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Business credit supply entails a firm providing credit to its customers as a means to gain a competitive edge. The advent of the digital economy has brought about profound changes in business practices. In this context, it becomes crucial to examine how the digital economy impacts the business credit supply of enterprises. This study employs a theoretical framework to derive insights and carries out an empirical analysis using the City Digital Economy Development Index spanning from 2008 to 2021, along with data from A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen. The objective is to explore the influence of the digital economy on corporate business credit supply and its underlying mechanisms. The findings reveal that the digital economy can enhance corporate business credit supply by reducing the incidence of bad debt, thus enabling companies to extend more credit to their customers. This research contributes empirical evidence for understanding the microeconomic impact of the digital economy, while also providing theoretical insights to advance the development of the digital economy and optimize the allocation of financial resources, thereby alleviating corporate financing constraints.

In the enterprise financial information management, the information security of reimbursement and annual bad debt accumulation cannot be ignored. In order to solve the problem that the plaintext exceeds the byte limit in information encryption and affects the encryption calculation time, an annual bad debt accumulation information and reimbursement encryption method is proposed based on ant colony algorithm. We first define all the variables including encryption method, organizations’ information and reimbursement encryption, Ant colony algorithm and then we utilized elliptic curve digital signature to process the data and to prevent the annual bad debt accumulation information data from being tampered with or replaced in the transmission process. Furthermore, one dimensional Logistic chaotic map and Tent chaotic map with good randomness are selected to generate chaotic sequences as keys, and they are grouped based on ant colony algorithm. Each group is XOR with the previous group of ciphertext, which shortens the plaintext bytes. The design of the encryption method for the accumulated information of annual bad debt accrual is completed through the operation and the second round of encryption. The plaintext data files with file sizes of 10MB, 50MB, 100MB and 200MB are selected for serial and parallel encryption calculation. It shows that the average speedup ratio of this method is 3.90, which is 0.44 and 0.46 higher than the encryption methods based on genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm, so it has better encryption performance.

Most American households carry debt, yet we have little understanding of how debt influences health behavior, especially health care seeking. We examined associations between foregone medical care and debt using a population-based sample of 914 southeastern Michigan residents surveyed in the wake of the late-2000s recession. Overall debt and ratios of debt to income and debt to assets were positively associated with foregoing medical or dental care in the past 12 months, even after adjusting for the poorer socioeconomic and health characteristics of those foregoing care and for respondents' household incomes and net worth. These overall associations were driven largely by credit card and medical debt, while housing debt and automobile and student loans were not associated with foregoing care. These results suggest that debt is an understudied aspect of health stratification.

Bank competition is complex because it occurs simultaneously in deposit markets and loan markets. Most governments regulate the banking industry more than other private-sector industries, and some intervene in the banking industry in ways that would be unthinkable in other sectors of the economy. These features of the banking market sector result in characteristics that vary substantially across countries, with bank behavior and decision-making highly dependent on local conditions. Banks also play an important role in policy transmission and economic development, which makes understanding banking market structures and their influence crucial. This study examines banking market structure and the influence of market power on bank behavior in a highly regulated environment—the Chinese market. Using financial report data, this research analyzes how market structure and power affect profitability and lending decisions. The results show that, as in many other banking markets, concentration in the lending market contributes positively to profitability by increasing loan rates, while deposit markets experience lower deposit rates in more concentrated settings. However, market power in China exhibits different competitive features compared with other countries. Banks compete on loan quality by offering lower loan rates, relying on higher leverage, and reducing bad debt to generate greater profits, rather than maximizing profits through higher loan rates when they hold more market power. Smaller banks, however, cannot compete in this way because a larger scale is required to cover monitoring and operating costs. For smaller banks, such strategies are infeasible, forcing them to charge sufficiently high loan rates to generate enough profit to cover operating expenses.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the financial condition and ability of farmer cooperatives to withstand significant increases in bad debt expense.Design/methodology/approachA unique data set of farmer cooperative financial statements that spans from 1996 to 2019 is used to examine the changes in profitability, solvency, liquidity and accounts receivable risk. Also, a deterministic stress test model is designed to shock bad debt expense and the resulting write-off of accounts receivable for farmer cooperatives. The stress test provides insights to the resiliency of farmer cooperatives.FindingsResults find that farmer cooperatives are in a strong financial position, which has improved over time. The majority of farmer cooperatives are able to absorb a substantial increase in bad debt expense because of their sizable, retained earnings position. However, cooperatives that have significant profitability challenges do experience much larger losses, especially mixed farmer cooperatives (roughly equally amounts of grain and farm supply sales) and large cooperatives with more than $500 million in sales.Practical implicationsThe stress test results suggest farmer cooperative managers and boards of directors could re-examine their credit policies and consider extending additional credit. Also, cooperatives should consider monitoring and identifying an optimal accounts receivable to retained earnings ratio, which is similar to how banks examine their tier 1 capital ratios.Originality/valueThe value of this study is having data that allows for the examination of the financial condition of farmer cooperatives over time. Also, having current data means the accounts receivable stress test results are more relevant and timelier. This is important because these accounts receivable are primarily tied to crop input supplies, and farmer cooperatives are a significant market participant in the crop input supply market.

We examine whether initial public offering (IPO) firms exercise discretion over an individual accrual account on the balance sheet—the allowance for uncollectible accounts—and an individual accrual account on the income statement—bad debt expense. Our research design exploits a unique disclosure requirement related to these accounts (i.e., the ex post disclosure of write-offs of uncollectible accounts), which enables us to develop refined expectation models. We provide evidence that IPO firms have conservative, not aggressive, allowances in the annual periods adjacent to their stock offerings. In fact, the average IPO firm has an allowance that is over four-times leading write-offs. We also provide evidence that IPO firms record larger, not smaller, bad debt expense and are less likely to record income - increasing bad debt expense than matched non-IPO firms. These results challenge the view that IPO firms understate receivables-related accrual accounts.

Semiconductor colloidal nanostructures capped with chiral organic molecules are a research hotspot due to their wide range of important implications for photonic and spintronic applications. However, to date, the study of chiral ligands has been limited almost exclusively to naturally occurring chiral amino and hydroxy acids, which typically contain only one stereocenter. Here, we show the pronounced induction of chirality in atomically thin CdSe nanoplatelets (NPLs) by capping them with enantiopure menthol derivatives as multi-stereocenter molecules. L-(−)/D-(+)-menthyl thioglycolate, easily synthesized from L-(−)/D-(+)-menthol, is attached to Cd-rich (001) basal planes of 2- and 3-monolayer (ML) CdSe NPLs. We show the appearance of narrow sign-alternating bands in the circular dichroism (CD) spectra of 2 ML NPLs corresponding to heavy-hole (HH) and light-hole (LH) excitons with maximal dissymmetry g-factor up to 2.5 × 10[sup.−4]. The most intense CD bands correspond to the lower-energy HH exciton, and in comparison with the N-acetyl-L-Cysteine ligand, the CD bands for L-(−)-menthyl thioglycolate have the opposite sign. The CD measurements are complemented with magnetic CD measurements and first-principles modeling. The obtained results may be of interest for designing new chiral semiconductor nanostructures and improving understanding of their chiroptical properties.

The different tax treatment of government, nonprofit, and forprofit hospitals implies different charity care obligations, with the greatest obligation for government hospitals and the least for for-profit hospitals. Prior research has not examined charity care provision among all three ownership types at the national level. Using 2018 Medicare Hospital Cost Reports, we compared charity care provision across 1,024 government, 2,709 nonprofit, and 930 for-profit hospitals. In aggregate, nonprofit hospitals spent $2.3 of every $100 in total expenses incurred on charity care, which was less than government ($4.1) or for-profit ($3.8) hospitals. No hospital ownership type outperformed the other two types with respect to charity care provision in a majority of hospital service areas containing all three types. Using different kinds of analyses, we also found wide variation in charity care provision within ownership types and a lack of a consistent pattern across ownership types. These results suggest that many government and nonprofit hospitals' charity care provision was not aligned with their charity care obligations arising from their favorable tax treatment. Policy makers may consider initiatives to enhance hospitals' charity care provision, particularly hospitals with government and nonprofit ownership.

Not-for-profit hospitals are required to provide community benefits to improve the well-being of their communities. However, hospitals' community benefit spending has remained mostly flat despite federal and state regulations intended to increase it. A new Oregon policy takes a multiphase approach to increase not-for-profit hospitals' community investment. In 2020, phase 1 expanded patient financial assistance requirements and medical debt protections. In 2021, phase 2 imposed a hospital-specific minimum community benefit spending floor. Using a nearest-neighbor matching difference-in-differences design and hospital financial data from the period 2016-22, we examined the impact of phase 1 requirements on charity care spending and bad debt. Oregon's patient financial assistance and medical debt protections were associated with higher charity care spending ($423,000 per hospital) and higher levels of bad debt ($846,000 per hospital) by Oregon hospitals relative to control hospitals. It is too soon to understand the effects of minimum community benefit spending floors.

A comprehensive physicochemical characterization of heterogeneous nanoplastic (NPL) samples remains an analytical challenge requiring a combination of orthogonal measurement techniques to improve the accuracy and robustness of the results. Here, batch methods, including dynamic light scattering (DLS), nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA), tunable resistive pulse sensing (TRPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), as well as separation/fractionation methods such as centrifugal liquid sedimentation (CLS) and field-flow fractionation (FFF)–multi-angle light scattering (MALS) combined with pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry (pyGC–MS) or Raman microspectroscopy (RM) were evaluated for NPL size, shape, and chemical composition measurements and for quantification. A set of representative/test particles of different chemical natures, including (i) polydisperse polyethylene (PE), (ii) (doped) polystyrene (PS) NPLs, (iii) titanium dioxide, and (iv) iron oxide nanoparticles (spherical and elongated), was used to assess the applicability and limitations of the selected methodologies. Particle sizes and number-based concentrations obtained by orthogonal batch methods (DLS, NTA, TRPS) were comparable for monodisperse spherical samples, while higher deviations were observed for polydisperse, agglomerated samples and for non-spherical particles, especially for light scattering methods. CLS and TRPS offer further insight with increased size resolution, while detailed morphological information can be derived by electron microscopy (EM)–based approaches. Combined techniques such as FFF coupled to MALS and RM can provide complementary information on physical and chemical properties by online measurements, while pyGC–MS analysis of FFF fractions can be used for the identification of polymer particles (vs. inorganic particles) and for their offline (semi)quantification. However, NPL analysis in complex samples will continue to present a serious challenge for the evaluated techniques without significant improvements in sample preparation.