Fintech is disrupting the traditional financial models with the power of technology. Will it solve the problems faced by farmers in starting their own businesses and stimulate the vitality of rural entrepreneurship? In this paper, we focus on the impact of fintech development on the entrepreneurial behavior of farmers in China. First, we theoretically analyze the effects of fintech development on the entrepreneurial behavior of farmers and put forward the corresponding theoretical hypotheses. Second, using data from Baidu search index and the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), we employ a Probit model to verify our theoretical hypotheses. Our findings suggest that (1) fintech development encourages farmer entrepreneurial behavior, (2) it achieves this by alleviating credit constraints, information constraints, and risk aversion effects, (3) in terms of the type of entrepreneurship, the development of fintech mainly promotes survival entrepreneurship among farmers, while the entrepreneurial effect of fintech is more significant among farmers with low education level, low income level and in the central and western regions. Overall, our study provides timely insights into boosting farmer entrepreneurship in emerging countries such as China by leveraging the potential of fintech.

The institutional environment is critical to economic growth. A favorable business environment can reduce unnecessary transaction costs. This study examined the impact of institutional friction costs on economic growth, based on panel data for 38 OECD countries from 2004 to 2020. The contribution of this paper is that, first, we explore methods to measure the cost of institutional friction, and the measurements show that the total cost of institutional friction tends to be lower in high-income countries than in upper-middle-income countries. Second, we find that reducing the cost of institutional friction helps to promote economic growth through an empirical fixed-effects analysis approach with panel data. The empirical results remain significant after robustness and endogeneity tests. Third, we find that the effect of institutional friction costs on economic growth is more pronounced in high-income countries and even more pronounced in countries with inefficient governments. Fourth, the mediation effect test finds that institutional friction costs affect economic growth by increasing firm innovation. Overall, reducing the costs of institutional friction helps promote economic growth, and this study suggests that policy makers in each country should develop measures to reduce the costs of institutional friction to improve efficiency and economic development.

The new urbanization city pilot policy is China’s most recent policy on urban urbanization. This paper uses new urbanization pilot policies as a quasi-natural experiment to empirically test the impact of new urbanization pilot policies on urban innovation through the difference-in-differences (DID) method using panel data from 199 cities in China from 2011 to 2019. The results show that: (1) The new urbanization city pilot policy has significantly enhanced urban innovation. (2) The theoretical mechanism test shows that the pilot policy of new urbanization promotes urban innovation through the level of human capital. (3) The results of the heterogeneity analysis show that the new urbanization pilot policies have obvious city-level heterogeneity and regional heterogeneity on the improvement of urban innovation levels. The impact effect of new urbanization pilot policies is higher in first-tier and second-tier cities than in fourth-tier and fifth-tier cities; the effect of new urbanization pilot policies is higher in western regions than in eastern and middle regions.

FinTech is disrupting the traditional financial models with the power of technology. Will it solve the problems faced by farmers in starting their own businesses and stimulate the vitality of rural entrepreneurship? In this paper, we focus on the impact of FinTech on the entrepreneurial behavior of farmers in China. First, we analyze the current state of FinTech in China and propose corresponding theoretical hypotheses regarding its impact on farmer entrepreneurship. Second, using data from Baidu search index and the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), we employ a Probit model to verify our theoretical hypotheses. Our findings suggest that (1) FinTech development encourages farmer entrepreneurial behavior; (2) It achieves this by alleviating credit constraints, information constraints, and risk aversion effects; (3) The positive effect of FinTech on farmer entrepreneurship is more significant for individuals with lower education or income levels as well as those residing in central or western regions. Overall, our study provides timely insights into boosting farmer entrepreneurship in emerging countries like China by leveraging the potential of FinTech.