City Size, Development of Digital Financial Inclusion, and Gig Economy

Purpose This study aims to explore how institutional quality links digital financial inclusion to inclusive development in lower-middle-income countries, considering heterogeneities. Design/methodology/approach The study uses dynamic generalized method of moments to analyze a balanced panel data set of 48 lower-middle- income countries (LMICs) from 2004 to 2022, sourced from various databases. It assesses four variables and conducts checks for study robustness. Findings The study reveals a positive link between digital financial inclusion and inclusive development in LMICs, confirming theoretical predictions. Empirically, nations with quality institutions exhibit greater financial and developmental inclusion than those with weak institutions, emphasizing the substantial positive impact of institutional quality on the connection between digital financial inclusion and inclusive development in LMICs. For instance, the interaction effect reveals a substantial increase of 0.123 in inclusive development for every unit increase in digital financial inclusion in the presence of strong institutions. The findings provide robust empirical evidence that the presence of quality institutions is a key catalyst for the benefits of digital finance in inclusive development. Originality/value This study offers significant insights into digital financial inclusion and inclusive development in LMICs. It confirms a positive relationship between digital financial inclusion and inclusive development, highlighting the pivotal role of institutional quality in amplifying these benefits. Strong institutions benefit deprived individuals, families, communities and businesses, enabling full access to digital financial inclusion benefits. This facilitates engagement in development processes, aiding LMICs in achieving Sustainable Development Goals.

The East–West imbalance in China’s economic development has profoundly affected all aspects of society, but the emergence of digital financial inclusion offers potential opportunities to address this issue. This study examines 31 provinces in China from 2011 to 2020, and Exploratory Space–time Data Analysis is employed to specify the temporal and spatial changes in the East–West disparity in economic development and digital financial inclusion. The main findings are: First, inequality in economic development is associated with a decline in spatial autocorrelation. With the acute exacerbation of inequalities after the pandemic, enhancing spatial dependence through regional cooperation would be conducive to reducing disparities. Second, economic development, digital financial inclusion, and its components (usage and coverage) have hot spots in the East and cold spots in the West. Before the pandemic, significant advancements in the West mitigated the East–West gap, but the East–West divergence in economic development worsened after the COVID-19 explosion. Third, distinct from economic development, digital financial inclusion and its key elements (usage) not only have a growing regional dependence, but also that the pandemic has not disrupted improvements in the West. More importantly, there is a significant regional overlap between digital financial inclusion, usage, and economic development, implying spatial and attributable connections among them. Consequently, governments should consider digital financial inclusion as a policy tool to relieve the worsening inequality in economic development between the East and West during the post-pandemic stage.

This paper aims to examine the complex relationship between digital financial inclusion, monetary policy transmission, and economic development in 18 Sub-Saharan African countries from 2004 to 2021. The study utilizes panel data and employs a digital financial inclusion index, broad money growth, and real gross domestic product per capita as proxies for digital financial inclusion, monetary policy transmission, and economic development, respectively. The panel autoregressive distributed lag model results uncover a bi-directional causality between economic development and digital financial inclusion, emphasizing the pivotal role of digital financial inclusion in fostering economic development. Additionally, another bi-directional causality between digital financial inclusion and monetary policy transmission highlights their interdependence. Unidirectional causality from monetary policy transmission to economic development is also established. This study emphasizes the crucial role of robust measures in enhancing digital financial inclusion to avert adverse consequences, offers nuanced insights into policy dynamics, particularly regarding inflation mitigation, and enhances monetary policy effectiveness. These findings underscore the importance of policy reform, legislation, and regulatory improvements to promote digital financial inclusion by Sub-Saharan African central banks. Strengthening rural financial infrastructure is crucial for driving digital financial inclusion, sustainable economic development, and reducing regional inequalities.

"The development of China's digital financial inclusion" is an important research field that has attracted much attention in recent years. Digital financial inclusion refers to the use of emerging technologies such as the Internet, big data, and artificial intelligence to provide the general public with more convenient, efficient, and low-cost financial services. Digital financial inclusion has become an important means to promote financial inclusion. In recent years, the development of my country's digital financial inclusion has achieved world-renowned achievements. However, there are still many issues and challenges to be resolved. For example, information asymmetry, difficulty in risk control, and imperfect regulatory policies are still the main obstacles to the development of digital financial inclusion. This article will discuss the background, development, problems and challenges, and future development directions of China's digital financial inclusion, aiming to give readers a comprehensive understanding of the development status and future trends of China's digital financial inclusion.

Can digital financial inclusion promote female entrepreneurship? Evidence and mechanisms

Digital financial inclusion provides financial services through digital platforms, aiming to improve the ability of MSMEs and low-income groups to access financial resources, thereby easing their financing constraints and promoting economic growth and inclusive development. As an innovative financial model, digital financial inclusion utilizes modern technological means to significantly improve the accessibility and convenience of financial services, especially in areas where traditional banking services are under-covered. Digital finance has promoted the popularization of financial services such as micro-credit, micro-savings, and micro-insurance, and helped improve the financing environment of low-income groups and small and micro enterprises. At the same time, digital financial inclusion promotes financial literacy education and digital inclusion construction, and enhances the acceptance and use of digital financial instruments by the general public, which is the key to achieving sustainable development of digital financial inclusion. Therefore, digital financial inclusion can better ease the financing constraints of small and medium-sized enterprises and promote economic development.

Digital financial inclusion is critical for achieving higher economic growth, sustainable development, and a more financially inclusive nation. Additionally, digital financial inclusion is vital for stabilizing the Islamic banking industry during the COVID-19 epidemic, leveraging its resistance to financial shocks, and fostering financial inclusiveness. Islamic banks are usually considered because of their significant ability to counter financial crises and their prominent contribution to financial landscape. This study investigated the digital financial inclusion and Islamic banking stability nexus using unbalanced panel data from 65 Islamic banks from six countries from 2010 to 2021. This study uses a GMM approach and a Z score. The finding implies that the default risk of the banks in the analyzed area is reduced due to the increased stability of Islamic banking brought about by the broader application of digital financial inclusion. Digital financial inclusion is more strongly correlated with banks' financial soundness. Access to banking services, made possible by digital financial inclusion, also dramatically improves banking stability and makes banks more resilient. Moreover, incorporating digital financial inclusion into Islamic banking promotes inclusive economic development, which may help the industry weather crises like the present COVID-19 epidemic. This study lays out the policy implications that increasing bank stability, bolstering financial literacy, and combining digital financial inclusion with other strategies to keep banks viable.

Digital financial inclusion and tourism development

The development of digital financial inclusion has added a new vitality to economic growth, and environmental regulation is an important tool to achieve sustainable economic growth. Therefore, whether there is a synergistic effect between these two factors of economic growth is a topic worth exploring. This paper uses the space econometric model and threshold model to explore the impact of digital financial inclusion and environmental regulation on regional economic growth using panel data from 30 Chinese provinces, collected between 2011 and 2019. The research results prove that the development of digital financial inclusion and the improvement in the intensity of environmental regulation have a significant direct promotion effect and negative spatial spillover effect on regional economic growth. Moreover, the two have a significant synergistic effect on regional economic growth. A panel threshold analysis showed that, with the improvement in the level of digital financial inclusion, the regression coefficient of environmental regulation changed from negative to positive, which played a significant role in promoting regional economic growth. The heterogeneity analysis found that digital inclusive finance in eastern regions of China plays a greater role in promoting the economy, whereas environmental regulation in the central region plays a greater role in promoting the economy. The synergy between the two in the central region greatly promotes economic development. When digital inclusive finance is used as the threshold variable, environmental regulation in eastern and western regions has a single-threshold effect on regional economic development. Based upon these research results, this paper proposes that a coordination mechanism between digital financial inclusion and environmental regulation should be established to give full play to their synergies in sustainable economic growth.

Digital financial inclusion intersects with globalization through digital technologies and represents a vital tool in expanding financial access while overcoming the challenges of poor basic physical infrastructures. Egypt's resilient population of over 100 million represents challenges due to limited resources and the presence of unbanked and underserved citizens. This population growth has spurred Egypt to redouble its efforts to promote affordable digital financial inclusion. This chapter investigates the Egyptian government's efforts to promote digital financial inclusion, focusing on adopting digital financial inclusion. The study used a logical description methodology. This study shows Egypt's adoption of Fintech has seen significant growth, especially in digital assets and payments, contributing positively to financial inclusion and economic development. The findings of this research hold substantial implications for policymakers, government administration, and the private sector, underlining the importance of their role in fostering digital financial inclusion in Egypt.

Digital Financial Inclusion is a hot topic under the theme of China's economy today. Digital Financial Inclusion is an important supplement and extension of traditional Financial inclusion. Its core idea is to reduce the threshold of financial services and ease the financing difficulties of low-income groups, small and micro enterprises, and other vulnerable groups by providing low-cost and efficient financial services to the public. The empirical results of much literature show that digital Financial inclusion has narrowed the gap between the rich and the poor, which plays a vital role in the high-quality development of China's economy. Therefore, it is important to explore it's influencing factors and analyze the influencing mechanism. This study focuses on the three provinces in eastern China and applies the grounded theory approach. Utilizing data from the Peking University database, 17 factors influencing the level of digital inclusive finance are selected. PCA (principal component analysis) is used to reduce dimensions, and ANN-MLP (artificial neural network multi-layer perceptron) algorithm is used to explore the contribution factors of Digital Financial Inclusion, explore important factors, and put forward relevant suggestions. The significance of this study is that taking the three provinces in eastern China as an example, it explores the factors influencing the development of DFI in China, and makes an important contribution to the issue of how to promote the rapid development of digital Financial inclusion in China.

How does the development of digital financial inclusion affect the total factor productivity of listed companies? Evidence from China

In the context of the AI era, the interaction between demographic changes and the development of digital financial inclusion urgently requires in-depth research to explore how AI technology can be used to mitigate the challenges of aging and amplify the dividends of education optimisation, so as to promote the high-quality development and regional coordination of digital financial inclusion. Based on this background, this paper selects provincial panel data of 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China from 2011-2023, and conducts an empirical study using the global spatial Durbin model (SDM) and the local spatio-temporal geographically weighted regression model (GTWR), to explore the impacts of the aging population age structure and the optimisation of the population's education structure on the development of digital financial inclusion among provinces in China. The findings of the study show that aging age structure has a significant negative effect on the development of digital financial inclusion in both the region and neighbouring regions. Optimisation of education structure has a significant positive effect on the development of digital financial inclusion in both the region and neighbouring regions. Aging age structure weakens the positive effect of education structure optimisation on the development of digital financial inclusion. The negative effect of age structure aging on digital financial inclusion development strengthens over time, while the positive effect of education structure optimisation persists but weakens; age structure aging has a negative effect on digital financial inclusion development in the eastern and central regions, while the western region has yet to show a significant negative effect; the positive effect of education structure optimisation in the western region is stronger than that in the central and eastern regions. Based on the above conclusions, this paper puts forward the recommendations to promote the high-quality development of digital financial inclusion from the three aspects of promoting the ageing and intelligent construction of digital financial inclusion, strengthening the talent support and educational empowerment of digital financial inclusion, and promoting the coordinated development of the region and the sharing of intelligent technology.

This paper comprehensively considers the development of digital financial inclusion and rural finance, calculates the rural digital financial inclusion index at the provincial level from 2011 to 2018, and empirically analyzes the relationship between the development of digital financial inclusion in rural areas and poverty reduction. The research shows that the development of rural digital financial inclusion can indeed reduce poverty to a certain extent. In addition, the industrial structure, the level of financial literacy and the level of urbanization also have a significant impact on poverty reduction. By dividing 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions into four regions, namely, the northeast, the east, the central and the west, the heterogeneity of rural digital inclusive finance in these regions is proved. Finally, based on the conclusions of the empirical study, relevant policy suggestions are put forward to better play the effect of rural digital inclusive finance on poverty reduction.KeywordsRural digital inclusive financePoverty reductionThe performance evaluation

Over the past four decades of reform and opening up, China's economy has achieved a high average annual growth rate of over 9 per cent, becoming the second largest economy in the world. At the same time, China's financial reform and development has been continuously optimized, and the financial industry has maintained rapid development. With the accelerated integration of new-generation digital technology and inclusive finance, the flourishing development of inclusive finance has added strong momentum to the financial services economy. Based on the relevant research literature on inclusive finance at home and abroad and the characteristics of digital finance, we constructed the evaluation index system of cross-country digital inclusive finance level and the evaluation index system of provincial digital inclusive finance level, and evaluated the development level of digital inclusive finance in 31 provinces (municipalities directly under the central government) in China. On this basis, the impact of digital financial inclusion on economic growth is comprehensively analyzed from two perspectives (temporal and spatial dimensions) and two levels (cross-country and provincial levels), and the empirical evidence is analyzed from the temporal dimension by using traditional econometric analysis methods. The increase in the level of digital inclusive finance in a region has a significant contribution to the region's economic growth, and the mediating effects of credit constraints, entrepreneurship, investment and urban-rural income gap between digital inclusive finance and economic growth are proposed and verified through the decomposition of the direct-indirect effects and heterogeneity of the spatial Durbin model. Policy recommendations are proposed through relevant research results to help China's further economic development.