At present, more and more attention is paid to the sustainable development of enterprises. In particular, in the context of frequent financial crises and COVID‐19 pandemic, how the performance of listed companies' environmental, social, and governance (ESG) affects the company's market value has attracted widespread attention. Different from existing studies, this paper takes financial performance as a mediating variable and constructs linear regression model and mediating effect model based on analyzing the relationship between ESG performance, financial performance, and company market value and their influencing mechanism. The ESG rating data of Chinese listed companies newly developed by SynTao Green Finance from 2014 to 2019 were selected for empirical test. The results show that the improvement of ESG performance of listed companies can improve the market value of the company, and the financial performance of the company presents an obvious mediating effect. At the same time, operational capacity is an important mediating way for ESG performance to affect the company's market value. Further research shows that ESG performance of state‐owned listed companies exerts a stronger mediating effect on corporate operating capacity. Finally, this paper provides relevant suggestions for regulators, listed companies, and investors.

From the perspective of the policy impact effect, this paper takes green enterprises as the treatment group and polluters as the control group. Firstly, the double difference method (DID) was adopted to study the effect of green credit policy on enterprises from two aspects, namely the amount of loans obtained by enterprises and the financing cost. The study found that in terms of loan volume, the launch of “Green Credit Guidelines” enabled green enterprises to obtain more credit resources than polluters. In terms of financing cost, green credit policy means green enterprises obtain lower financing cost than polluters. The triple difference method is further used to test the impact of green Credit Guidelines on the access to credit resources and financing costs of enterprises. The results show that for enterprises with different property rights, the effect of green credit policy on non-state-owned enterprises is more significant than that of state-owned enterprises. For enterprises in different regions, the policy effect of green credit policy on enterprises in regions with relatively backward economic development levels is more significant than that of enterprises in regions with relatively developed economic development level. From the empirical results, the policy basically realized the original intention of directing credit resources to green enterprises and realized the Pareto improvement of financial resource allocation.

Based on the theoretical analysis of the relationship between China’s higher education input, technological innovation, and economic growth, this paper chooses the 1997–2015 sample data of China, and uses a vector auto regression (VAR) model to test the relationship between the three. The results show that educational input, technological innovation, and economic growth form an interaction mechanism featuring dynamic circulation. Higher education input and technological innovation are two important factors influencing economic growth. In the meantime, higher education input is an important source and driving force of technological innovation, and technological innovation will further promote economic growth. However, technological innovation has a delayed positive effect on economic growth, so higher education input demands a long-term view and thinking for quick success, and instant benefits should be avoided.

Inclusive finance is an important financial development strategy in the world. The promoting effect of the human capital on economic growth has also gained theoretical and empirical support. This paper attempts to deeply examine the interaction among inclusive finance, human capital and regional economic growth as well as their mutual influence mechanism. To the end, data of 31 provinces and cities from 2005 to 2015 were chosen to build a corresponding panel data template. Meanwhile, the fixed effect model was adopted for an empirical test. Results suggest the following. (1) Inclusive finance and human capital can exert a significantly positive promoting effect on regional economic growth. The influence of inclusive finance on regional economic growth is more obvious, while the nonlinear influence of human capital is more significant; (2) Inclusive finance is observed to have a significantly negative influence on economic growth of China’s central region (mainly referring to eight provinces, including Shanxi). The positive promoting effect of inclusive finance on economic growth of China’s west region (mainly referring to 12 provinces and cities, including Chongqing) is found to be the most significant. Differently, human capital exerts the most significantly promoting effect on China’s central region. The economic development level differs in different regions of China. As an increasing number of talent resources gather in the central and western region of China and the financial system is built in the two regions, resource optimization has become a necessity, which is the linchpin to China’s sustainable economic development.

The difficulty of financing for small- and medium-sized enterprises is an important problem that has plagued China’s economic development for a long time, so it is of great practical significance to explore how to solve the problem of financing difficulties for small- and medium-sized enterprises. From the perspective of financial structure, this paper introduces it to the analytical framework of the investment-cash flow sensitivity model, and establishes a two-way fixed effect model on the basis of the financial structure and other external financing conditions, so as to study the impact of the financial structure in China, especially the banking structure, on the financing constraints of small- and medium-sized enterprises. At the same time, the data of 161 listed companies on the Small and Medium Enterprise Board from 2009 to 2013 is used to carry out an empirical test on the correlation between the financial structure factors and the financing constraints of small- and medium-sized enterprises. The study shows that the promotion of the scale ratio of small- and medium-sized enterprises in the banking industry is able to significantly alleviate the financing constraints of small- and medium-sized enterprises. Meanwhile, the structure of the banking industry should adapt to the industrial structure, in order to achieve the sustained and stable development of the real economy.