Amid growing pressure for sustainable development, understanding the impact of green technology innovation (GTI) on firm performance has become increasingly important. However, existing studies on this relationship remain inconclusive, especially regarding how it varies across different firm lifecycle stages. This paper uses data from 4,275 firms in China's A-share market from 2007 to 2022 to explore the impact of GTI on firm performance, considering lifecycle stages. The results show that GTI positively impacts both financial and social performance. GTI enhances financial performance by boosting competitiveness and elevates social performance through improved environmental sustainability. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that GTI has a stronger impact on financial performance in manufacturing and private enterprises, while it more effectively improves social performance in service and state-owned enterprises. Additionally, the results indicate that GTI's positive impact is significant only in the mature phase, with no significant effects observed in the growth or declining stages. These findings suggest that firms should strategically integrate GTI, tailoring efforts according to different lifecycle stages and adjusting strategies based on ownership and industry characteristics. Meanwhile, policymakers can support GTI adoption by providing targeted incentives and creating a conducive environment through flexible regulations and fintech advancements, especially for firms in resource-constrained stages.

This paper investigates the impact of environmental courts on pollution abatement at the city level, utilizing the establishment of environmental courts in China as a quasi-experiment. A spatial difference-in-differences model is employed to control for the influence of environmental courts on neighbouring non-pilot cities. The results underscore the effectiveness of environmental courts in reducing industrial pollutant emissions, evident in both the pilot areas and adjacent non-pilot areas. The influence of environmental courts on pollution abatement is more pronounced in cities characterized by stronger environmental regulations, higher level of economic agglomeration, and higher level of openness. Mechanism analysis shows that environmental courts promote environmental supervision by governments, public participation in environmental protection, and expenditure on environmental governance by firms. In summary, this paper unveils the tangible effects of environmental courts on pollution abatement and elucidates the mechanisms underpinning this relationship. These findings provide timely implications for regulators concerned with environmental protection.

Agricultural credit guaranteed loans were effective in alleviating the challenges of securing funding and obtaining costly finance for new agricultural enterprises. This research utilized the Probit model to empirically analyze the impact and influence of social capital on the participation behavior of agricultural credit guaranteed loans, based on survey data from 503 newly established agricultural businesses in Hunan Province. The findings indicated that social capital, social network, social trust, and social involvement all exert a favorable and substantial influence on the behavior of participating in agricultural credit guaranteed loans. Additional analysis revealed that the impression of value had a role in moderating the impact of social capital on the behavior of participating in agricultural credit guaranteed loans. Furthermore, the influence of social capital on engagement patterns varies across distinct demographic categories, including age, educational attainment, and years of business experience.

At a time when China encourages its firms to go overseas, especially to countries and regions involved in its “Belt and Road Initiative”, and sets up a favorable domestic environment for innovation and entrepreneurship, this paper is a first trial looking along both the two dimensions to test whether Chinese firms’ operating performance changes after cross-border merger and acquisition (CBM&A) activities, using entrepreneurial orientation (EO) as a moderating factor. The paper combines data from Chinese listed firms’ annual reports, Chinese stock market financial statements database and the Zephyr database from 2001 to 2015 to examine how acquirers’ operating performance changes after CBM&A activities using EO as a moderating factor. In order to test whether the results are affected by the stock market, this paper also defines abnormal return on equity (ROE) to detect abnormal operating performance. After these, the paper divides the sample into separate industry groups to see whether results will change. The results obtained for the whole sample show that the performance of Chinese listed firms is fluctuant after CBM&As within the sample years. It increases one year after the acquisition but drops two years later and then follows an increasing trend again. The moderating factor of EO is not significant for the sample as a whole. However, after dividing the sample into separate industry groups, it becomes clear that different industries have their own characteristics. EO helps Chinese listed firms to adjust to the post-acquisition situation and even to improve their performance to some extent in the metal mining industry and the business services industry. When ROE is substituted with abnormal ROE, the results do not change much.

This paper uses Chinese firm-level data from 2001 to 2007 and applies a propensity score matching method combined with a difference-in-differences approach to examine the direct causal link between inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and various aspects of Chinese firms’ performance. We divide China into four economic regions and subdivide the origin of foreign investment into HMT investment (within the Greater China Area) and other foreign investment (outside the Greater China Area). The results indicate that the progress of the IFDI market in China is not evenly balanced within the four economic regions, while the different origins of foreign investment produce different effects.