China Economic Quarterly International最新文献

We use the China Household Income Project (CHIP) data to evaluate the impact of the Housing Provident Fund (HPF) on income inequality in urban China. We find that urban residents differ significantly in their accessibility to and intensity of utilization of the HPF. Those who work in the public sector, in monopolistic industries, and possess managerial or professional occupations are more likely to benefit from the HPF, leading to further income inequality. Our research also emphasizes four mechanisms through which the HPF affects income inequality. The foregone interest due to compulsory HPF saving is the only mechanism that decreases the inequality, whereas the employer's match, personal income tax exemption on the HPF, and lower interest expense due to acquiring the HPF loan increase inequality. The evidence highlights the HPF's unintended redistributive impacts and thus the necessity of enhancing equity in the ongoing HPF reform.

This paper employs regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of heating modes on residents’ energy consumption, energy efficiency gap, and energy usage behavior, using the Chinese Residential Energy Consumption Survey (CRECS). We find that district heating increases total energy consumption and total heating expenditure. However, energy consumption and expenditure per unit of district heating are lower than self-heating, which means a positive energy efficiency gap between district heating and self-heating. With the estimates, we construct a model of household heating expenditure. The counterfactual simulation shows that district heating expenditure would be reduced by more than 35% if the heating fee is charged based on actual usage. We suggest government provide a quantity-based district heating service by implementing a two-part tariff pricing strategy.

This paper examines how decentralization of administrative and fiscal authority affects the development of small cities by exploiting a unique reform of county-to-city upgrading (chexiansheshi) in China. Based on a comprehensive county-level dataset and difference-in-difference approach, I evaluate the overall as well as heterogenous effect of upgrading policy between 1993 and 1997 on local economic development. The policy impacts are most pronounced in eastern regions and counties with higher initial agglomeration level. While the effect on economic development is insignificant in middle and western regions, it greatly expanded local bureaucracy size in these areas. I discuss the potential channels of policy effects under a simple decentralization framework with heterogeneous regions. These findings suggest that decentralization might generate entirely different consequences, relying on the level of local development potential. For this reason, it is important for the policy makers to fully take into account regional heterogeneity in optimizing decentralization policy.

This paper estimates the rate of intergenerational social mobility of status in Late Imperial, Republican and Communist China by examining the changing social status of originally elite surnames over time. It finds much lower rates of mobility in all eras than previous studies have suggested, though there is some increase in mobility in the Republican and Communist eras. But even in the Communist era social mobility rates are much lower than are conventionally estimated for China, Scandinavia, the UK or USA. These findings are consistent with the hypotheses of Campbell and Lee (2011) of the importance of kin networks in the intergenerational transmission of status. But we argue it more likely reflects mainly a systematic tendency of conventional mobility studies to overestimate rates of social mobility of status, where status is partially measured by income, wealth and education at individual or household level.

Based on a county-level monthly panel data from four provinces and a province-level monthly panel data from 21 provinces from 2009 to 2015, we use the regression discontinuity method to examine the impacts of the tired pricing reform implemented in July 2012 on residential electricity use in China. The county-level (province-level) estimation shows that the tiered pricing reform has reduced the monthly electricity use per household by 6.5 ​kWh (8.9 ​kWh), accounting for 6.1% (7.1%) of the monthly electricity use per household. Moreover, counties and provinces with a more drastic policy shift have shown a larger decrease in residential electricity use.

Can administrative approval reform become an effective reform to improve the quality of economic development? Total factor productivity is the key measure of the quality of economic development. In this paper, we studied the influence of administrative approval reform on total factor productivity of enterprises theoretically and empirically. We found that administrative approval reform has promoted the improvement of the total factor productivity of enterprises overall. The reduction of institutional transaction costs and the increase in the threat of enterprise entry are important mechanisms for administrative approval reform to affect enterprise productivity. In addition, the decomposition results of the overall productivity growth of cities show that administrative approval reform mainly promotes the growth of total factor productivity of incumbent enterprises.

The Chinese version of Bayh-Dole Act (BD for short) refers to the ownership reform policy for patents arising from government funding research grants. We collected the policies of 31 “985 project” universities from 1998 to 2015 to explore the impact of the Chinese BD. Empirical evidence suggested that patent applications, patent approvals, patent durations, patent citations, and profits from technology transfer of the universities adopting the BD policy had increased significantly. The BD policy encouraged more researchers to disclose and commercialize their inventions and to pursue global patent filing strategies. Compared with the BD policy, the incentive effect of subsidies, tenure promotion and cash bonuses were relatively limited.

Government Information disclosure (GID) is an important part of Chinese efforts in improving doing-business environment. Based on the sample of China's listed enterprises, this paper studies the effect of government information disclosure on enterprise investment efficiency. We find that GID significantly improves enterprise investment efficiency, and this effect is stronger for non-SOE, and enterprises in regulated industries. Mechanism analysis suggests that when policy uncertainty is higher, the promotion effect of GID on enterprise investment efficiency is stronger. The analysis based on enterprises' survey data shows that the higher level of GID is associated with the lower enterprises' perception of policy uncertainty. These suggest that GID improves enterprise investment efficiency and raise the doing-business environment by reducing policy uncertainty.

This study examined the causal relationship between air pollution and labor productivity, by adopting prison factory data for a perfect measure of labor productivity. To address the endogeneity of air pollution, an instrumental variable strategy was used. The results showed that a 10-unit increase in air pollution index led to a significant decrease in labor productivity by 4%. A nonlinear relationship between air pollution and labor productivity was also suggested, which implied that the extreme air pollution reduced labor productivity heavily. This study emphasized the negative externality of air pollution on labor productivity.

Using the China General Social Survey data, we tried to examine the impact of gender roles on women’s labor market outcomes. We find that traditional gender roles emphasizing women’s responsibility for housework are negatively related to the employment rate and earnings of women. Although gender roles are persistent and transmit across generations, we find that women’s liberation movements during the planned economy period significantly reshape the concept of gender roles, where we take the intensity of local women’s liberation movements as the proxy variable by using local numbers of the National March 8th Women Pacesetters in 1960 and 1979. Using the intensity of local women’s liberation movements as instrument for gender roles, we find consistent evidences that the traditional gender roles decrease the likelihood of being employed and earnings of women.