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The aim of this article is to investigate how the use of financial instruments influences the development of Regional Development Funds (RFR) in Poland and to assess the maturity and coherence of the regional development financing system in this country.

The methodology is based on the multilevel governance literature and on data collected during 26 in-depth interviews in regional, national and international institutions.

The authors demonstrate that the use of financial instruments stimulates new kinds of cooperation between several institutions and contributes to the establishment of RFR. The authors also show that the Polish regional financing system is still developing and formulate recommendations about necessary improvements.

The main contribution of this article, in addition to taking up a new, relevant topic for the regional development policy in countries benefiting from European Union (EU) cohesion policy, is the application of the multilevel governance (MLG) concept to explain the development of the Polish regional development financing system. Moreover, the significant added value of this study comes from the use of data collected during 26 in-depth interviews (IDI) in regional, national and international institutions on the use of repayable instruments in regional development policy.

This study intends to explore the relationship between digital finance and the vertical specialization of firms. The following questions are discussed: (1) As a representative new financial development model, what is the role of digital finance in the vertical specialization of firms? (2) If digital finance improves the level of vertical specialization of firms, what is the mechanism behind such improvement? (3) How does digital finance impact the vertical specialization of firms in different regions, industries, and firms?

A two-way fixed-effect model of panel data is proposed to verify the relationship between digital finance and the vertical specialization of firms. This model is constructed by matching the city-level data of digital finance with the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2018. Meanwhile, the instrumental variable (IV) method and difference-in-difference (DID) method are adopted to deal with the endogeneity problem of the model.

The authors' study finds that digital finance has significantly improved the level of vertical specialization of firms. The result is robust under the endogeneity consideration and a series of robustness tests. After the dimensionality of the index is reduced, the depth of digital finance usage is more conducive to the improvement of the vertical specialization of firms compared with the width of digital finance coverage and the level of financial digitization. Digital finance mainly improves the level of vertical specialization of firms by reducing transaction costs and increasing the market thickness of the intermediate products. Moreover, digital finance has certain heterogeneity in promoting the vertical specialization of firms, an effect that is more significant in the eastern region, manufacturing industry and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The first limitation is the mechanism test. This research only analyzes the mechanism from transaction cost and the market thickness of the intermediate products. With the rapid development of information technology, digital finance will be further integrated into people's production and life. There will then be more mechanisms that should be explored between digital finance and the vertical specialization of firms. Another limitation is the data sample of this paper. The conclusions of this research are based only on the data of listed companies. However, in the authors' opinion, the specialization level of small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) should be higher. Therefore, the conclusions of this work are underestimated, which can be considered as the lower limit of digital finance for enterprise specialization.

As a favorable financing channel to supplement traditional financial service functions, digital finance plays a critical role in the operating efficiency of enterprises and the effective allocation of macro resources. The authors' research shows that digital finance has significantly improved the vertical specialization of firms. This conclusion provides guides to improve the production efficiency of enterprises and the quality of economic development.

This paper has three main contributions. (1) The relationship between financial development and the vertical specialization of firms is innovatively discussed from the perspective of digital finance, which implies that digital finance can effectively promote the level of vertical specialization of firms. (2) This paper provides new perspectives and ideas to reveal the impact mechanism of digital finance on the real economy by systematically analyzing the mechanism of digital finance on the vertical specialization of firms from the perspectives of transaction costs and financing constraints. (3) The regional differences in the development of digital finance, industry differences in the vertical specialization of firms and differences in the nature of enterprise property rights are all under consideration, which improves the effectiveness and pertinence of digital finance in promoting the vertical specialization of firms.

This paper takes listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 1998 to 2013 as a research sample, investigating the role played by corruption and financial development, along with the interactions between the two, in determining the factors of a company’s capital structure in China’s legal environment. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using data of listed companies and the regional level of China during 1998-2013 and the STATA process (xtabond2 command) developed by Roodman (2006) to implement the two-step GMM estimation, empirically investigate the effect of interactions between corruption and financial development on a company’s capital structure in Chinese legal environment.

After both controlling for China’s legal environment, a company’s internal factors, and industry factors and considering endogeneity problems, the results show that corruption and financial development have significant positive influences on a company’s bank loans. However, when investigating the interactions between corruption and financial development, the authors find that financial development does not increase a company’s bank loans in areas with a higher level of corruption. However, corruption and financial development have insignificant influences on a company’s long-term bank loans.

The findings in this study suggest that a company’s capital structure was affected not only by the company’s internal factors and industry factors, but also by the company’s external factors, and the interactions between these factors.

To improve the financing circumstances of company credit, the next point of reform should be to improve their procedures for administrative examination and approval of bank creditors and strengthen the punishment and prevention of credit and judicial corruption to weaken the negative effects of corruption on firms’ capital structure decisions.

This study uses only Chinese listed companies, and considers the influence of the interaction of corruption and financial development on a company’s capital structure decisions.

According to the grey uncertainty and the connotation of different types weights, the purpose of this paper is to establish the pattern of multi-dimensional grey fuzzy decision making with feedback based on weight vector and weight matrix, and applies this pattern to evaluate the regional financial innovation ability.

At first, this paper analyzes the connotation of financial innovation ability and establishes the evaluation system of regional financial innovation ability. Second, the formula of computing the multi-objective weighted comprehensive value based on weight vector and weight matrix is put forward. In view of the object function with supervised factor and stability coefficient, this paper gives the formulas to compute weight vector and weight matrix. Moreover, the algorithm of the multi-dimensional grey fuzzy decision making pattern with feedback based on weight vector and weight matrix is expressed. At last, this paper uses the presented pattern to evaluate the financial innovation ability of thirty-one provinces in China.

The results are convincing: the development of regional financial innovation is not balanced in China, having obvious spatial clustering feature. The comparisons of evaluation results based on different forms of weights show that the calculating convergence speed of the pattern presented in this paper is fast. The pattern enhances the rationality of the demarcation point between categories, and the convergence within categories, making the evaluation more reasonable.

The method exposed in the paper can be used at evaluating the regional financial innovation ability and even for other similar evaluation problem.

The paper succeeds in realising both the pattern of multi-dimensional grey fuzzy decision making with feedback and evaluating the regional financial innovation ability by using the newest developed theories: weighted grey and fuzzy recognition theory based on weight vector and weight matrix.

For decades, financing constraints have been a major obstacle to corporate performance. Volumes have been written about the probable factors that can help firms alleviate such financial constraints. Nonetheless, empirical evidence concerning the various perspectives on how inventory control may influence financing constraints has been surprisingly scant. Using the resource- and region-based view as theoretical lenses, this study seeks to estimate the relationship between lean inventory, regional financial technology (fintech) and financing constraints.

Utilizing a large-scale sample of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China's manufacturing sector, the authors empirically test their hypotheses by using hierarchical linear regression models with multiple high-dimensional fixed effects.

Results indicate that firms with higher levels of inventory leanness and those located in more fintech-developed regions are less likely to encounter financing constraints. Furthermore, inventory leanness and regional fintech ecosystem development interact with each other to mitigate financing constraints. Moreover, inventory leanness significantly decreases firms' financing constraints when the regional fintech ecosystem is highly developed.

The present research contributes to the literature on the interface of supply chain management and financial management. It also provides managerial implications for policymakers and SME stakeholders.

This paper aims to investigate the influence of financial development on non-performing loans (NPL).

The model used in this study follows the NPL model of Louzis et al. (2012), Ozili (2015) and Beck et al. (2015).

The findings indicate that financial development, measured as foreign bank presence and financial intermediation, are positively associated with NPLs. Also, bank efficiency, loan loss coverage ratio, competition and banking system stability are inversely associated with NPLs, while NPLs are positively associated with banking crises and bank concentration. In the regional analysis, NPLs are negatively associated with regulatory capital and bank liquidity, implying that banking sectors with greater regulatory capital and liquidity experience fewer NPLs.

National bank regulators/supervisor should not only consider the role that financial development structures play in influencing aggregate NPLs but also ensure that thorough supervision of the lending practices of banks is in place as well as the active monitoring of the financial intermediation process in the country.

The study is the first to use a global sample to examine the direct relationship between NPL and financial development.

This paper uses data on 125 countries to study whether entrepreneurship affects the level of economic development by taking a regional perspective. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether entrepreneurship leads to economic development by accounting for several other factors including the level of financial development, the business environment and governance and the quality of institutions.

To investigate the impact of entrepreneurship on economic development, the paper uses data available from the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey database. The data are augmented with variables from the World Development Indicators and various Doing Business Reports. These variables are used to capture for other factors that affect the level of economic development.

The results indicate that economic development of the countries in the sample is affected by entrepreneurship even after controlling for regional variation. These results indicate that policy makers around the world need to put in place specific policies to promote the entrepreneurship culture among their population.

This paper uses a purely cross-sectional dimension to investigate the factors that impact on economic development with particular focus on entrepreneurship. This study uses cross-section data on various countries from different regions. However, panel data would allow the examination of causality issues and this could be a potential area of further research.

Entrepreneurship is increasingly seen as a development-promoting tool and it is recognized that countries, which facilitate entrepreneurship, tend to have higher economic development. The main finding of this paper is that irrespective of the level of development of any country or the region that it is located in, countries would gain from encouraging entrepreneurship.

The paper uses two broad proxies for entrepreneurship captured by the business density in each country and the number of newly formed limited firms. Interestingly, the paper also captures for regional variation to investigate if the relationship between economic development and entrepreneurship changes when different regions are being considered. The use of a merged data set is therefore a main contribution of this paper to the literature.

This paper aims to seek to find answers to three questions. First, is there any possibility of long-term cointegration between East and Southeast Asian equity markets? If so, how many cointegrating equations are there? Second, what are the short-term causal relationships between equity markets in East and Southeast Asia? Third, what is the East Asia’s most influential equity market toward their Southeast counterparts, and vice versa?

This study uses Johansen's (1988) cointegration method to test long-run relationships among East and Southeast Asian equity markets. With regards to short-run causal relationships, this study uses Granger-causality test as well as the forecast variance decomposition method.

Johansen test proves that there is cointegration between East and Southeast Asian equity markets, but the integration process is not complete. Cointegrating vector also provides evidence that member countries of ASEAN+3 respond differently to external shocks. With regards to short-run causal direction, this study finds that Japan Granger-causes all equity markets in Southeast Asia, while Singapore and Vietnam Granger-cause all equity markets in East Asia. These results imply that Japan is the market with most linkages in Southeast Asia, while Singapore and Vietnam are the markets with most linkages to East Asia. Furthermore, forecast variance decomposition reveals that Japan is the East Asia’s most influential equity markets, while Singapore is the most influential equity market in Southeast Asia. This study suggests that policymakers in East and Southeast Asian countries to synchronize the capital market standards and regulations as well as to reduce the barriers for capital mobility to spur the regional equity market integration.

Increasing integration of East and Southeast Asian capital markets forces policymakers in ASEAN+3 countries to synchronize monetary policies, as it has been found that regionally integrated capital markets reduce the degree of independent monetary policy (Logue et al., 1976). It is therefore important for policymakers in East and Southeast Asian countries to assess the possibility of stock market integration within this region to anticipate the future risks associated with economic integration as well as to build collective regional institutions (Wang, 2004). Click and Plummer (2005) also argued that integrated stock markets is more efficient than nationally segmented equity markets, and the efficiency of Asian capital markets has been questioned in particular after the 1997 Asian financial crises. Yet, the empirical evidence on the extent of financial integration among ASEAN+3 member countries has been limited and inconclusive. This study is therefore an attempt to investigate the recent development of ASEAN+3 equity markets integration.

This study focuses its attention on the existence and the extent of financial integration in East and Southeast Asia region, and it provides evidence that equity market integration in ASEAN+3 is far from complete, and for that reason, there is a need for policymakers in ASEAN+3 member countries to synchronize their standards and regulations. Furthermore, the policymakers in East and Southeast Asia can gain benefit from this study, as it provides the evidence that ASEAN+3 member countries respond differently to policy shocks, which may hinder the development of regional financial integration as well as the policy effectiveness of region-wide authority in ASEAN+3.

This research is different from previous studies, as it puts the regional financial integration within the context of ASEAN+3 frameworks. Unlike previous research that considers East and Southeast Asian countries as an individual entity, this research considers East and Southeast Asia into two different blocks, following Tourk (2004) who documented that negotiation process for ASEAN+3 financial integration is conducted in sub-regional level (ASEAN vs East Asia), rather than national level (country per country basis). Second, this study covers the period after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. As suggested in Wang (2014), that the degree of stock market integration tends to change around the periods marked by financial crises, the updated study on Asian financial integration in the aftermath of 1997 financial crises is important to document the development of regional financial integration.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of institutional developments – market economy, financial deepening, private sector, property rights and rule of law – affecting the bank efficiency in China.

First, profit efficiency and cost efficiency scores of banks at the firm‐year level were estimated using a stochastic efficiency frontier approach. Then the results were aggregated at the regional level. Regional differences in the timing and extent of the institutional developments impacting bank efficiency were exploited.

It was observed that most institutional variables play an important role in affecting bank efficiency and additionally banks tend to operate more efficiently in those regions with greater presence of private sector and more property rights awareness.

The data on a number of important institutional variables such as property rights and rule of law are not easily available or importantly do not vary that much across years. However, based on whatever information available, it is apparent that institutional development is crucial to bank performance and also eventual economic growth.

This paper is believed to be the first attempt to empirically examine the role of institutional factor affecting bank efficiency especially in a transition country.

This study examines how institutional quality influences variability in financial development among economies in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Empirical estimations verifying various relationships are performed using the limited information maximum likelihood (LIML) estimation technique.

The results suggest that institutional quality enhances the pace of financial development among economies in the sub-region all things being equal. In a further micro-level analysis where components of institutional quality index are examined separately, the study’s results suggest that effective governance, regulatory quality, rule of law and accountability tend to have a significant positive impact on financial sector development.

Findings of the study suggest that policies geared towards improving governance and regulatory institutions can augment development of the financial sector among economies in SSA; governments and policymakers are therefore encouraged to resource noted institutions to play effective roles for the development of the financial sector.

Compared to related studies, this study reorients existing paradigm, which emphasizes the role of governance and institutional variables in the economic growth discourse. The authors’ empirical inquiry rather focuses on how governance and institutional structures influence regional financial development dynamics. Specifically, this study differs from most macro-level studies found in literature because it examines the impact of hitherto unexamined governance and institutional variables on financial development among economies in SSA.