China Economic Quarterly International最新文献

We set up a general equilibrium model of Chinese wealth management products (WMPs), which are deeply rooted in traditional Chinese commercial banks. According to this model, we proposed two hypotheses, namely, the regulatory arbitrage and information asymmetry hypotheses. We tested the hypotheses by using data on Chinese WMPs during the 2006–2015 period. We found that regulatory arbitrage was the main driver of WMPs’ rapid expansion. The greater the pressure from regulation was, the greater the incentive for commercial banks to issue off-balance sheet WMPs and take risks. When the regulatory standard became strict or loose, the effect of regulatory arbitrage on marginal risk-taking behavior became reinforced or reduced, respectively. We also argue that transparency can moderate drive-up behavior. Some relevant suggestions are provided for solving the problems of overexpansion and risk-taking behavior according to the results.

Based on a novel dataset constructed with the supplier-consumer paired sample, this paper uses a difference-in-differences approach to evaluate the impact of national high-tech zones on firm performance. We find that the supplier's sales growth rate increased by about 61.35% after the approval of the national high-tech zone in the place where its largest customer was located. This spillover effect transmitted from the consumer to the supplier could be due to either knowledge spillover or demand expansion. Further study finds that the innovation spillover effect is stronger when the consumer company has a higher switching cost, when the supplier company has a stronger absorption capacity, and when the relationship between the supplier and the consumer is closer. Our paper suggests that the innovation policy effect would be amplified through the supply chain network.

The massive expansion of China's real estate sector has raised manufacturing wage through the channel of reallocating low-skilled labor from manufacturing sectors to the real estate sector. Using data of manufacturing firms in 35 major cities from 2000–2007, we find that the expansion of the real estate sector resulted in higher manufacturing wage. Additionally, we find that this positive effect was more pronounced among labor-intensive firms, among non-SOEs, and among firms in cities with a low development level of the labor market. By investigating the occupation choice of rural-to-urban migrant workers, we find that real estate expansion made migrant workers less likely to choose manufacturing jobs while more likely to choose construction jobs, which further confirms the labor reallocation story.

Traditional culture is usually regarded as the response to environmental change. In this paper, we tried to investigate the impact of natural calamity on the cultural formation by a case study of Yellow River flooding region (YRFR). Using national population censuses and Chinese General Social Survey data and the regression discontinuity design, we estimated the influence of YRFR on the formation of cultures, including gender norms, religious beliefs, and trust. The results suggested that inner YRFR residents preferred boys than girls, believed in religions but repelled foreign religions, and lacked the trust in others in spite of their more trust on governmental organizations. Finally, we conducted robustness checks and discussed the possible influencing paths.

With regard to the supply of public goods, existing literature mainly focuses on the crowding out effect of public provision of public goods on private provision, while the adverse effect has been largely neglected. In this paper, building on the perspective of private provision's impact on public provision, we attempt to investigate the causal effect of corporate donation on firms' tax aggressiveness. We use the IV method to address potential endogeneity and find that corporate donation does not lead to more tax aggressiveness. We propose a supervision mechanism to explain the results. We empirically demonstrate the effect of supervision by including the local workforce of media business in the regression.

Public development banks and development financing institutions are experiencing renaissance worldwide, but systematic academic research is patchy. The bottleneck mainly boils down to the lack of data, which has constrained the meaningful research on the rationales of establishing PDBs and DFIs and reasons for their successes and failures. To fill the gap, we aim to answer the fundamental question of “what PDBs and DFIs are” by proposing five qualification criteria, i.e., being a stand-alone entity, using the fund-reflow-seeking financial instruments as main products and services; funding sources going beyond the periodic budgetary transfers; the proactive public policy orientation, and government steering of their corporate strategy. Furthermore, we have systematically identified over 500 PDBs and DFIs that meet the five qualification criteria worldwide. Based on the first-hand data collection, we present the stylized facts (including ownership structure, official mandate, geographical scope of operation, asset size, and income groups) and development trends of worldwide PDBs and DFIs. We hope that this first global database on PDBs and DFIs can lay the foundation for the original academic and policy research.

Using the two annual rich lists of Forbes and Hurun, this study estimated the parameters of Pareto distribution to describe the features of the top tail of the wealth distribution. The wealth inequality for the whole population was re-estimated by the combination of estimated Pareto distribution and household surveys, CHIP2013, CFPS2012 and CFPS2016. The robustness of estimated Pareto coefficients and the possibility of the rich missing from the lists were also discussed in detail. The wealth inequality for the whole population was estimated at different assumptions on the combination of the top tail of wealth distribution and the household survey. The wealth Gini in the CHIP and CFPS data were as high as 0.619 and 0.736. The estimated wealth Gini minorly increased by the combination with the top tail of wealth distribution by the relative criterion, while exceeded 0.8 by the absolute criterion.

This paper uses data from an employee tracking survey in China for about 6000 incumbent workers to document their dynamic labor market outcomes throughout the year 2020. I find that the employment situation worsened sharply during the lockdown period and then recovered gradually, showing a “V” shaped pattern. However, by the end of November 2020, about 4.4 per cent of 2019 incumbent workers were still unemployed, with few social protections. By adopting a Difference-in-Differences approach, I further estimate the impacts of city and community lockdowns on labor market outcomes of surveyed employees and their mental health. The estimation results show that lockdowns reduced the probability of resuming work by 13.2 percentage points, which in turn worsened their mental health status. My findings suggest that stringent measures to counter the virus brought about negative shocks in the labor market and reduces the welfare of workers, at least in the short run.

We examine the impact of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) on innovation using China's county-level data from 1985 to 2011. Results show that the establishment of SEZs promotes a county's innovation in terms of application, grant and citation numbers of patents by 15%–25%, 8%–22% and 15%–25%, respectively. The promoting effect of establishing high-tech SEZs is higher than that of establishing economic and technological SEZs. Compared with provincial SEZs, national SEZs have a greater effect on innovation. Counties with universities nearby apply for more patents. The SEZs not only promote innovation in existing technical fields, but also continuously expand new research fields. The SEZs promote innovation by providing tax credits, technological subsidies and attracting more enterprises.

Value-added tax (VAT) is shared between central and local governments, and is levied based on firms' production location, which provides incentives for local governments to intervene in firms' production. This paper investigates how local governments' VAT retention rate affect firms' capacity utilization theoretically and empirically. We find that the more VAT retained by local governments', the lower the firm's capacity utilization. Our findings suggest the fiscal and taxation system reform should correct local governments' improper incentives and eliminate the negative effects of the distorted intergovernmental fiscal relationships on firms.