查看更多>>摘要:This paper evaluates the gender differences in intergenerational effects of laid-off parents on children's adult outcomes. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) over the period from 1991 to 2015, we construct the children's lengths of exposure to fathers'/mothers' layoffs from state-owned enterprises (SOEs) retrenchment starting in the 1990 s before they turn 18 years old. We find that, when experiencing fathers' layoffs for a longer period, only girls suffer a significant reduction in education outcomes and are hence more likely to have manual occupations; when suffering mothers' layoffs for a longer period, boys' education levels increase, but this advantage does not reduce their probability of having manual occupations. Although the gender difference in children's education persists in their occupations, girls do not underperform in adult earnings compared to boys with similar family backgrounds. Instead, for girls with manual occupations, fathers' layoffs increase their gardening income.
查看更多>>摘要:Motivated by Rajan's work, we propose that income inequality and systemic banking crises have a nonlinear nexus. In addition to examining the linear "Rajan effect," we propose a "Kuznets effect" based on an assumption that income inequality has a nonlinear impact on growth, conditional on the stage of economic development, and thus plays a nonlinear role in modeling crises. We test the existence of this nexus using a sample covering 172 economies for a period of fifty years. We confirm that the relationship is U-shaped and identify the threshold level of income inequality that is beneficial for financial stability. Additionally, the U-test and area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) statistics confirm that nonlinearity, and our model has good predictive performance of forecasting. Furthermore, the results of our panel regressions are consistent and are robust to several tests. We then identify the Rajan and Kuznets effects using a two-step test. We conclude that the impact of income inequality on the occurrence of systemic banking crises is U-shaped.
查看更多>>摘要:Different from most studies that analyze command-and-control policies, our paper quantitatively evaluates the effectiveness of one type of economic incentive - environmental subsidies for stimulating corporate environmental investment. Using a representative sample of Chinese manufacturing listed firms, we find that environmental subsidies provided by the government significantly increase corporate environmental investment. The effect of environmental subsidies is also higher for smaller firms and private firms. Moreover, we also find that environmental subsidies have a significant and positive effect on both cleaner production and end-of-pipe investment, with the effect on cleaner production being greater. Further exploration reveals that government subsidies are a signal of endorsement that contributes to increments in firms' innovation and financial capacity, which encourages an increase in corporate environmental investment.
查看更多>>摘要:The transfer payment policy for National Key Ecological Function Zones is a typical vertical ecological compensation (VEC) policy that has been in place in China since 2008. This study treats this VEC policy as a quasi-natural experiment and utilises a slack-based measure model to calculate each county's green economic efficiency based on China's county-level data for the period 2003-2020. Then, the difference-in-differences method is used to evaluate the impact of the VEC policy on green economic efficiency and to verify its possible mechanisms. The results indicate that the VEC policy significantly improves the green economic efficiency of compensated areas, demonstrating that this policy promotes regional green economic development. Moreover, we find that the VEC policy may improve green economic efficiency by reducing the pollution caused by industrial development, promoting eco-industrial development and accelerating technological innovation. From the perspective of realising its three policy goals, the VEC policy not only improves the compensated areas' ecological environment quality, but also promotes economic growth and optimises public services in the compensated areas. Furthermore, an inverted U-shaped curve relationship between the scale of VEC and green economic efficiency is identified.
查看更多>>摘要:This paper studies convergence in per capita gross regional products across Russian regions in the period from 1996 to 2017. By applying the system GMM technique we estimate growth equations that are directly derived from the classic Solow model, augmented with human capital and migration and considering possible spatial effects. Our main estimates establish a convergence rate of around 2% per year. While interregional migration and interdependencies of the growth of Russian regions contribute to the convergence process, the role of human capital is ambiguous: when we employ system GMM we do not find any significant impact of human capital on regional growth no matter how we measure human capital, while pooled OLS estimates establish a positive contribution.
Wolfgang BesslerHalit GonencMario Hernandez Tinoco
101129.1-101129.19页
查看更多>>摘要:Information asymmetry can affect the propensity of firms to pay dividends directly and indirectly by reducing the agency costs of free cash flow (FCF). However, designing a research framework to identify whether information asymmetry or agency cost directly explains the propensity to pay dividends is challenging, as both are partially endogenous. To overcome this challenge, this study investigates the role of two independent external shocks in explaining the propensity of firms to pay dividends. We use the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as an information asymmetry-reducing event and the global financial crisis (GFC) as an agency cost-reducing event to disentangle the effects of information asymmetry and agency costs. Using a large international sample of more than 100,000 firm-year observations and a matched sample of more than 35,000 observations, we find that the propensity to pay dividends declined after the mandatory adoption of IFRS and then declined further due to the economic shock of the GFC. We also provide evidence that firms facing high information asymmetry and high agency costs have a lower propensity to pay dividends because of the combined effects of IFRS adoption and the GFC. These findings suggest that the agency costs of FCF are more directly relevant in explaining dividend payout policy.
查看更多>>摘要:Using a novel database on countries exposed to coastal risks (CR), this paper estimates an augmented neoclassical growth model that encompasses eight other new growth models. To account for uncertainty related to the number of models and choice of growth determinant proxies, we use a Bayesian averaging of classical estimates (BACE) approach. A preliminary examination of the data reveals that a country that faces coastal risks is likely to be a former British colony characterized by a common law legal framework, a parliamentary political system, a high degree of international trade openness, little language and ethnic fractionalization, a low level of public sector corruption, and a high rate of fertility. The BACE-based model selection procedure shows that, in CR countries, the growth determinant proxies typically used in the neoclassical, mac-roeconomic policy, natural resources, and institutions theories are significantly correlated with growth. These results suggest two implications related to these countries' coastal ecosystems. First, because they are heavily dependent on natural resources and have high fertility rates, these countries might seek short-term economic gains at the expense of deterioration in their ecosystems. Second, these countries' good institutions and low levels of ethnic division might be conducive to sustainable management of these ecosystems.
查看更多>>摘要:High-frequency financial indicators provide more useful information and are efficient at forecasting low-frequency GDP. To this end, we extend the traditional Growth-at-Risk (GaR) framework for mixed frequency data. In this extension, monthly financial indicators are used to forecast quarterly GDP with the mixed data sampling-quantile regression (MIDAS-QR) method. Its ability for high-frequency monitoring of GaR is investigated using Chinese evidence. The evidence shows that our mixed-frequency GaR is promising in terms of good forecasting and nowcasting results, and can offer early warning of GDP downturns.
查看更多>>摘要:Over the last five decades a growing number of governments in developed and developing countries have implemented targeted policies to increase the R&D to GDP ratio. However, there is little evidence regarding the feasibility of achieving large and permanent changes in R&D investment. We study the incidence and effects of episodes of substantial acceleration in R&D expenditure, using a sample of 62 countries with data from 1960 to 2007. Among other exercises, we use propensity score matching, synthetic cohorts, and panel VAR, in order to elucidate the determinants and effects of important increases in R&D intensity. We find that transitions to higher levels of R&D-intensity are a relatively infrequent phenomenon which occurs at relatively high levels of R&D intensity. Looking at long-run changes in R&D, we corroborate that few countries have been able to raise their R&D intensity from the bottom quintile to the top quintile of the global distribution. Our findings indicate that income, physical investment, education, and the size of the manufacturing sector increase the likelihood of transition, whereas country size and FDI decrease it. We find that transitions are positively correlated with subsequent greater income levels, and weakly to TFP growth. Finally, in our Granger tests with panel VAR estimates, we find that R&D acceleration Granger causes GDP growth, the level of patents, high-tech exports, and private and public R&D. In the case of private R&D, there is evidence of bidirectional causality with R&D acceleration.
查看更多>>摘要:The R&D literature framed in a strategic context shows two unpleasant outcomes for the public goods nature of knowledge: 1) the private R&D activity results in under-investment (with no information leakage - no spillovers) or over-investment (with information leakage - positive spillovers) compared to the social optimum because of appropriability, and 2) the R&D outcome shared by each firm is lower than full disclosure, as innovators are not rewarded for disseminating information. This article departs from De Bondt et al. (1992), who consider the cost-reducing (process) innovation duopoly a la d'Aspremont and Jacquemin (1988, 1990) with non-network goods showing that the (second-best) social optimum requires partial disclosure if products are homogeneous. Unlike these studies, this work finds that, in a network industry, full disclosure becomes optimal depending on the extent of the network externality. Results offer clear policy implications.