Shujie Yao

• Ph.D
• Chair at Liaoning University and Chongqing University, China

Based on Harrold's neutral technological progress production function, this paper studies the impact of Covid‐19 on output distortion and capital mismatch of China's A‐share listed firms in 2006–2022. It also identifies the ‘positive transmission’ and ‘backward forcing’ mechanisms of this impact effect. The empirical results suggest that there exis...

Digital innovation is a critical factor in the successful digital transformation of firms, not only enhancing firm competitiveness but also contributing to sustainable social and economic development. The topic of driving digital innovation within firms has garnered significant attention in academic research. However, existing studies have overlook...

The economic consequences of water efficiency that results from water policies remains controversial. Studies on how water rights trading (WRT), which allocates water resources in and across industries, influences corporate efficiency can reveal the behavioral response of market participants to increase water efficiency. Considering the WRT pilot i...

Using a panel data set comprising 284 prefecture‐level and above cities in China during 2005–2018, this study develops a theoretical mechanism harnessing the spatial Durbin model (SDM) to accumulate evidence and explain how innovation affects China's economic growth. It is found that regional economic growth is facilitated by local innovation activ...

Tourism exerts a great effect on the modern economy and relies largely on the flow of people facilitated by high-quality transportation infrastructure. Applying a spatial econometric method, this paper investigates the effect of high-speed rail (HSR) on tourism expansion in China from the view of the spatial spillover effect. Based on a 276 Chinese...

This book is an investigation into China's reform process during the period 1979 to 1987, with especial reference to the effect of the process on the industries (mostly manufacturing) that are still owned by the state. The data on which this book is based results from a large-scale study in which the authors collaborated with the Institute of Econo...

Digital transformation has given firms new development capability. This paper portrays the overall digital transformation intensity of China's listed firms in 2007–20, and empirically examines the impact of digital transformation on outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) and its transmission mechanisms for the first time. It is found that digital...

This paper studies the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on greenfield investments using a large panel dataset comprising 78 countries and regions at the monthly level from January 2019 to August 2021 (32 months). Particular attention is paid to whether the Belt and Road (BRI), a regional cooperation initiative, contributes to mitigating these shocks...

This paper explores the impact of digital economy development on the wage gap between high- and low-skilled workers based on the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) database in 2010–2020. The research results suggest that the higher the level of digital economy development, the larger the wage gap between high- and low-skilled workers. Some mediating...

Economic agglomeration has played a key function in China’s economic transformation. Meanwhile, structural adjustment and external pressure to reduce carbon emission necessitate a deeper investigation into its relationship with carbon productivity. This paper measures economic agglomeration and carbon productivity of 281 cities in China in 2003–201...

This study analyzes the effects of transportation infrastructure on carbon emissions (CE) based on the level of urban economic agglomeration. For this purpose, 281 Chinese cities are considered during the period 2003–2017. A Moran’s I index is used to assess the spatial distribution characteristics of transportation infrastructure and CE. In additi...

Compared with other transportation facilities, high-speed rail (HSR) may be more beneficial to “green development.” Based on a sample of 276 cities in China over 2005–2019, this study calculates the actual and change values of green total factor productivity (GTFP) with the stochastic frontier approach (SFA) and investigates the effect of HSR on GT...

This paper investigates the impact on the risk of a crash in the stock price (SPCR) of a hometown connection between a firm’s chief executive officer (CEO) and suppliers. Using manually collected data on CEOs’ hometown connections among Chinese A-share companies (A-shares, or RMB common shares, are issued by companies registered in China and only l...

This paper studies how transportation infrastructure affects carbon emission from the urban economic agglomeration perspective. Using 281 Chinese cities in 2003-17, a Moran’s I index is used to test the spatial distribution characteristics of transportation infrastructure and carbon emission. A spatial Durbin model is also employed to explore the s...

This article examines the effect of high-speed rail (HSR) on haze pollution using a panel data set covering 276 Chinese cities in 2010–2019 using the GS2SLS approach. It is found that HSR accessibility can significantly reduce haze pollution in China, which has important policy implications on HSR development.

This article investigates the impact of supervision intensity on stock price crash risk (SPCR) in China. A firm’s decision to hide bad news lies in the trade-off between the benefits of violation and the costs of being punished by government regulations. Our research findings reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between SPCR and supervision int...

Based on panel data from 30 provinces over the period of 2003–2016, this study uses the spatial econometric model to examine the effect of green credits on carbon productivity. The research findings show that there is a significant positive correlation between green credits and carbon productivity among provinces during this period. Provinces with...

In this study, we analyse China's foreign trade performance under the global COVID‐19 pandemic using the monthly data in 2019–2021. This paper finds that: (1) China's exports to its major trading partners recover and continue to grow in the second half of 2020 and 2021, after falling significantly in the first half of 2020; (2) the mechanical & ele...

This study examines the economic, welfare, and environmental impacts of trade tariffs using China’s 2014 coal tariff adjustment as a quasi-experiment. Employing a global simulation model derived from computable partial equilibrium analysis, it reveals three notable findings. First, the tariff adjustment is surprisingly found to have had little impa...

Applying the social network analysis (SNA) approach, this paper investigates the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on urban housing prices from the perspective of network accessibility. Based on a sample of 285 cities in China over 2009–2017, we find a positive effect of HSR network accessibility on urban housing prices. An increase in HSR network ac...

Based on a two-sector (clean energy and dirty energy) model of directed technical change, we examine the relationship between carbon emissions, clean energy consumption, and financial development in China using the ARDL method. The results show that clean energy consumption reduces carbon emissions effectively but the effect of financial developmen...

With deteriorating air quality in Chinese cities, high-speed rail (HSR) has attracted serious attention as an efficient transportation system to contain haze pollution across the country. This study introduces the concept of HSR accessibility and applies the generalized spatial two-stage least square method to examine the effect of HSR on haze poll...

Based on a two-sector (clean energy and dirty energy) model of directed technical change, we examine the relationship between carbon emissions, clean energy consumption and financial development in China using the ARDL method. Clean energy consumption reduces carbon emissions effectively but the effect of financial development is opposite, suggesti...

High-speed railway (HSR) is a new and increasingly popular transportation mode in China bringing about a significant impact on the economy, including tourism development. This article investigates the effect of HSR on tourism development in China based on a time-varying difference-in-differences model. Cities connected by HSR in 2013 and 2014 are r...

The global COVID-19 pandemic has generated serious challenges for the world economy, including cross-border foreign direct investment (FDI). China’s inward FDI (IFDI) and outward FDI (OFDI) are also facing unprecedented risks and challenges. This paper first clarifies the timelines of the pandemic evolving in China, the US, and the rest of the worl...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reveal the internal mechanism of the deviation of targeted poverty alleviation under the condition of asymmetric information. Design/methodology/approach Introducing a traditional signaling game theory model with dynamic asymmetric information, this study uses a dataset covering 813 poor households from Sout...

This paper studies the effect of high‐speed rail (HSR) on urban economic growth using a panel data comprising 285 Chinese cities in 2007–2017. Combining the endogenous growth model with a difference‐in‐difference analysis, we extend the horse‐mass theory to explain how China may use HSR to avoid the so‐called middle‐income trap. The paper also exam...

Rapid development of high-speed rail (HSR) in the past decade has a tremendous boosting effect on China’s economy and society. Under the ‘New normal’, HSR provides an important physical space for the steady expansion of the national economy. This paper uses a panel dataset comprising 285 prefecture-level cities in 2010–2016 to establish an investme...

Renewable energy plays an important role in reducing global carbon (CO2) emission. This paper builds a RER (renewable energy consumption rate) index to represent the energy structure of a country and proposes a U-shaped RKC (renewable energy Kuznets Curve) hypothesis between RER and economic growth. We also examine the dynamic relationship between...

This paper examines the impact of corporate philanthropy on trade credit financing for listed private firms in China viewed from the heterogeneous perceptions of credit suppliers. A positive relationship is found between corporate philanthropy and trade credit financing, suggesting that in general firms donating more can obtain more trade credits....

High‐speed rail (HSR) has been an important driver of China's economic expansion over the last decade. Using data of 285 prefecture‐level cities over 2010–2014, this paper proposes an endogenous economic growth model to explain how and why HSR may have propelled China's economic growth by reducing the time‐space between cities. The research results...

Rapid development of High-speed railways (HSR) in China has attracted serious research interest. This paper proposes an endogenous economic growth model to explain how and why HSR may lead to faster economic growth and regional convergence in China using data from 285 cities in 2010–2014. TSLS estimation suggests that HSR has a powerful impact on u...

Using the weak-form measure, this paper derives a normalized index to study the impact of China's financial liberalization policies on its stock market integration with the rest of the world during 2000–2015. It reveals that the Chinese stock markets in general have become more integrated with the world markets irrespective of significant fluctuati...

This book presents a series of our studies on various aspects of the Chinese banking industry over the last 15 years. It starts from the economic and banking sector reform, which matches China’s long-term ambition to build a modern financial services industry. When we initially started our research on the Chinese banking industry, we encountered tw...

In the past decade, the financial services industry has changed significantly, especially after the 2008 global financial crisis. The emergence of FinTech has been enabled by a “perfect storm” of rising customer expectations for services, increased access to VC funding, reduced barriers to entry, and accelerated technological advancements (World Fi...

Competition is important in any industry, with impacts on a wide range of issues such as productivity, innovation, and consumer welfare. In banking, competition is even more important because of its externalities beyond the banking industry. Anti-competitive behaviour of banks may have far-reaching influences on social welfare and well-being of the...

Over the last few decades, the financial system has gone through enormous transformation due to a number of driving forces, such as globalization, financial liberalization, financial innovation, and technological advancement. Development in information and communication technologies has blurred the boundaries of different segments of the financial...

Banks are the cornerstone of the financial system, especially in developing countries where capital markets are underdeveloped. The global financial crisis in 2007–2008 caused great turmoil in the banking sectors of the developed world with the clustered collapses of international financial giants in the advanced economies. However, there have been...

One main objective of banking reform in China is to improve bank performance so that the banking sector could allocate capital more efficiently. While three decades of reform give rise to a number of important research questions, this chapter addresses the following three issues: Has the banking reform been motivated by the agency theory and the bu...

In most countries, pawnbroking is an intermediate financial instrument to help private households or individuals meet their short-term and urgent consumption needs. In China, due to market imperfection and institutional discrimination against the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by commercial banks and other formal financial institutions,...

This chapter provides a systematic review of the evolution of the Chinese banking sector in Sect. 2.1, beginning from its establishment in 1949 through to early institutional reforms in the 1980s, commercialization reforms in the mid-1990s, modernization reforms in the early twenty-first century, and modern banking development in the post-crisis er...

Compared to inward foreign direct investment, outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) from China is a relatively new phenomenon. However, the volume of China's OFDI increased rapidly from 2004. There has been an increasing amount of literature on the motivations of China's OFDI, but few studies have focused on its location determinants. The presen...

Pawnbrokers in China, like those in many other countries, not only provide financial intermediation services to individuals and households to finance the shortfall between consumption and income in the short term, but also serve as a supplementary financing channel for private entrepreneurs and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that face d...

In China, pawnbrokers not only provide financial intermediation services to individuals and households who need to finance their short-term gap between consumption and income like those in many other countries, but also serve as a supplementary financing channel for private entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who face diffic...

This paper examines the impact of financial constraints across business cycles on production market competition using firm-level data from China’s manufacturing industry during 1998–2012. This study constructs a theoretical model with respect to financial constraints and product market competition and conducts a hierarchically multivariate regressi...

This book is a wide-ranging and timely overview of the contemporary Chinese banking system. It charts the vast changes in Chinese banking from before China’s admission to the WTO in 2001 to more recent regulatory reform and developments in the shadow banking sector. The book begins with an economic history of the mono-banking system, and a critical...

This paper establishes a dynamic exchange rate determination model incorporating capital control and foreign exchange intervention in a Taylor rule framework. It uses the SVAR model to identify the sources of real exchange rate dynamics for three pairs of currencies: RMB/USD, Yen/USD and GBP/USD. It shows that demand shock, instead of supply shock,...

This paper studies the dynamic relationship of China's inward and outward foreign direct investments (FDI). It first identifies the key determinants of China's outward FDI (OFDI) in 172 host countries during 2003–2009 using a partial stock adjustment model. It finds strong evidence of dynamic adjustment in China's OFDI stock with an agglomeration e...

In most countries, pawnbroking is an intermediate financial instrument to help private households or individuals meet their short-term and urgent consumption needs. In China, due to market imperfection and institutional discrimination against the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by commercial banks and other formal financial institutions,...

Using the daily return indexes of 39 industries obtained from DataStream database during 3 January 2000- 31 May 2011 of the world stock markets and the multi-factor R-squared approach, we derive a normalized index to analyse the impact of China’s financial liberalisation on its stock market interdependence with the world. It is found that China’s f...

This paper studies China's stock market with respect to financial liberalization and international market interdependence after its accession to the WTO in 2001. Using the multi-factor R-squared measure, we derive a normalized index to measure the impact of financial liberalization policies on stock market interdependence between China and the worl...

The failed advance of Chinalco on Rio-Tinto and the quick success of Minmetals’ acquisition of Oz Minerals within a week in June 2009 represented China’s persistent thirst for natural resources such as iron ore and bauxite. However, the eagerness and scale of acquisitions of foreign mining companies by China’s large state-owned enterprises cannot b...

One important motivation of outward foreign direct investments from a less advanced country such as China is technology seeking. This chapter studies the development of China’s automotive industry in the past 60 years and uses the case of Geely’s acquisition of Volvo to demonstrate the increasing importance of technology-seeking related to OFDI.

In the foregoing two chapters, we have studied China’s outward FDI (OFDI) by examining the underlying motivations and the locational determinants in a static framework, and by investigating the dynamic adjustment of China’s OFDI and its relation to China’s inward FDI (IFDI) in a dynamic framework. We have shed some lights on the causes of China’s O...

China has been acknowledged as an important recipient of inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) since the ‘open-door’ policy was launched in 1979. However, the rapid integration of China into the world economy has also led it to become a major source of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI).1 China’s OFDI developed from a very limited scale and...

China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) is a new phenomenon, and studies related on this issue are largely underdeveloped. Existing descriptive and empirical studies generally conclude that China’s OFDI is relevant to mainstream FDI theories. In other words, the general motivations and determinants of OFDI discussed in the FDI literature a...

The previous chapter examines the underlying motivations and the locational determinants of China’s outward FDI (OFDI). Like the majority of existing empirical studies on China’s OFDI, the previous chapter focuses on the effects of host country characteristics in a static framework.1 This chapter extends the discussion and analysis made in the prev...

This book deals with a series of important issues on China’s OFDI. The case studies, Chinalco and Geely, are presented to demonstrate the difficulty of and experiences about Chinese MNCs to become global. In the Chinalco case, it shows that Chinese MNCs require state support to become competitive with their foreign counterparts. It also reveals tha...

After more than 30 years of fast expansion, China has become the world’s second-largest economy and the largest energy consumer and C02 emitter. In 2010, China consumed 3.2 billion tons of coal equivalents (TCE) and 4.2 trillion kWh of electricity, up by 6 per cent and 13.7 per cent respectively from a year earlier. It is estimated that from 2010 t...

Since China began to embrace a free market approach to business and opened its doors to the outside world in 1978, its economy has made tremendous progress. Chinese companies, especially large-scale state owned enterprises (SOEs), have increasingly shown interest in strengthening their ability to compete in the global economy. However, they are fac...

Employing the content analysis approach, this paper aims to identify the determinants of corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) in China using the annual reports of over 800 A-share listed firms on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. We find that CSRD is positively associated with firm size, media exposure, share ownership concentration and ins...

Rapid urbanisation and rising income have led to a strong demand for housing in urban China. However, housing development has been distorted by speculation, income inequality and lack of government support for low-cost houses. In recent years, house prices become so high, making the vast majority of urban residents unable to afford, whereas rich fa...

This paper combines the static effect of ownership and the dynamic effect of privatization on bank performance in China over 1995–2010, reporting a significantly higher performance by private intermediaries – joint stock commercial banks and city commercial banks – relative to state-owned commercial banks. However, publicly traded banks, subject to...

The concept of ‘harmonization’ has become very popular in China, with the Chinese government increasingly applying the term ‘harmonious society’ to internal affairs and the term ‘harmonious world’ to international relationships. Harmonization as both an end and a means of China’s development is deeply rooted in China’s cultural tradition, which emp...

As China has rapidly emerged as one of the world’s largest investors abroad, there has been a hectic debate in the literature on whether its emergence as a major foreign investor may have undermined the importance of western industrialised economies, including those in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This paper aim...

A decline in the relative price of imported goods compared to that of domestically produced goods may have different effects on domestic consumption. Such effects may not be accurately detected and measured in a classical permanent-income model without considering consumption habit formation as pointed out by Nishiyama (2005). To resolve this probl...

Air transport increased exponentially in China over the last 30 years, but studies on this issue are few. This paper aims to fill in this literature gap. It identifies the key determinants of air transport in the Chinese regions for the period 1995–2006. The empirical results based on an augmented production function indicate that air transport is...

The 2008 world financial crisis had led many industrialised countries to endure a significant decline in their GDPs. Though the Chinese government arranged a 4 trillion RMB stimulus package coupled with 30 trillion RMB of new bank credits in 2008–2010 to mitigate the impact of the world financial crisis, the growth of China’s international trade de...

China and India are the two largest and fastest growing developing economies. But rapid growth has been accompanied by rising income inequality and social discontent, especially among different religious and ethnic groups. Few comparative studies exist on the issue. The paper shows that poverty and inequality are closely related to issues such as e...

China is now the world's second largest economy, and it is expected to overtake the United States to become the largest by 2020. What are the implications for the global environment and climate change if China surpasses the United States? There are major concerns with China's rapid rise because its economic and industrial structure is increasingly...

This paper studies the market reactions to corporate philanthropic giving in response to the 12 May 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan, China. Based on a sample of 136 Chinese listed companies, our results indicate a significant and positive seven-day cumulative abnormal rise in the share prices of those companies making donations compared to thos...

This paper presents a new economic theory to explain the evolution of a financial crisis and why a major crisis may take a long time to recover. It suggests that asymmetric psychological reactions of market players to gains and losses are the principal cause of a crisis and responsible for prolonging recovery. Three different shapes of recovery, V,...

The US credit crunch generated substantial turmoil in the global financial markets and directly caused the collapse of several world banking giants. Nonetheless, Chinese commercial banks, decoupled from the rest of the world, achieved remarkable results because of their risk‐averse nature and banking reform during the past 10 years. To improve corp...

This paper investigates the dynamic and long-run relationships between monetary policy and asset prices in China using monthly data from June 2005 to September 2010. Johansen’s cointegration approach based on vector autoregression (VAR) and Granger causality test are used to identify the long-run relationships and directions of causality between as...