| Variable | Definition | Calculation |
| Cash | Cash holdings | Monetary capital + financial assets held for trading |
| Lev | Leverage | Debt with interest/total assets |
| D | Dividend | Dividend paid/total assets |
| ECH1 | Excessive cash holdings | The actual cash holdings of a company − the optimal cash holdings estimated according to the conditions of a company |
| ECH2 | Excessive cash holdings | Max (0, the actual cash holdings of a company − industry average) |
| SDC1 | Spare debt capacity | The optimal debt estimated by corporate conditions − the actual debt born by the company |
| SDC2 | Spare debt capacity | Max (0, average debt of the industry − actual debt of the company) |
| FF1 | Financial flexibility | FF1 = ECH1 + SDC1 |
| FF2 | Financial flexibility | FF2 = ECH2 + SDC2 |
| Beta | Predation risk | Regression coefficient of the individual yield to the industry yield |
| NH | Natural hedge | The capital-labor ratio adjusted by the industry |
| n | Number of companies | Number of listed companies per year |
| Size | Company size | Natural logarithm of total assets |
| NTC | Net trade credit | (The payable − the receivable)/sales revenue of that year |
| Capex | Capital expenditure | Cash paid to buy fixed assets, intangible assets and other long-term assets/total assets |