Digitalization has imposed new production and trade requirements on enterprises. Quality upgrading of export products, a requirement of international consumption upgrading, is also a product of enterprise industrial upgrading. We examine the impact of the digitalization of Chinese listed firms on the quality of their export products from 2011 to 2015 using the panel fixed effects model and chain mediating effects model. The results demonstrate that digitalization has an inverted U-shaped effect on the quality of export products. Further, digitalization can promote the quality upgrading of enterprises’ export products. However, the supporting capacity of digital infrastructure and the decreasing consumption upgrading of foreign customers limit this process. Empirical results show that digitalization can alleviate the financing constraints to improve the quality of export products. Because digitalization can improve human capital quality, this effect can improve the export product quality. A chain mediation effect also occurs. Digitalization alleviates financing constraints to improve human capital and enterprises’ export product quality. By clarifying digitalization⇒, alleviating financing constraints⇒, improving human capital quality⇒ improve export product quality relationships, executives can improve the competitiveness of enterprises in the international market.

Many studies have examined the influence of digital technologies, such as robots and artificial intelligence, on enterprise labor, but few have investigated the underlying mechanisms and impact paths of digital empowerment on labor employment. Therefore, this study uses data on manufacturing enterprises listed on China's Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets from 2011 to 2020, and applies a panel fixed effect model to test the relationship between digital empowerment and labor employment, and the mechanisms underlying this relationship. We find that digital empowerment increases labor employment. However, the effects are heterogeneous: firms with better corporate governance, more competitive industry, and less favorable regional business environments are more motivated to optimize the structure of their labor resources. Through robustness test and mediation effect model test, we find that digital empowerment can improve enterprise human capital by increasing economies scale and managerial efficiency, especially the employment of R&D and innovation personnel and management personnel; it can also affect the amount of human capital by improving total factor productivity.

This paper examines whether the composition of crowded public-fund ownership shapes the market effects of common redemption shocks. Using Chinese A-share data from 2021 to 2024, we separate overall crowding among public equity funds from the quantitative tilt in that crowding. Quantitative-tilt outflow exposure predicts a larger contraction in turnover-based trading participation, while the effect of average-crowding exposure is much weaker. A one-standard-deviation increase in quantitative-tilt outflow exposure is associated with a 0.57% decline in average daily value turnover. Mechanism tests show that trading participation falls in the outflow quarter and recovers in the following quarter. The effect is stronger for stocks with high Amihud illiquidity, large downside price impact, or weak post-close trading support. Our findings show that investor composition matters for the transmission of redemption pressure and that trading absorption capacity shapes its market effects.

How does innovation generated abroad reshape the sectoral pattern of comparative advantage within countries? We study 26 economies, 15 manufacturing industries, and 2002–2021 by combining innovation comparative advantage (ICA) with a fixed international exposure network, annual source-country patent shocks, and fixed industry data intensity. Identification is within country-year: industries with different data-intensity rankings face the same country-level foreign innovation exposure but exhibit different relative responses. A one-standard-deviation increase in exposure is associated with an approximately 2.5 percent larger ICA response for an industry at the 75th percentile of data intensity than for one at the 25th percentile. The gradient is strongest among highly data-intensive industries. Decomposing ICA places the association primarily in its model-derived production-side component, with little corresponding movement in relative trade resistance. The gradient remains positive across alternative measurement, sample, randomization, trend, and influence exercises, although timing evidence is mixed and wild-cluster inference is less precise with 26 country clusters. Jointly removing the leading innovation sources eliminates the aggregate gradient, indicating that the reallocation margin is closely tied to the geography of global innovation.