Volume 14, Issue 3

In response to the growing trend of sustainable development in various countries, the specific advantages driving outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) by multinational corporations have undergone significant changes. The emphasis on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors and the ESG advantages they create may become a new competitive edge for OFDI. This paper explores the impact and mechanisms of ESG advantages on Chinese enterprises’ OFDI, using data from A-share listed companies between 2009 and 2019. The study finds that ESG advantages can significantly and steadily enhance the likelihood and scale of listed companies’ overseas investments. The investment promotion effect of ESG is mainly evident in greenfield investments and is slightly more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises. Mechanism analysis shows that ESG advantages can reduce the capital costs (mainly debt costs) of cross-border investments internally, easing financing constraints. Moreover, when confronted with host countries with different ESG levels, multinational corporations with ESG advantages can flexibly leverage social and governance advantages and overcome the disadvantages caused by environmental factors, thereby enhancing corporate OFDI activities. This paper may be the first to confirm the positive impact of corporate ESG advantages on OFDI, revealing the growing importance of responsible enterprises in building a higher-level open economy system at the micro level. It also provides important insights for promoting the image of responsible enterprises and great power globally and realizing the concept of a community with a shared future of humanity.

In the context of the digital economy and the decline in the demographic dividend, how have the rights of low- and medium-skilled workers changed? This study uses cross-sectional data from the China Household Income Project (CHIP) in 2002, 2007, 2008, and 2013, employing a two-way fixed effects model to answer the research question. The findings are as follows: First, the development of the digital economy has reduced the relative income rights of low- and medium-skilled workers but improved their relative welfare. Second, the efficiency gains and industrial intelligence resulting from the digital economy’s factor reorganization and reallocation have weakened the relative income rights of low- and medium-skilled workers, but they have enhanced their relative welfare through digital governance models. Third, the labor shortage effect due to the decline in the demographic dividend primarily affects low- and medium-skilled workers, particularly those with low skills, leading to a supply trap. Fourth, in the context of declining demographic dividends, the development of the digital economy has only diminished the rights of low-skilled workers. This suggests that the substitution effect of low-skilled labor caused by the digital economy far outweighs the labor shortage effect due to the decline in the demographic dividend, and the impact of individual endowments, macroeconomic conditions, and government governance levels on the rights of low-skilled workers varies significantly.

This paper incorporates non-homothetic preferences and the product quality ladder assumption into a model of heterogeneous multi-product firms from the perspective of scale and quality to investigate the differential impact of domestic demand upgrading on firm resource reallocation and export strategies. The theory suggests that, compared to basic products, emerging products possess higher prices and superior quality. Therefore, in response to the expansion of the domestic demand scale, firms concentrate on producing and exporting basic products, adopting a cost-competitive strategy of “small profits but quick turnover” in exports. Conversely, upgrading the domestic demand structure incentivizes firms to produce and export a greater variety of emerging products, pursuing a quality-competitive strategy of “high quality at a premium price.” Further analysis of the impact mechanisms has revealed that demand scale expansion intensifies market competition and reduces export costs, prompting firms to narrow their export scope and gain price advantages in exports. By contrast, demand structure upgrading alleviates market competition and enhances export quality, enabling surviving firms to introduce more high-quality emerging product variety and achieve export quality advantages. Using Chinese firm-level microdata from 2000 to 2014, this paper empirically validates the above propositions. Against the backdrop of the world entering a new period of turbulence and transformation, this study provides micro-level evidence and policy implications for leveraging the scale and structural advantages of domestic demand to promote stable and quality-enhanced exports.

The target responsibility system of environmental protection, introduced during the 11th Five-Year Plan period, is a key feature of China’s environmental regulation policy framework. Guided by the principle of high-quality development, this system addresses the challenge of incentivizing green technology innovation. This paper examines how the target responsibility system of environmental protection affects the quantity and quality of green technology innovation activities across society, identifying environmentally friendly invention patents at the International Patent Classification (IPC) group level. Using the difference-in-differences method, the study finds that while the target responsibility system of environmental protection has increased the number of green patent applications, it has also led to a decline in the quality of these innovations. Further analysis reveals that enterprises with weaker innovation capabilities are the primary contributors to the decline in innovation quality, particularly in the field of atmospheric pollution control technology, which is subject to environmental constraints, as well as in industries with moderate to light pollution. Notably, the substantive examination system effectively ensures the quality of authorized patents, mitigating the distortion effect of policies on innovation quality. The findings provide theoretical support and practical recommendations for deepening the reform of the target responsibility system of environmental protection, establishing a market-oriented green technology innovation system, and optimizing the intellectual property system.

Using data from China’s A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2023, we employ the entropy weight method to create an enterprise-level new quality productive forces (NQPF) index to assess the impact of government subsidies on enterprises’ NQPF. Our findings indicate that government subsidies can generally enhance the NQPF levels of enterprises, though with notable regional, industrial, and technological variations. In particular, government subsidies can significantly boost NQPF levels in the eastern region. Additionally, these subsidies have a substantial positive effect on technology-intensive and capital-intensive enterprises, while their impact on labor-intensive enterprises is limited. Furthermore, our mechanism analysis suggests that government subsidies can improve NQPF by alleviating financing constraints, enhancing digitalization levels, and stimulating innovation within enterprises.

This study evaluates urbanization’s impact on carbon emission rights value in China using translog production functions and carbon shadow pricing models. Firstly, the MK trend test and decoupling analysis divided the city into four carbon emission pressure types, where an enhanced translog three-factor model is used to analyze the nonlinear relationships among population, area, economic development, and total carbon emissions. The results reveal that population growth and urban expansion significantly increase carbon allowance values, with heterogeneous effects across urban types. Carbon-excessive cities demonstrate the strongest correlation, while plateau cities show minimal impacts, suggesting existing low-carbon adaptations. Notably, 50% of cities have achieved peak emissions during rapid urbanization, fulfilling emission control targets. Excessive-emission cities face urgent decarbonization pressure, requiring prioritized policy interventions, whereas plateau cities’ gradual emission growth offers transferable experience for low-carbon transitions. Finally, taking the cities in Guangdong province as an example, we use the shadow price model to calculate the value of carbon emission right, and combine the marginal influence of social factors to obtain the change of carbon emission right value under the influence of urbanization. The highest was 4759.08 yuan / ton for Shenzhen and the lowest was 253.19 yuan / ton for Heyuan.