International Studies of Economics最新文献

A central question in class action litigation is all or nearly all proposed class members were injured by the alleged conduct, that is, does “common impact” exist. In this paper, we demonstrate that a two-step econometric methodology can be used to estimate customer-level overcharges, providing a basis for evaluating whether common impact exists. The estimates obtained from this methodology possess desirable properties. We also address several common misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the two-step approach in practice.

The Henry George Theorem (HGT) in static models states that when a city has an optimal population size, aggregate urban differential land rents exactly cover costs of pure public goods. This paper extends the static HGT to dynamic settings. Through a series of dynamic models, the paper tentatively concludes that the HGT holds in dynamic settings in terms of present value—the present value of urban differential land rents equals the present value of public goods expenditure. In urban economies with congestion externalities or production externalities, the dynamic HGT still holds if externalities are priced correctly.

Crime affects social stability and people's safety, and directly increases the cost of urban development. Existing literature shows that income distribution affects crime, but it mainly focuses on the effect of income inequality and poverty, with scant evidence addressing the impact of income polarization on crime. Applying data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) and judicial documents from 2014 to 2018, this paper demonstrates that rising income polarization significantly increases crime in cities. The result still holds after a series of robustness checks. Heterogeneity analyses show that income polarization has a more pronounced effect on criminal activities related to violence, robbery and stealing, drug and financial fraud. Moreover, cities with a higher proportion of young and migrant populations would be more adversely affected by income polarization. Mechanism analyses indicate that income polarization exacerbates crime by increasing alienation, reducing job-seeking willingness and happiness of residents.

This paper examines whether and how national audits affect local fiscal transparency in China. Using panel data from 30 provinces between 2009 and 2018, we find that national audits significantly improve local fiscal transparency after controlling for various economic and institutional factors. The effect of national audits on fiscal transparency varies significantly by region, which is stronger and statistically significant in eastern regions and in regions with high land finance, while not significant in central-western regions or in those with low land finance. Furthermore, the positive impact is primarily driven by the disclosure and defense functions. These findings suggest that national audits are valuable for improving fiscal transparency, but their effectiveness varies depending on regional economic development and local government financing mechanisms.

This paper investigates the localized and short-term effects of COVID-19-induced lockdowns on Shanghai's rental market in the second half of 2022. Using Difference-in-Differences methodologies, we find that rental prices declined by 1.5% following the lockdowns on average, with areas characterized by a high density of companies falling by 2.0% and no significant change in suburban areas. Event-study analysis further reveals that this decline peaked at 3.0% 2 months post-lockdown. This decline was temporary with rental prices returning to pre-lockdown levels within 12 months. Robustness checks and comparisons with housing sale prices confirm the absence of significant spillover effects or structural shifts. These findings underscore the localized and temporary nature of lockdown-induced disruptions in the rental market and may be valuable to housing policymakers considering responses to short-term crises.

This work highlights a previously overlooked factor that contributes to bias in private inflation forecasts—ignorance of confidential monetary rules. Additionally, it examines how this ignorance indirectly affects policy rate settings. The model proposed reconciles biases in two key forecast sources: the inflation expectations from the Survey of Professional Forecasters and the Federal Reserve's Greenbook forecasts for the output gap. Moreover, the model investigates the impact of informational differences on monetary policy transmission and identifies clear conditions under which inflation rises following a contractionary monetary policy shock.

This article investigates the link between environmental, social, and governance performance (ESG) and dividend policy, as well as how likely the corporate life cycle might moderate this association. Using cross-country data from 2010 to 2020, the findings of this study reveal that ESG has a favorable influence on corporate dividend payments as measured by dividend payout ratio, dividend yield, and dichotomous variable. This conclusion holds true when the three ESG pillars are examined independently on dividend policy measurements. Furthermore, this analysis reveals that the firm's life cycle stage moderates the association between ESG and corporate dividend policy, exhibiting a negative moderating impact. This study specifically reveals that the relationship between ESG and dividends is stronger for firms in the early stages of their life cycle than for those in the mature stages. This relationship applies to firms operating in developed economies compared to developing economies. The study findings particularly highlight the dynamic nature of the link between ESG and dividends, underlining that this relationship is dependent on the stage of a company's life cycle. Understanding this relationship may assist stakeholders, such as investors and management, in making educated decisions about dividend expectations and sustainable practices depending on the life cycle of a firm.

In this study, we employ the synthetic control method to evaluate the transmission of external shocks, taking COVID-19 as an example, on the stock market in the Chinese hospitality and tourism industry, specifically in the catering, hotel, cultural landscape, natural landscape, and travel agency sectors. We find an increasingly negative causal effect on stock returns in all five sectors within 1–2 days after the external shock occurred. However, this impact then gradually shrank, disappearing after 7 days. We also show that the short- and long-term causal effects of the external shock on stock volatility in the above sectors are positive and significant, due to the great uncertainty induced by the pandemic. We examine the sensitivity of stock market reactions and find that hotels are the most vulnerable among the five sectors in terms of the duration of the pandemic's negative impact. Finally, we report that larger firms in the catering and hotel sectors (compared to the other three sectors) show a greater increase in volatility. These findings provide valuable insights into financial market reactions to an external shock and offer implications for crisis management in the hospitality and tourism industry during such events.