Huwei Wen

Nanchang University · School of Economics & Management

The informal sector, which is prevalent in many developing countries, is an important factor influencing the strategic decisions of formal enterprises. Using a sample of manufacturing enterprises in developing and emerging countries from the World Bank Enterprise Survey from 2006 to 2020, this study investigates the mechanism of formation of the en...

This study investigates Chinese A-share listed companies in the new energy industry for the period 2007–2019. We shed new light on the nexus between fiscal policy uncertainty and corporate innovation investment. The main empirical findings are threefold. First, fiscal policy uncertainty significantly reduces new energy enterprises' innovation inves...

Using the quasi-experimental method, this research investigates the impact of green credit policy on the upgrade of energy-intensive enterprises from the perspective of credit allocation efficiency. Through the panel data of listed companies in China, this study finds that the green credit policy under the Green Credit Guidelines in 2012 (GCG2012)...

This study employs six price series from international and Chinese crude oil markets and Chinese stock market to test for bubbles. Based on the efficient market hypothesis and the Generalized Supremum Augmented Dickey–Fuller test, we identify two bubble episodes in each series, namely, the 2007–2008 global financial crisis and 2014–2015 oil excess...

Environmental labels are designed to signal environmental and health information on products throughout their life cycle to consumers and other stakeholders. Investigating A-share listed manufacturing firms in China for the 2004–2018 period, this paper sheds new light on the nexus of environmental labeling certifications and firm performance. We fi...

In developing countries, foreign direct investment (FDI) plays a significant role in industrial catch-up concerning knowledge acquisition and technological innovation. The Chinese government's development strategy is vital in attracting FDI and green innovation (GI). This article investigates the moderating role of development strategy in the causa...

Regional imbalance is a typical feature of economic and social development in China, and place-based policies aimed at promoting balanced regional development may bring challenges to low-carbon goals. This study uses the panel data of China’s prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2019 to investigate the impact of place-based policies on carbon emiss...

This study investigates the effect of digital economy on entrepreneurship. Our empirical results show that digital economic development significantly increases the probability of labor force participation in entrepreneurial activities. Digital economy also has a polarizing effect on entrepreneurial behavior. It significantly promotes the entreprene...

Inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) can promote a country’s economic growth, but the effect of inward and outward FDI on regional ecological well-being performance (EWP) is uncertain. Using the data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2004 to 2019, this study employs the spatial Dubin model to examine the spatial spillover effects of synerg...

Uncertainty can bring about challenges to the operations of the energy industry, which may inevitably affect corporate innovation decisions. This study uses the firm-level data from the new energy sector in China to examine how perceived uncertainty affects their innovation decisions. It is found that new energy companies significantly increase inn...

China has proposed ambitious carbon neutrality targets to address the challenge of climate change and promote sustainable development despite being the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide. This study constructs an index system with six dimensions: carbon source, carbon sink, electrification, low-carbon technology, the government in action, an...

International investment is sensitive to environmental policies, and developing countries are worried about the withdrawal of foreign capital when adopting climate policies. This study treats the pilot policy of low-carbon cities as a quasi-experiment and uses urban panel data from 2006 to 2019 to investigate how climate policy affects foreign dire...

Using a quasi-natural experiment and city-level panel data from 2009 to 2018 in China, this paper investigates the impact of broadband infrastructure on green total-factor energy efficiency. Empirical results show that Broadband China Strategy has improved the green total-factor energy efficiency by an average of 2.61%, and the improvement effect i...

Using a sample of manufacturing enterprises from the World Bank Survey during the period from 2006 to 2020, this study explores the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on corporate energy intensity and its mechanisms. Empirical results show that ICT adoption significantly improves the energy intensity of manufacturing enterpr...

Climate change has brought great challenges to global sustainability, but only few research achievements in innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation have been reported. This study aims to identify the current research status and trends in climate innovation via CiteSpace visual analysis. We searched for published papers (up to 2021)...

Clean production and digitalization are the main directions of global manufacturing development under the new industrial revolution. Based on the application of digital technologies in enterprises caused by the smart city construction in China, this study adopts the difference-in-difference method to investigate the impact of digitalization and env...

To improve environmental quality and reduce pollutant emissions, China enacted the Environmental Protection Tax Law (EPTL) in 2018, leading to increase environmental pressure. Based on the data of energy-intensive firms listed in China’s A-share market, this study examines firms’ investment and financing behavior, increasing the short-term loans fo...

The digital transformation of global economic and social activities brought about by advanced information and communication technology (ICT) may have a profound impact on sustainable economic development. This research measures the digitalization of the economy and society in cities of China based on Internet-related indicators and digital financia...

Although the digital economy has become a new driving force for development worldwide, it is still unclear how digital economy development affects green total factor energy efficiency (GTFEE). Using panel data from 281 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2018, this study empirically analyzes the effect of digital economy development on GT...

The existing literature mainly focuses on the impact of information communication technologies on carbon emissions, but little attention has been paid to the role of the digital economy in transporting carbon emissions. This paper calculates the index of the digital economy through the entropy weight Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to...

As the driving force for the upgrading of the global industrial structure, digital technology has been at the helm of transforming the current economic and technological paradigm. This study empirically analyzes the role of the digital economy in the upgrading industrial structure using panel data from 237 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011...

Economic growth targets management is the driving force behind China's phenomenal economic achievement over the past decades. However, how it affects corporate environmental behavior remains ambiguous. Based on the data of China's A-share listed companies in the heavy-polluting industries from 2009 to 2019, this study sheds light on the effect of e...

On the basis of new structural economics theory and heterogeneity of firm viability, this study analyzes the effect of trade policy uncertainty on firm export behavior using panel data of Chinese listed companies in the industrial sector. Empirical results show that the high uncertainty of trade policy significantly inhibits the extensive and inten...

Digital transformation is permeating from the service sector to the manufacturing industry and is becoming an increasingly important factor in enterprise operating decisions. Based on data from A-share listed Chinese manufacturing companies, this study examines the nexus between the digitalization of the manufacturing industry and corporate innovat...

This study mainly investigates the nexus of environmental protection tax and corporate environmental investment using a quasi-natural experiment and the difference-in-difference method. On the basis of 422 Chinese listed enterprises from 2012 to 2020, empirical results show that environmental protection tax has significantly reduced corporate envir...

With the digital transformation of the economy and society, high-speed Internet is becoming an important supporting infrastructure for international trade activities. This study treats the pilot policy of the Broadband China strategy as a quasi-natural experiment and investigates the ways in which broadband infrastructure development affects export...

In 2016, China implemented an environmental protection tax (EPTL2016) to promote the transformation and upgrading of heavily polluting industries through tax leverage. Using panel data of China’s listed companies, this study assesses the treatment effects of the EPTL2016 on the transformation and upgrading of heavily polluting firms by incorporatin...

Despite the increasing use of digital technology in industrial production, how industrial digitalization affects the environmental performance of production activities remains unclear. This research contributes to the literature on the relationship between industrial digitalization and enterprise environmental performance by employing a large sampl...

The international trade weight of scrap copper has exceeded 6 million tons annually over the past two decades. China introduced the “National Sword” policy in 2017, which brought uncertainty to the international recycling of scrap copper. We use the international scrap copper trade figures from 1998 to 2019 in UN Comtrade, and seek to analyze the i...

This study investigates the varying effects of trade liberalization on environmental pollution from the perspective of enterprise viability. We find that trade liberalization significantly reduces pollution emissions, and the environmental effect on low viability and high viability enterprises varies. Our results also indicate that the emissions tr...

The Chinese manufacturing sector has undergone an accelerated digital transformation. This study examines the impact of industrial digitalization on energy intensity in China. Energy intensity is negatively correlated with digitalization in terms of time trends, cross-sectional differences, and correlation coefficients. Our empirical analysis shows...

With the rapid development of the digital economy, understanding the relationship between the digital economy and the environment is increasingly important for sustainable development. This study mainly studies the nexus of digital economy development and environmental quality for 217 cities in China from 2003 to 2018. Specifically, this study firs...

Despite the increasing use of digital technology in industrial production, how industrial digitalization affects the environmental performance of production activities remains unclear. This research contributes to the literature on the relationship between industrial digitalization and enterprise environmental performance by employing a large sampl...

This study adopted the two-stage super-efficiency network slack-based model (SBM) to measure the green development performance index (GDPI) of 30 provinces in China. The Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition was used to analyze the regional differences and their sources in China’s green development performance. The results are as follows: first, the...

In 2016, China enacted a law on environmental protection tax (EPTL2016) to promote the transformation and upgrading of heavily polluting industries through tax leverage. Using the panel data of China’s listed companies, this study assesses the treatment effects of environmental protection tax law on the transformation and upgrading of heavily pollu...

To promote county economic prosperity and social development, China enacted a fiscal reform known as “province governing county” (PGC) in the early 2000s. Using the difference-in-differences (DID) method and a massive sample of enterprises from 2003 to 2011, this study investigates the effect of PGC reform on firm environmental performance. The res...

Using the difference-in-differences method, this study investigates the impact of bank lending intervention on firm innovation. We find that bank lending intervention significantly hampers R&D investment of firms in overcapacity industries. Moreover, policy intervention significantly reduces bank lending but increases the firms’ trade credit as wel...

Employing OLS, GIVE and propensity score-matching (PSM) methods, this study investigates the impact of industry association on the innovation of small and micro enterprises. Using a survey of China micro and small enterprises (CMES), we find that industry association significantly and positively affects the innovative behaviour of small and micro e...

Aimed at improving innovation capacity and upgrading technology of manufacturing industry, ‘China Manufacturing 2025’ (CM2025), which relies on selective industrial policies, has attracted great attention. This paper investigates the effects of CM2025 on firms’ R&D investment using CEM-DID, a combination method based on the coarsened exact matching...

A comprehensive competition policy for talent introduction was first implemented in Xi’an in February 2017 and has been imitated by many cities in China ever since. Although turned out to be useful in alleviating the problem of talents loss in the lower-tier cities, the policy has been criticized for its potential effect of driving up housing price...