Capital structure plays an important role in organizational performance. Sources of funds for micro-finance institutions (MFIs) and their performance and financial sustainability become an important topic for the MFIs and poverty alleviation initiatives to achieve sustainable development goals of the UN. We explored the following question: Does the financial structure in terms of financial leverage affect the financial performance: Financial sustainability, depth, and breadth of outreach of MFIs? Our research focuses on studying the relationship between capital structure and financial performance of micro-finance institutions as well as achieving the objectives of this program by reaching out to the deserving clients without collaterals. A dataset of 187 MFIs is used to establish the relationship between the capital structure and performance of MFIs. Panel data regression analysis has been used for this study using the Random effect and Fixed effect models. Return on Asset (ROA), and Net Income to Expenditure (NIER) have been used as measures of financial performance. The findings indicate that Equity to Asset Ratio (EAR), Debt to Loan Ratio (DTL), Risk, and Size are the factors that influence NIER. Furthermore, EAR, and DTL have a positive effect on ROA, and Risk has a negative effect. The findings of this study will enable MFIs to configure their capital structure by creating a portfolio of sources of their capital from market-based sources of funds that can maximize their financial performance and reach out to poor clients without collaterals.

With rapid urbanization, the air pollution issue is becoming an increasingly serious issue given that people are strongly swayed in their location choice to settle down in a growing urban area where most job opportunities have been created. This study investigated the influences of both air quality and income on the settlement intentions of Chinese migrants by using microlevel samples of the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) data from 2017 and the annual average concentration of PM2.5 (particles with diameter ≤ 2.5 μm in the air) to measure a city’s air quality. The results showed that the settlement decisions of Chinese migrants involved a trade-off between income and air quality. Poorer air quality could significantly decrease the settlement intention, while a higher income could significantly increase the settlement intention of Chinese migrants. However, as the migrants’ income opportunity increased at a location, the negative influence of poorer air quality on the settlement intention at that location gradually declined. Specifically, when deciding whether to settle down in cities, the migrants with a non-agricultural “hukou” (household registration) tended to pay more attention to air quality than the migrants with an agricultural “hukou,” and migrants who moved farther away in geographic distance tended to pay more attention to income. It was concluded that the influences of air quality and income on the settlement intentions of the migrants were robust and consistent after using different estimation methods and considering the issue of endogeneity.

To examine the impact of housing prices on urban competitiveness, we first sort out the relevant literature on the compositions and performances of urban competitiveness. The internal compositions of urban competitiveness include factor endowments and industrial development. The external manifestations include market size, economic growth and productivity. Additionally, from the perspectives of urban economics and new economic geography, the theoretical basis of housing price’s impact on urban competitiveness is analyzed. On this basis, we analyze the mechanism and direction of housing price’s impact on urban competitiveness. The results show that most of the existing researches pay attention to the impact of housing prices on urban competitiveness through economic growth, industrial structure or production factors. However, there are differences in the specific direction of influence, and there is no research that considers the relationship of multiple influences.

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