Fig 1.
Conceptual framework of DIF and URI.
Note: DIF includes three sub-indices (D1, D2, D3). Threshold effects are modeled for DIF, sub-indices, and traditional financial development (TF).
Table 1.
Descriptive statistics of key variables.
Table 2.
Variance inflation factor (VIF) results.
Table 3.
Benchmark regression results.
Table 4.
Results of DIF sub-indices.
Table 5.
Regression using DE as the core explanatory variable.
Table 6.
Robustness Tests and Instrumental Variable (IV) Estimation Results
Table 7.
Threshold Effect Tests for DIF and Sub-indices
Table 8.
Regime-specific coefficient estimates.
Fig 2.
Regime-specific coefficient estimates with 95% confidence intervals.
Notes: Each point denotes the estimated coefficient; horizontal bars show 95% confidence intervals based on province-level cluster-robust standard errors. Upper regimes (e.g., DIF >4.1133, n = 19) exhibit wider intervals due to limited sample size.
Fig 3.
Threshold effects of DIF and sub-dimensions on URI.
Notes: The red dashed vertical lines indicate estimated threshold values derived from Table 8. Blue lines represent estimated coefficients in lower and upper regimes; blue dots mark point estimates in each regime. The visible structural breaks reflect regime-dependent nonlinearities, reinforcing the presence of critical development inflection points in the DIF–URI relationship.