AMS

28 June 2026, Volume 06 Issue 02
    

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  • Digital Economy Development and the Evolution of Service Sector’s Position in Global Value Chains
    Liu Sheng, Liang Wenting, Chen Xiuying
    The Applied Economics Review. 2026, 06(02): 18-37.
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    Against the backdrop of booming service trade and deepening digital transformation, how the digital economy reshapes a country’s service‑sector position in global value chains (GVCs) has become an important theoretical proposition worthy of investigation. On the basis of distinguishing forward and backward embedding patterns of service‑sector GVCs, this paper adopts the UIBE GVC Indicators database to measure GVC participation and position indices for service sectors across 50 economies including China. Combined with WDI and WEF datasets, this paper evaluates national digital‑economy development and estimates its impacts on service‑sector GVC position. The empirical results show that digital‑economy development significantly elevates a country’s overall service‑sector GVC position. Compared with backward participation, forward participation is more conducive to capturing digital dividends and promoting GVC upgrading. Threshold tests further indicate that the promotion effect of digital economy on service‑sector GVC position is constrained by economies’ structural absorptive capacity. Factor endowments, human‑capital accumulation and institutional quality exert prominent moderating effects under different threshold conditions, generating non‑linear dividends of GVC upgrading brought by the digital economy.
  • How Managerial Attention to Organizational Change Shapes Total Factor Productivity
    Luo Shanyuan, Huang Chunchun, Zhou Ye’an
    The Applied Economics Review. 2026, 06(02): 38-71.
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    The allocation of managerial attention to organizational change serves as a critical factor for firms to improve productivity and foster new‑quality productive forces. Drawing on attention‑based economics and organizational change theories, this study employs Chinese listed‑firm data from 2010 to 2023. Using text‑analysis and machine‑learning techniques, we construct a novel executive‑attention matrix oriented toward organizational change and comprehensively investigate how both the magnitude and persistence of executives’ attention to change affect corporate total factor productivity (TFP). The results show that greater magnitude and higher persistence of executives’ change‑related attention significantly boost firm‑level TFP. This productivity enhancement operates mainly through three channels: improvement of managerial efficiency and optimization of factor structure, R&D‑driven innovation, as well as digital transformation and artificial‑intelligence‑related investment. Heterogeneity tests indicate that the productivity‑promoting effect of executives’ change attention is stronger among firms with a higher share of R&D personnel and firms operating in less‑competitive markets. Further analysis suggests that change‑focused attention net of actual change actions still exerts a significantly positive effect on TFP, yet excessive attention devoted to change turns counter‑productive. By constructing an original executive‑attention matrix for organizational change, this paper explores the influence and underlying mechanisms of managerial attention allocation on TFP. It provides policy implications for strengthening managers’ attention to change and leveraging high‑caliber managerial talents to advance firms’ new‑quality productive forces.
  • The Impact of Intergenerational Succession on the Development of New‑Quality Productive Forces in Family Firms
    Chen Baihe, Du Mingrui
    The Applied Economics Review. 2026, 06(02): 72-92.
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    Cultivating new‑quality productive forces constitutes a core strategic priority for advancing high‑quality development. As a vital component of the private economy, family firms’ intergenerational succession bears heavily on their long‑term stable development. Nevertheless, whether family firms can sustain technological innovation, optimize resource integration and realize productivity leaps after succession remains a critical research question. Based on a sample of Chinese A‑share listed family firms from 2010 to 2021, this study finds that the level of new‑quality productive forces declines significantly following intergenerational succession. Mechanism analyses indicate that such decline mainly stems from successors’ diminished innovation capacity and willingness, together with growing familialization of management teams that pushes corporate decision‑making toward conservatism. This paper innovatively links intergenerational succession with new‑quality productive forces, and systematically clarifies their internal relationship and influencing mechanisms from the perspective of changes in managers and management teams. It provides theoretical foundations and practical references for family firms to improve new‑quality productive forces amid generational transitions.
  • The Impact of Urban Renewal on Local Fiscal Sustainability
    Mei Lin, Yan Nannan
    The Applied Economics Review. 2026, 06(02): 93-112.
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    Urban renewal serves as a core starting point for high‑quality urban development, and its linkage with local fiscal sustainability constitutes a key issue for local governance in the new era. Taking the renovation of old residential communities as a quasi‑natural experiment of urban renewal, this paper draws on panel data of 165 prefecture‑level cities in China from 2010 to 2024. The entropy‑weighted TOPSIS method is adopted to construct the local fiscal sustainability index for each city, and a Difference‑in‑Differences (DID) model is applied to evaluate the policy effect and influencing mechanisms of urban renewal on local fiscal sustainability. The empirical results indicate that urban renewal significantly improves local fiscal sustainability, and such promoting effect is more pronounced in regions with less‑advanced industrial structures and areas with lower market proximity. Mechanism tests show that urban renewal enhances local fiscal sustainability mainly through two mediating channels: urban asset appreciation and the improvement of urban consumption capacity. Accordingly, this paper puts forward policy suggestions oriented toward improving fiscal sustainability, including establishing diversified policy guarantees for urban renewal, adopting region‑specific renewal strategies, and amplifying the mediating roles of asset appreciation and urban consumption.
  • Temperature Fluctuations, Digital Inclusive Finance and Climate‑Adaptive Consumption
    Yu Yihua, Zhou Wenji, Shen Xiaojing, Hui Ziyang
    The Applied Economics Review. 2026, 06(02): 113-148.
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    Against the backdrop of growing extreme‑temperature events and online consumption, air‑conditioner purchases reflect climate adaptation and are also shaped by digital transaction environments. Based on JD.com online air‑conditioner transaction data of Beijing and Shanghai from 2016 to 2018, this paper constructs high‑resolution grid‑month panel data and adopts two‑way fixed‑effect and moderation‑effect models to investigate how temperature fluctuations, extreme temperature events and digital inclusive finance affect online air‑conditioner consumption. The results show that online air‑conditioner purchases respond non‑linearly to temperature fluctuations: high temperatures significantly boost sales, while low‑temperature shocks exhibit pronounced cross‑city heterogeneity. Heatwaves exert a stronger stimulus on online air‑conditioner sales in Shanghai, whereas cold waves have a more notable impact in Beijing. Digital inclusive finance plays a context‑dependent moderating role in the transmission from climate shocks to online consumption. In cold‑wave scenarios, it strengthens online purchase responses in both cities. For heatwaves, it amplifies high‑temperature effects in Beijing yet weakens the marginal heatwave impact in Shanghai. This paper reveals the formation mechanism of climate‑adaptive consumption within digital channels, and provides empirical evidence for e‑commerce inventory allocation, urban extreme‑weather governance and differentiated green home‑appliance policy design.
  • How Do Social Interactions Affect Individual Pension Account‑Opening Willingness?
    Zheng Wenping, Zheng Boqiao, Wang Fang
    The Applied Economics Review. 2026, 06(02): 149-175.
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    Amid accelerating population aging in China, building a multi‑tier pension security system has become an urgent priority. The expansion of the individual pension system plays a vital role in alleviating public pension pressure and improving elderly residents’ welfare, and residents’ social interactions constitute a key factor shaping the effective implementation of this system. Based on questionnaire data covering 27 provincial‑level administrative regions across China, this paper distinguishes two types of social interaction and investigates their effects on residents’ willingness to open individual pension accounts. The empirical results show that endogenous interaction significantly boosts residents’ willingness to open individual pension accounts, whereas contextual interaction exerts no significant effect. Acting as two distinct information channels, endogenous interaction and contextual interaction demonstrate a substitution effect in promoting account‑opening willingness. Further decomposition indicates that the demonstration effect of others’ investment gains within contextual interaction presents a significant positive influence, while media channels show insignificant impacts. Accordingly, this paper puts forward policy suggestions including strengthening community publicity and offline interaction in individual‑pension promotion, diversifying individual‑pension product supply, and optimizing the existing old‑age security system.
  • Employment Inclusiveness of the Digital Economy: Evidence from Migrant Workers’ Labor‑market Performance in China
    Zeng Bingrong, Yang Jiakai
    The Applied Economics Review. 2026, 06(02): 176-208.
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    This paper investigates how digital‑economy development shapes migrant workers’ labor‑market outcomes, offering a critical perspective for understanding technological change and employment inclusiveness. We construct a city‑level composite digital‑economy index covering digital infrastructure, digital industries and digital finance, and combine it with 2016‑2018 China Migrant Dynamic Survey data to systematically assess its impacts on migrant workers’ employment probability and labor earnings. The results show that a one‑standard‑deviation rise in the digital‑economy index raises migrant workers’ employment probability by approximately 1.2 percentage points. The income effect is heterogeneous across quantiles: digital economy significantly boosts labor income for low‑income groups at the 15%‑35% quantiles, while the effect turns insignificant at higher quantiles. Mechanism tests confirm two channels. The social‑capital accumulation channel shows that digital economy improves migrants’ employment and earnings by enhancing social integration, political participation and urban acceptance. The labor‑efficiency channel suggests that digital economy raises low‑income workers’ hourly wages rather than lengthening working hours, curbs working hours for high‑income workers, and exerts no adverse health impacts. Oaxaca‑Blinder decompositions indicate that digital economy does not widen employment and earnings gaps between groups of different educational attainment and skill levels. Interaction regressions further reveal that digital economy generates larger marginal improvements for less‑educated and low‑skill migrants. Collectively, our findings demonstrate the employment‑inclusive nature of the digital economy and provide micro‑level evidence and policy implications for promoting high‑quality employment among floating migrant labor force.
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