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| 1 |
ID:
156449
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| Summary/Abstract |
Driving restriction policies (DRPs) have been adopted worldwide to curb traffic congestion and air pollution. However, the empirical evidence of the effectiveness of such policies in improving air quality remains mixed (e.g., Davis, 2008; Viard & Fu, 2015). Individuals may change their commute schedules/routes or hire/purchase additional vehicles to circumvent such restrictions. This paper addresses this possibility by utilizing hourly measurements of air pollutants from monitoring stations at Lanzhou, one of the most polluted cities in China. Utilizing a regression discontinuity design (RD) approach, we concluded that the driving restrictions in Lanzhou are ineffective in improving its air quality. Specific hour and location results suggest that drivers shift their travel schedules, take detours, and acquire alternative vehicles. The results are robust after considering alternative model specifications and sample restrictions.
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| 2 |
ID:
156452
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| Summary/Abstract |
Functioning land markets are necessary for an increase in off-farm employment. However, there is limited empirical evidence on the impact of land transfer on off-farm employment in rural China. This paper investigates the drivers of households' cooperative membership, which is equivalent to transferring land through land cooperatives, and its impact on off-farm employment. Using a two-step control function approach and data from Suzhou and Yangzhou (Jiangsu province), we do not find a general effect of cooperative membership on household heads' current off-farm employment, though the effect is large for households which had surplus agricultural labor before cooperative initiation. The effect is also positive and large for household heads without off-farm experience and households located in Yangzhou. Policy-makers should be aware of the distributional consequences of these heterogeneous effects.
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| 3 |
ID:
156467
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| Summary/Abstract |
The ascension to urban citizenship and assimilation into urban life for rural to urban migrant workers is a pressing mission during the current process of rapid urbanization in developing China. However, the issue of how self-employed migrants, who account for up to 25 percent of total migrant workers in 2009 (Meng, 2012), acquire urban citizenship remains understudied. Using a unique sample from the 2009 Rural to Urban Migrants in China (RUMiC) survey, this paper explores whether self-employment choice contributes to migrant workers' ascension to urban citizenship and integration, and uncovers the underlying mechanisms. We find that although self-employed migrants are capable of earning a higher income, and improving their living conditions, their tendency to reside permanently in the city is not significantly different from their counterparts of wage workers. We argue that self-employed migrants, who are less covered by urban social securities and are more discriminated against by current urban household registration (Hukou) system, tend to lose faith in ascension to urban citizenship. It implies that a social security system with self-employed migrants being covered as well as an urban Hukou admission system favoring diverse human capital (especially taking into account entrepreneurship) would help accelerate the urbanization process.
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| 4 |
ID:
156471
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper aims to study the effect of culture on economic outcomes by focusing on one unique fertility norm in China: the belief of continuing the family line. Using the national representative household survey data, we successively examine the fertility behavior and socioeconomic status of women in regions of China with varying beliefs regarding continuing the family line. We show that this local fertility norm has positive and significant effects on the fertility behavior, including the number of births; sex selection biased towards boys; and the education, employment status, and income of women. We also show that the gender gaps in education, labor supply, and income are significantly larger in regions where the belief of continuing the family line is stronger. Our results are robust to the control for reverse causality issue by measuring the local fertility norm using the beliefs of the older generation.
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| 5 |
ID:
156460
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| Summary/Abstract |
The literature has extensively discussed whether firms benefit from exporting (referred to as the learning-by-exporting (LBE) effect), but the empirical evidence is inconclusive. This paper draws on firm experience (age) to explain this question by using Chinese firm-level data for the period 1998–2007 to examine whether younger firms learn more from exporting than older firms. Employing propensity score matching and the difference-in-difference approach, we show significant LBE effects for older firms, especially those engaging in R&D activities, having large-scale production, and under private ownership. However, the yearly or cumulative LBE effects are either insignificant or rather limited for younger firms regardless of their R&D status and firm size.
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| 6 |
ID:
156472
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper studies the economic and environmental impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China. First, we build a simple theoretical model to predict the overall beneficial effects of FDI, and also find that a stronger sense of “environmental citizenship” by the FDI firm is associated with lower pollution and lower emission intensity in the host region. For empirical analysis, we use Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) to address the regional spillovers of FDI and pollution in China, and confirm the beneficial impacts of FDI both environmentally and economically. We also find that FDI from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan (HMT) that is assumed to exhibit a stronger sense of environmental citizenship due to its closer ties with mainland China, significantly improves the host region's environmental outcome but has no measurable effects on its economic growth; in contrast, FDI from other origins significantly promotes the economic growth of the host economy although it has no measurable impacts on the environmental outcome.
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| 7 |
ID:
156455
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| Summary/Abstract |
This study investigates the influence of the financial system on firms' investment efficiency in China. For this purpose, we employ country level data of capital markets and financial institutions along with financial data from 2797 Chinese firms in the period from 1998 to 2015. The firms are priori classified into four groups, by high and low values of financial constraints and agency problems. Results show that financial development influences firms' investments positively either directly or by reducing cash flow sensitivity. The impact remains the same for all types of firms. Moreover, the financial structure has an impact on investment efficiency of firms; this result also remains the same even after controlling levels of financial development. Study contributes that capital market based financial structure impacts investment decisions by reducing financing constraints and agency issue due to its strong monitoring ability.
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| 8 |
ID:
156461
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper aims to measure and understand the rural–urban student cognitive ability gap in China. Using the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) 2013/2014 data, we find that the cognitive ability test scores of urban students are approximately 1.41 points (17%) higher than those of rural students, on average. This difference is equivalent to 37 and 41% of the standard deviation of urban and rural students' test scores, respectively. Instead of the raw test score, when the cognitive ability is estimated with the 3-parameter Logistic item response theory model, the rural–urban gap is somewhat reduced. The regression and Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition analyses show that nearly one-half of the rural–urban gap can be accounted for by differences in observed characteristics, especially number of siblings, parental education, and interaction between parents and teachers. We then discuss the policy implications of these results and propose a few potential ways to reduce the rural–urban gap in students' cognitive abilities.
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| 9 |
ID:
156462
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| Summary/Abstract |
The existence of economic slack or inefficiency is a common phenomenon of economies that operate under mandatory central planning. It implies that the economy operates in the interior of its set of production possibilities and not on its frontier. It also implies that output can be increased without any increase in the inputs if the constraints which prevent the economy from operating on the frontier in the first place are removed. Thus, there is “surplus potential output” that is not directly observable and cannot be identified by conventional analysis of the relationship between inputs and output alone. The objective of this study is to attempt to identify and estimate the surplus potential output in the Chinese economy prior to its economic reform in 1978. This will help answer the question of how much of the Chinese economic growth since 1978 can be attributed to the reduction and elimination of the pre-existing economic slack. This question is important because the increase in output due to the reduction or elimination of the economic slack can only take effect once and cannot be continuing. It will also affect the attribution of the sources of Chinese economic growth. Our investigation suggests that a reasonable estimate of the magnitude of the surplus potential output of the Chinese economy on the eve of its reform is approximately 50% of the actual realized output in 1978.
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| 10 |
ID:
156463
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper empirically analyzes distinctions between intra- and inter-industry trade indices. The research indicates that the co-movements of business cycles are influenced more through the intra-industry trade channel than by the total volume of trade itself. As trade integration among Asian countries increased, business cycle synchronization among these countries was expected to expand through trade transmission. Inter-industry trade resulting in higher specialization will induce less synchronized business cycles, while intra-industry trade could lead to increased business cycle synchronization. Moreover, I find that increased business cycle synchronization, as one of the optimum currency area criteria, is overemphasized.
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| 11 |
ID:
156469
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| Summary/Abstract |
The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of changes in China's rural land policy on agricultural investments. Dramatic changes occurred in China's rural land policies after 2000, including the extension of rural land contractual period, restriction of land reallocation among villages and villagers groups, elimination of agricultural taxes for responsibility land, and rapid development of rural land rental markets. These changes have given farmers more secure tenure on collectively controlled responsibility land and have strengthened farmers' income rights for responsibility lands, incentivizing them to increase their investments on responsibility lands. A panel data method was used to quantitatively investigate the impact of land policy changes on agricultural investment. We considered the application of organic fertilizer as an indicator for long-term agricultural investment, and compared the use of organic fertilizer between private plots and responsibility lands operated by the same household. The results showed that the difference in organic fertilizer use between private plots and responsibility land for the same household has become smaller from 2000 to 2008. Our findings suggest that recent changes in rural land policies have provided farmers incentives to increase land quality investment on their responsibility lands.
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| 12 |
ID:
156454
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| Summary/Abstract |
Using longitudinal Chinese county-level data from 2005 to 2007, we examine the causal effect of the Province-Managing-County fiscal reform on primary education spending by combining propensity score matching with the difference-in-difference method and allowing for the concurrent County Strengthening and Power Expansion reform. While the fiscal reform significantly increases per pupil expenditure on elementary education, there is little evidence showing that this fiscal reform narrows the urban-rural expenditure gap within counties. This Province-Managing-County reform, on the other hand, aggravates regional educational spending disparity in elementary schools based on the observation that the reform has caused a higher increase of per pupil educational spending in the affluent Eastern Region than the increase in Central and West China.
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| 13 |
ID:
156465
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper investigates the impact of trade liberalization on firm dynamics and productivity in the context of dramatic tariff reductions after China's accession to the WTO, and how this impact varies across regions with different marketization levels. Our results show that (a) on average, output tariff reductions tend to reduce firm entry rate and increase firm exit rate, while input tariff reductions help to increase both firm entry rate and exit rate, furthermore, regional marketization strengthens the impact of trade liberalization on firm dynamics; (b) trade liberalization exerts greater impact on the likelihood of exit for the least productive firms while it tends to reduce the probability of exit for the more productive firms, with regional marketization strengthening such a reallocation process of trade liberalization; (c) firm dynamics effect contributes approximately 43% of the growth of productivity, and it (especially the firm exit effect) is an important channel through which trade liberalization fosters productivity growth, and domestic market reform is found to strengthen such an impact.
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| 14 |
ID:
156470
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| 15 |
ID:
156468
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| Summary/Abstract |
The Chinese government faces a great challenge to safeguard the safety of the food supply chain due to the significant fragmentation of producers and weak institutional resources to monitor and enforce safety standards. Food safety in China has received escalating attention since the 2008 milk scandal. Mainly due to safety concerns, Chinese farmers adopt two separate production systems for the market and self-consumption, and thus, the so-called “One Farm Household, Two Production Systems” (OFH-TPS) has gained popularity in the recent years.
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| 16 |
ID:
156464
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper presents new evidence for the Fisher hypothesis, which states a positive relationship between nominal stock returns and inflation. We introduce a new data set from the episode of hyperinflation that occurred in China after World War II. To establish the reliability of our estimates we consider different frequencies, and time horizons and econometric models. The results reveal that stocks were a complete hedge against expected inflation and a partial hedge against unexpected inflation. In contrast to the empirical literature on the ‘stock return-inflation puzzle’, we find that the Fisher hypothesis is applicable to common stocks even with a short-horizon in the Chinese hyperinflation context.
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| 17 |
ID:
156459
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| Summary/Abstract |
We seek to contribute to the debate over trade openness and the environment by taking specific account of the endogeneity of trade openness. We use exogenous geographic determinants of trade as instrumental variables as well as distance to Huai River for identification which is based on China's heating policy. Using air quality measure from NASA, we find that trade increases three measures of air pollution: SO2, NO2, and Aerosol concentration.
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| 18 |
ID:
156473
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| Summary/Abstract |
The particularly overheated Chinese housing market, with its soaring property prices, has attracted a large amount of research. We point out three of its striking empirical features, which current literature leaves unexplored: co-existence of steady growth of real transaction price and excess supply, accelerations in price-to-income ratio, and significantly strong positive correlation between real transaction prices and income inequality. A search-equilibrium model is built to explain these facts. Heterogeneous buyers and homogeneous sellers randomly search for partners to trade in a frictional property market. The search equilibrium of the property market is either a high-price-and-low-transaction elitist matching equilibrium, or a low-price-and-high-transaction pooled matching equilibrium. The terms of trade determine which equilibrium arises. Empirical observations argue for the development of China's property market through evolution from a pooled matching equilibrium to an elitist matching equilibrium. We set out to show that the market equilibrium is always inefficient, due to crowding out externalities and market incompleteness. Policy experiments support redistributive tax, as a means to improve social welfare.
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| 19 |
ID:
156451
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| Summary/Abstract |
China has been experiencing a substantial growth in patent applications. But is this increase accompanied by a similar increase in patent value? To assess this question, we examine the citation lag of Chinese patents as a proxy of patent value in comparison with patents from the US, Europe, Japan, and Korea. Our empirical analysis comprises a unique data set of 60,000 patents with priority years between 2000 and 2010. Utilizing Cox regressions, our results show that Chinese patents suffer from a large citation lag in comparison to international patents, indicating a lower value. This is especially true for patents filed domestically. However, we find empirical support for an increasing patent value in more recent patents. China shows a strong dynamic in the field of patenting and our results suggest that the gap between Chinese patents and international patents might narrow down in the near future.
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| 20 |
ID:
156466
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| Summary/Abstract |
We examine whether companies from certain countries are more likely to fulfil investment pledges. Using data on contracted and utilized FDI in China, we find that firms fulfil an average of 59% of their pledges within two years. The propensity to fulfil pledges is lower for firms from countries with greater uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and egalitarianism; higher if the source country is more traditional; and is unaffected by popular attitudes towards China. Prior literature has found that these cultural characteristics are associated with higher levels of utilized FDI. We extend this to show that announcements of planned corporate activity may be more reliable for firms from countries with certain cultures.
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