Financial Innovation | 2021
Belt and Road (B&R) initiative and its impact on financial research: introduction to the issue
Abstract
The Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative, proposed by China in 2013, aims to boost regional economic cooperation and connecting China to Asia, Africa, and Europe. A total of 126 countries, including developed and developing nations, and 29 international organizations have signed cooperation documents with China on the initiative. In recent years, the world economy has witnessed repeated trials of strength between globalization and de-globalization. Nevertheless, B&R Initiative has grown into one of the most promising platforms for international cooperation, forging a new pathway toward inclusive globalization. In the meantime, financial markets play an important role to economic development, especially for emerging markets, in which domestic investment, as well as foreign direct investment (FDI), is costly. Well-developed financial markets may help to fund investment in infrastructure, R&D etc., which ensure the successful operation of B&R Initiative. This volume is the 27th issue of Financial Innovation (FIN), Volume 8, No. 3 (2021). In this issue, scholars from Asia, Africa and Europe have contributed their most up-todate studies mainly on developing nations that have joined in The Belt and Road Initiative. The eleven papers present us the contemporary theories and empirical findings on a range of topics such as commodity market, taxation policy, monetary policy, internet finance, asset pricing etc. A famous Chinese poet from Tang Dynasty (618–907) once said in his poem: A bosom friend afar brings a distant land near. We sincerely hope the papers here will encourage further academic investigations of Belt and Road Initiative’s dynamics and help to address the tremendous opportunities and challenges facing business leaders and policy makers. Articles included in the special issue are listed as follows: The first paper, titled “Co-movement of commodity price indexes and energy price index: a wavelet coherence approach studies”. This research studies the causal link between commodity price indexes in the global market. Understanding the evolution of commodity prices is important in assessing macroeconomic performance, especially for policy makers who are under heavy pressures of climate change. The second paper, titled “Does access to credit reduce SMEs’ tax avoidance? Evidence from a regression discontinuity design”. It investigates the effect of targeted Open Access