Empowerment of Cross-Border E-Commerce Platforms for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Evidence from China

Can common institutional ownership inhibit the formation of zombie firms? Evidence from China

“…Yet, the disposal method is still imperfect, and there are many practical dilemmas and governance difficulties, such as undue government intervention, obstacles to the implementation of policies, the lack of market‐based disposal institutions, and the imperfection of social supporting policies (He et al, 2020; He et al, 2023). There is an existing fruitful literature on zombie firm governance, such as environmental regulation (Du and Li, 2018), administrative reform (Fan et al, 2023), development of FinTech (Jin et al, 2022), and so forth. However, there is a lack of extant literature on exploring the governance mechanisms of zombie firms from the perspective of ownership structure.…”

“…In recent years, the issue of zombie firms in China's industrial sector has emerged frequently (Chang et al, 2021). The painful problem of being ‘stiff but not dead’ has made zombie firms a major persistent problem in social and economic development (Du and Li, 2018), causing severe harm to the overall economic and social development (Fan et al, 2023). The long‐term nature of ‘blood‐sucking’ and dependence on zombie firms not only seriously crowd out valuable physical and credit resources but also squeeze out healthy peers and result in the phenomenon of the ‘bad money drives out good’ (Ren et al, 2023).…”

“…Du and Li (2018) suggest that environmental regulation can accelerate the exit of zombie firms and achieve the management of excess capacity in energy firms. Fan et al (2023) find that lowering entry barriers by reducing government intervention and breaking administrative monopolies can facilitate the disposal of zombie firms and stimulate entrepreneurship. At the external environment level, Jin et al (2022) suggest that Fintech can not only improve the efficiency of bank credit and government subsidies, thus reducing the risk of corporate zombification, but also curb the contagious effects of zombie firms in the industry.…”

“…There is a fruitful existing literature on the governance of zombie firms, which can be broadly categorised into three dimensions: government policies, the external environment and the enterprise's efforts. Government policies include fiscal stress (Cai et al, 2022), environmental regulation (Du and Li, 2018), administrative reform (Fan et al, 2023), and trade facilitation (Li, Hu, et al, 2021; Li, Wang, et al, 2021), and so forth. The external environment level includes the development of FinTech (Jin et al, 2022), investor attention (Lin and Zhang, 2023), and fierce bank competition (Zhang and Huang, 2022), and so forth.…”

New growth in cross-border E-business: evidence from gray forecasting to cross-border E-business in China

“…This approach not only furnishes an environment and technical support framework for profound international collaborations (Niehoff et al ., 2022; Veile et al ., 2022) but also, through internal cooperation mechanisms, implicitly cultivates and fortifies the international trust system (e.g. Niu et al ., 2019; Yan et al ., 2021; Fan et al ., 2023). China’s established digital leadership strategically positions it to proactively engage in global digital cooperation, bearing paramount significance in reshaping the international order and forming a crucial foundation for the forthcoming intensive permeation of the global cooperation network during the smart economy era.…”