and team creativity. Leader mindfulness and team task complexity can positively moderate the facilitative effect of cooperative conflict management on team reflexivity, while also significantly moderating the indirect effect of cooperative conflict management on team creativity through the mediating mechanism of team reflexivity. The results of this study deepen the theoretical research of team conflict management in China, emphasize the importance of leader mindfulness, and provide practical enlightenment for organizations and leaders to stimulate team creativity through cooperative conflict management.

According to the reputation mechanism theory of independent directors’ performance of duties, independent directors perform their duties diligently in order to maintain their reputation. Independent directors who take office as part of a transfer bundle may play a stronger governance role if they want to maintain the reputation of ‘integrity’, but they may also come across as ‘staying silent’ if they focus on maintaining relationships. This paper takes Chinese A-share listed companies from 2004 to 2019 as a sample to test the impact of bundled independent directors on earnings management. We find that the greater the strength of the independent director’s bundling relationship, the lower the earnings management based on accruals, and the higher the real activity earnings management, which supports the reputation-supervision mechanism. This effect is more significant when the major shareholder has greater power or the firm lacks institutional investor shareholder supervision. The above results indicate that bundled independent directors are likely to have a limited supervisory effect on corporate earnings management, and the ‘staying silent’ strategy can better explain the behavior of bundled independent directors. Further, in non-state-owned enterprises and firms that do not purchase directors’ liability insurance, bundled independent directors have a stronger inhibitory (enhancing) effect on earnings management based on accruals (real activity earnings management). Besides, bundled independent directors have a strong temporal dependence feature, and is more likely to be absent from board meetings, while there is no significant difference in opposing votes compared to other independent directors. This paper makes a useful supplement to the theory of reputation mechanism, enriches the research on the impact of independent directors’ personal characteristics on the performance of their duties, and provides suggestive policies for optimizing the rotation system of independent directors.

In recent years, it has become increasingly common in China’s capital market that unrelated shareholders form alliances through concerted action agreements to become controlling shareholders, known as controlling persons acting in concert. How to understand the economic consequences of this phenomenon is an important scientific question. This paper intends to analyze the economic consequences of unrelated shareholders forming controlling persons acting in concert from the perspective of earnings manipulation. Using manipulated accruals to measure earnings manipulation, we find that companies with controlling persons acting in concert exhibit higher levels of earnings manipulation and lower financial report quality, and this relationship is primarily manifested in upward earnings manipulation, and in subsample where minority shareholders form controlling shareholders. Further analysis indicates that in private enterprises and regions with lower degrees of marketization, the impact of controlling persons acting in concert on earnings manipulation is more pronounced. Mechanism tests suggest that controlling persons acting in concert may worsen internal corporate governance and weaken external audit supervision, so as to achieve their goal of manipulating earnings. The consequence test shows the future performance for companies with concerted controlling shareholders become worse.

Customer co-creation, which engages users in product development, has received increasing attention. Our study focuses on the disparities in user participation costs within customer co-creation and constructs models of high and low entry threshold co-creation considering spillover effects. We find that: (1) In environments with high entry thresholds for co-creation, intensified spillover effect from primary to general users may lead to a reduction in the primary user base. To stabilize or expand this group, the firm needs to alleviate this effect through strategic information protection. (2) Conversely, in low threshold co-creation environments, enhancing the spillover effect among primary users can significantly increase corporate anticipated revenues. Additionally, any rise in spillover effects is beneficial for the firm. Therefore, the firm can optimize its profits by regulating various spillover effects to motivate users to exert more customization efforts.

Project scheduling is intended to allocate limited resources to appropriate activities and achieve the goal of optimal project construction period. It is an important means to optimize project resource allocation and shorten project construction period. In the process of scheduling, how to choose the appropriate activity based on limited resources in different periods is the key to solution. Based on the objective of minimum project construction period, from the perspective of activity combination, this paper designs a new project scheduling mechanism with the framework of branch and bound process, nested task combination optimization strategy and heuristic priority rules. In this process, firstly, breadth-first search is used to determine the activities to be decided and the branching time, and then the branching optimization and pruning process of the tree are completed based on the activity combination optimization strategy and depth-first search respectively. Finally, the experimental test is completed through an example and PSPLIB, and the traditional heuristic scheduling mechanism is compared to analyze the impact of different project environments on the scheduling and verify the effectiveness of the mechanism. The results show that the proposed scheduling mechanism is more efficient than the traditional heuristic scheduling mechanism in solving both the average project construction period and the optimal scheduling proportion. This conclusion can further guide project management practices and provide scientific decision-making basis for actual project scheduling.

To avoid the uncertainty risk brought by the delayed effect of online advertising, enterprises often adopt CPA (cost per action) advertising for network promotion. This paper explores the online advertising decision and coordination problem for a supply chain with the delayed effect under the CPA mode. By establishing goodwill as a delay differential equation and time-dependent online advertising cost function, the deferential game model is firstly constructed for online advertising in a supply chain under the CAP mode. Next, the optimal control theory is utilized to derive the optimal online advertising and pricing strategies, product goodwill, and supply chain profits under the decentralized and centralized decision scenarios. Then, the decision results are compared and analyzed, and the best decision-making mechanism of the supply chain system is proposed. A dynamic wholesale price contract is designed to coordinate the supply chain perfectly based on the best decision-making supply chain as a benchmark. Finally, numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of the presented results and provide the sensitivity analysis of online advertising investment, goodwill, profit and coordination parameters. It is found that, unlike the traditional advertising situation, the optimal advertising investment of the manufacturer is time-dependent under the CPA mode and follows the principle of “gradual reduction-early termination.” Under the CPA mode, the shorter delayed effect of online advertising and the better sales results can enhance the cooperation enthusiasm of two sides. As a result, enterprises tend to adopt the centralized decision-making mechanism that can ensure the maximum profit of the whole supply chain. The research results provide some theoretical guidance for the marketing practice of supply chain enterprises.

This paper aims to find out how to make the best decision regarding multi-source transnational procurement-assembly under the situation that the production service level and component quality are stochastic. First, stochastic process theory is used to describe the ripple effects of production service level and component quality. Then a multi-cycle transnational purchasing-assembly decision model with multiple stochastic factors is constructed, and the operation situation and reliability assessment mechanism of stochastic system is presented. The findings are as follows. When the coupling effect of multiple quality fluctuations makes the production state dominant, the expected order quantity and profit have an upward trend. When the production service level process is an irreducible ergodic Markov chain, the optimal expected profit has a good robustness, otherwise vice versa. The reliability of the supplier’s production system can be revealed by the first-reach target assessment mechanism. In order to avoid risks and achieve the goal of good operation, the corresponding supply contract or quality investment contract can be designed according to the mechanism.

The concept of liability of ecosystem integration (LoEI) expands the scope of discussions on liability of foreignness (LoF) and liability of outsider (LoO). Regarding the influencing factors of companies going overseas, LoEI broadens the scope of responsibilities that foreign entrants may face and proposes the establishment of a multi-layered local ecosystem to be effective in the host country market, but the process mechanism of how companies overcome LoEI has not yet been explored. This paper uses case analysis and NCA and fsQCA methods, taking legitimacy acquisition as a clue to analyze the dynamic process mechanism of how overseas enterprises overcome LoEI, and explore the combination of ecosystem configurations that affect the level of overseas enterprises overcoming LoEI. The study concludes that: (1) the dynamic process model of LoEI includes three stages: encountering LoEI at the initial market entry period, maintaining LoEI at the market development period, and defending LoEI at the period of external shocks; (2) ecosystem configuration combinations that produce high LoEI-overcoming levels include institutional distance, Gini index, urbanization rate, foreign capital inflow, trade competitive advantage, and economic complexity. The research provides theoretical support and guidance for overseas enterprises and economically open countries to achieve high local ecosystem embeddedness and build their development environment.

With the continuous promotion of the strategy of rural revitalization and common prosperity, vigorously developing rural industries has become the only way to improve the level of rural economy. Considering the development characteristics and practical needs of China’s rural industry, this paper selects the “new community factory” in Pingli County, Shaanxi Province as the research object, and adopts the inductive case study method to discuss the evolution process and the cooperation among multiple subjects. The research shows that: so long as the government implements policies, industrial concentration and brand promotion, the market gives play to the role of business strategy, technology import, organization management, and the society guides the high-quality development of rural industries by improving ideas, social network, a “government-market-society” multi-subject cooperation system can be formed, where pragmatic government, effective market and organic society work together to promote the development. This paper also puts forward corresponding policy suggestions that can be used for the high-quality development of other rural revitalization industries.