| CoD | The cost of debt, which is equal to the financing expense, including interest expense, exchange loss and service fees, divided by the total liabilities |
| IPO | A dummy variable equal to one if the firm has been listed |
| Leverage | Total liabilities divided by the total assets |
| Size | The natural logarithm of the total assets |
| Age | The natural logarithm of the firm age |
| Current ratio | Current assets divided by the total assets |
| ROA | Profit, scaled by the total assets |
| Fixed assets | Fixed assets, scaled by the total assets |
| SOE | A dummy variable equal to One if the firm is a state-owned enterprise |
| IPO likelihood | An instrumental variable reflecting the likelihood that that a firm receives approval for its IPO application, which is defined as: |
| Employee | The natural logarithm of the number of employees |
| R&D expense | The R&D expense, scaled by the total sales |
| Higher education | The number of employees with bachelor’s or postgraduate degrees, scaled by the number of total employees |