|
|
|
Sort Order |
|
|
|
Items / Page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
168344
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Income inequality is undoubtedly a potential economic and social risk for any country in the world. For China, the improvement in agricultural production capacity and the steady progress of urbanization are fundamental guarantees to mitigate unbalanced urban-rural development and alleviate urban-rural conflict. However, previous studies have paid little attention to the effects of agricultural inputs such as chemical fertilizers on urban-rural income disparity. Based on a data set of 30 provincial-level regions in China over 1997–2015, we use the system generalized method of moments to investigate the impacts of agricultural production inputs and urbanization on urban-rural income disparity. The results show that increasing urbanization has a significant effect on mitigating urban-rural income disparity. The intensity of chemical fertilizer application also has a significant impact on the disparity, but the impact depends on the level of urbanization. For the provinces with relatively low levels of urbanization, an increase in the intensity of chemical fertilizer application can moderate the disparity, while a decline in the intensity of chemical fertilizer application can narrow the disparity in more urbanized provinces. The threshold levels of urbanization present a time-varying characteristic; however, the threshold effects are significant over the entire sample period. Therefore, during the process of further urbanization in China, it is necessary and urgent to appropriately adjust the pattern of chemical fertilizer application and thus reduce the over-dependence on chemical fertilizers in agricultural production.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
168352
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Although students in rural and migrant schools in China generally have not performed well, a share of each cohort has been able to thrive in school and to test into academic high school and college. To understand the origins of persistence, specifically, why some students learn more than do others, researchers have identified certain sources of the problem. Few studies, however, have paid attention to the role that low levels of cognitive development of students play in their academic performance. To address this gap, this study focuses on the role that cognition may play in terms of the academic achievement of rural students. We analyze data from more than 10,000 primary school students from private migrant schools in Beijing and Suzhou and from public rural schools in Henan and Anhui, using the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices test. Our results show high rates of developmental delay (about 33% of the students have Ravens scores that are less than one standard deviation lower than an international mean). Further, the rates of delay are large among all subgroups in the study, including rural children who attend migrant schools in cities and those who live in rural areas and attend rural public schools. The results also suggest that the cognition of students is highly correlated with their educational performance and, in fact, is by far the most important factor in their academic achievement.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 3 |
ID:
168341
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This study examines the impact of gender workforce composition on firm productivity. Using a large sample of Chinese manufacturing firms and conditional on human capital-related controls, we find that firms with a greater share of female workers demonstrate lower productivity. However, our results suggest that increasing the fraction of highly educated female workers significantly improves firm performance. This effect is evident for all private firms regardless of their trade orientation and foreign firms undertaking purely domestic sales. However, the effect does not exist in the case of state-owned and export-oriented foreign enterprises. Compared with medium-sized and large firms, small firms benefit more from gender diversity at high education level. Finally, the share of highly talented female workers indicates better firm performance in more feminized industries.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 4 |
ID:
168342
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
In this paper, we study the pattern of assortative marriage in China since 1990 and its impact on income inequality. The results indicate that men in China are increasingly likely to marry women of similar education levels. We calculate the counterfactual income inequality that would prevail if marriages were randomly matched in terms of education. In 2005, China's overall Gini coefficient of household income per capita would decline from 0.512 to 0.476 if marriages were randomly matched. In urban areas, assortative marriage in education increased the Gini coefficients from 0.321 to 0.338 in 2009. The decomposition exercise shows that the rising returns to education contribute most to the increase in income inequality in urban areas between 1990 and 2009, while the change in marriage assortativeness plays a minor role.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 5 |
ID:
168349
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Employing a unique data from a county in rural China, we use the regression-discontinuity design to study the causal effects of elite school and magnet class enrollment. Our data contains two admissive processes, allowing us to separately examine elite school and magnet class effects on two groups of students with different abilities. Results show that enrollment in elite schools has small and insignificant effect on borderline student scores in the college entrance examination, whereas studying at a magnet class can significantly boast borderline student CEE score by 0.435 standard deviations. We provide suggestive evidence that teacher effect is roughly 40% of the magnitude of the peer effects associated with the score gain in magnet classes. We also find magnet class experience can improve the probability of entering high-quality academic universities. By comparing the effects of two cutoffs with different student abilities, our findings support the claim that the effect of elite school/magnet class enrollment depends on student abilities.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 6 |
ID:
168347
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The industrial pollution caused by China's unprecedent economic expansion seriously imperils public health, giving rise to public's high demand for better environmental quality. The paper employs the difference-in-differences (DID) methodology to conduct a quasi-natural experiment based on the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) to evaluate the public participation impact on pollution emissions reduction and environment technology efficiency. The results show that PITI information disclosure has a positive influence on pollution emissions reduction, however, some existing literatures may overstate the effect of public participation on environment improvement in China, the empirical results show that government administrative measures still play essential role at current stage. The paper also finds that the influence of public participation exists in eastern China rather than in central and western China. In addition, the results of using environment technology efficiency as outcome variable show insignificant effect, but eastern China has positive environment technology efficiency, suggesting that economic development may increase enterprise technological input, hence achieving mutually beneficial achievements of economy and ecological efficiency.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 7 |
ID:
168343
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Using data from the 2012 consumer finance survey in China, we extend the literature on household finance by examining the effects of both financial literacy and housing value on household financial market participation, the role of which has been examined separately in the existing literature. The results show that financial literacy significantly improves the probability of household financial market participation, while the housing value has an obvious “crowding-out effect” on household financial market participation in urban China. Further research finds that the role of financial literacy in household financial market participation in households with a low housing value is stronger than that in households with a high housing value. Furthermore, the study of the regional differences shows that among households with a high housing value, financial literacy plays a more significant role in household bond market participation in less-developed cities. Among households with a low housing value, improvement in financial literacy plays a more significant role in household fund market participation in less-developed cities and under-developed cities. Our findings remain robust after alleviating potential bias due to endogenous problems by applying the instrumental variable (IV) method and propensity score matching (PSM) method. Finally, the paper proposes corresponding policy recommendations.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 8 |
ID:
168350
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Households often make errors when self-assessing their housing wealth. By using the Chinese Households Finance Survey, we show that Chinese urban households systematically overestimate their home value. This bias is significantly related to household consumption: a one standard deviation increase in the extent of estimation bias is associated with a 10% increase in household consumption. Our main results are robust against a variety of robustness checks, e.g., taking into account the expectations of future home price, using the interviewee's estimation as the instrumental variable for the household self-estimation, implementing the hedonic model on an external data source to assess real homevalue, etc.. Further, we show that overestimated households are more likely to take risk in financial market, and have a larger amount of immediate and conspicuous consumption. These findings have policy implications for the recent debate about property tax, indicating the unintended consequences of property tax through providing more precise information about home value.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 9 |
ID:
168348
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This paper used the CHIP 2013 dataset to investigate the effects of two important education policies in China on intergenerational education mobility, including the Compulsory Education Law implemented in 1986 and college expansion policy (CEP) started from 1999. In general, our results reflect a relatively optimistic picture in urban China, but a less favorable pattern in rural areas. For the urban sample, both the Compulsory Education Law (CEL) and college expansion policy increase the probability of upward mobility at lower parental education level, and the college expansion policy further increases the intergenerational education mobility in urban China. In contrast, each of the two policies indeed reduces the intergenerational education mobility for the rural sample, and the effects found on upward mobility in urban China are non-existent for the rural sample. The unfavorable results in rural China can be attributed to poor enforcement of the policy or the lack of demand-side education reforms.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 10 |
ID:
168346
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Since 1980s, China has experienced a series of reforms to support the development of electricity industry, and the latest one is in 2015. The essence of this new reform is to improve efficiency and lower energy cost. However, China's electricity market has its particularity. The “provinces as entities” is the main regulation frame in China's electricity sector. The operation of the electricity industry can be seen as a game result and interest compromise between the local government and grid companies, and this “win-win exchange” regulation failure leads to grid market power. The profit mode of the grid enterprises will be gradually changed with the deepening of new electricity reform. How to regulate electricity transmission and distribution sector and improve grid efficiency becomes a crucial problem to address. This paper aims to examine the relationship between market power and power grid efficiency. We calculate the unconditional and conditional efficiency of grid companies by applying a conditional slack-based measure (SBM) model. The empirical results show that grid efficiency is at a low level and the indicators differ among provinces and regions. Moreover, market power indeed has significant negative effects on power grid efficiency. These findings provide some insightful references for the future development of China's power industry and electricity reform.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 11 |
ID:
168345
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This paper offers one of the first pieces of empirical evidence on the impact of inequality of opportunity on household education investment by using the panel data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) in three waves (2010, 2012 and 2014). Our result suggests that inequality of opportunity has a negative effect on household education expenditures. This result is robust to a series of robustness checks. Furthermore, for relatively disadvantaged households (household heads with less education, income, or rural hukou status), inequality of opportunity has a larger negative effect on their education expenditures. Policy suggestions to lower inequality of opportunity may include reducing labor market discrimination based on gender and hukou status, balancing education resources to create more equal educational opportunities, and offering children education subsidies in low-income families.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 12 |
ID:
168351
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Since the start of the land tenure reform in the pastoral areas of China in the 1980s, grassland use rights have increasingly been assigned to individual households. However, this period has also been accompanied by extensive grassland degradation in China, which has raised the question of whether a tragedy of privatisation has occurred. This paper investigates the impact of land tenure reform on the changes in grassland condition, using data from 60 counties in Inner Mongolia between 1985 and 2008. A fixed effects model is employed to control for time-invariant factors. Two alternative model specifications in terms of land tenure reform and time-variant factors are conducted to verify the robustness of the estimation results. The results show that land tenure reform did not affect the grassland condition significantly, and the major drivers of grassland degradation include the land use change and the increase in market demand (meat prices). Thereby, we provide empirical evidence that the privatisation of grasslands did not cause grassland degradation in Inner Mongolia, China.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 13 |
ID:
168340
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This study incorporates macroeconomic uncertainty and high-level innovation into the framework of urban green development performance analysis. The positive impact of macroeconomic uncertainty on high-level innovation is related to the economic level and geographical location of cities. In developed cities and coastal cities, positive incentives for high-level innovation depicted by invention patents and green technology patents are generated, but the impacts are not significant in less developed cities. The negative impact of macroeconomic uncertainty on green development performance of developed and coastal cities is not significant, but it has a more obvious inhibition effect in less developed cities; raising the proportion of high-level innovation helps to weaken this negative impact.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 14 |
ID:
168353
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This paper explores the price rigidity in China using 259 monthly domestic and foreign macroeconomic time series. A factor-augmented vector autoregressive (FAVAR) model expanded with global components is employed. Three findings are obtained. First, the model shows that common components at home and abroad are the main driving force of price volatility; for price persistence, however, it is the global components that play a major role. Second, there is no clear evidence to show that the price stickiness in China is subject to urban-rural disparities. Last, we observe a relatively active price volatility and high persistence after the 2008 financial crisis, in which domestic components have increasingly significant impacts.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|