Financial Shared Services Empower the Real Economy: The Evidence from China

Table 1

Main variables and their specific definitions.

Variable type	Variable name	Variable symbols	Variable values and method descriptions
Explained variables	Total net asset margin	ROA	Net profit/total assets
	Return on net assets	ROE	Net income/net assets
	Tobin’s Q value	Tobin	Company market value/book value
Explanatory variables	Financial shared services	FSSC	If the listed company is implementing financial shared services, the value is 1; otherwise, it is 0
Intermediate variables	Operating cost ratio	Cost	Operating costs/operating revenue
	Total assets turnover ratio	TATR	Operating income/average balance of total assets
	Current asset turnover ratio	CATR	Operating income/average balance of current assets
	Accounts receivable turnover ratio	ARTR	Operating income/(net notes receivable + net accounts receivable)
	Accounts payable turnover ratio	APTR	Operating costs/average balance of accounts payable
	Inventory turnover days	ITD	360/(operating cost/average inventory balance)
	Business cycle	Bcycle	Days of turnover of accounts receivable + days of turnover of inventories
	Cash cycle	Cash	Days of turnover of accounts receivable + days of turnover of inventory - days of turnover of accounts payable
	Personnel efficiency	Tfp	Borrowing from Lei Yu and Guo Jianhua’s calculation to measure employee efficiency
Control variables	Company size	Size	Natural logarithm of total assets
	Gearing ratio	Lev	Total liabilities/total assets
	Business growth rate	Growth	(Current amount of operating income - previous amount of operating income)/(previous amount of operating income)
	Company age	FmAge	The year in which the company is in minus the year in which it is listed
	Nature of ownership	Soe	The value is 1 if it is state-owned enterprise; otherwise, it is 0
	Shareholding concentration	Top1	Percentage of shareholding of the largest shareholder
	Percentage of independent directors	Ind	Number of independent directors/number of board of directors
	Two jobs in one	Dual	The value is 1 if the board of directors and the general manager are combined; otherwise, it is 0
	Board size	Board	Natural logarithm of the total number of board members
	Lerner index	Pcm	Lerner index, measured by (operating revenue - operating costs - selling expenses - administrative expenses)/operating revenue; the smaller the Pcm, the smaller the competitive position of the company