Physician resources are fundamental assets of the healthcare system. The unequal distribution of these resources inevitably leads to patients seeking medical services elsewhere, increasing healthcare costs, and hindering the realization of health equ...

Against the backdrop of China’s “Dual Carbon” strategy, transitioning to high-quality energy development (HQED) is imperative for balancing decarbonization with economic resilience. This study explores the transformative role of the digital economy as a primary driver of this transition. Using provincial panel data from 2013 to 2023, we employ a two-way fixed effects model to quantify the impact of digital economy on high-quality energy development. Our empirical results demonstrate that the digital economy significantly bolsters high-quality energy development, a finding that holds across rigorous robustness and endogeneity checks. Mechanism analysis reveals three critical transmission pathways: fostering technological innovation, accelerating industrial structure upgrading, and promoting industrial sophistication. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis indicates a pronounced positive effect in the Eastern and Central regions, whereas the impact in the Western region remains limited, highlighting a “digital divide” in energy transition. These findings suggest that policymakers should prioritize digital infrastructure in lagging regions and leverage digital tools to bridge the gap between industrial upgrading and energy efficiency.

With climate risk and sustainable development dominating global policy agendas, a key question for regulators and researchers alike is whether and under what conditions fintech development is associated with improved corporate ESG performance. Using A-share listed firms in China from 2011 to 2024, this paper builds a city-level fintech index from Baidu News advanced search records and links it to firm-level ESG and financial data. Our baseline estimates confirm that fintech development significantly improves corporate ESG performance. This core finding remains robust across lagged regressors, an ordered logit specification, additional industry fixed effects, the exclusion of the 2020 to 2022 pandemic window, and a spherical-distance-to-Hangzhou instrumental variable. Mechanism tests reveal two complementary channels: fintech eases financing frictions and stimulates green innovation. Further analyses are conducted to explore boundary conditions. Both management shareholding and spatial competition exert direct positive effects on ESG performance, yet their interactions with fintech are significantly negative, pointing to a substitution rather than complementary relationship. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect is more pronounced among state-owned enterprises, large firms, non-high-tech and labor-intensive industries, growth-stage firms, and firms in the eastern region. Our results offer differentiated policy implications for strengthening digital infrastructure, refining financing arrangements for growth-stage and SMEs, and calibrating region- and life-cycle-sensitive regulatory frameworks.