International Studies of Economics最新文献

This paper investigates the determinants and the time pattern of the subjective well-being of private business owners. We find that both personal and enterprise-level factors have a significant influence on subjective status of private business owners. Meanwhile, we find supportive evidence of Easterlin paradox among Chinese private entrepreneurs: both personal income and operating revenue enhance subjective status in a certain period, but subjective status declines as time goes by, even as incomes continue to rise. A further Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition suggests that the competition and provincial factors are the keys to explaining the paradox. Finally, we try to verify the positive effect of political connection on entrepreneurs' subjective status to provide some helpful advice for the government.

This article explores the impact of language proficiency on international trade by using panel data analysis. To do so, we construct a time-variant test-score-based measure of common language. Controlling for the standard gravity model variables, we find strong empirical evidence that English proficiency promotes bilateral trade flows through facilitating direct communication. We confirm that this finding is robust even when we estimate its effects separately on goods and services trade flows at a disaggregated level. Furthermore, we show that institutional similarities between trading partners play a role that is similar to communication easiness in trade. Our study provides a policy implication for government support for attaining second language fluency.

This paper investigates the influence of environmental regulations on outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). We first develop a simple model to show that an increase in emission tax in the domestic market induces firm-level foreign direct investment (FDI) activities. We next take advantage of China's 11th Five-Year Plan as a quasi-natural experiment, which imposed different pollution reduction targets across provinces, and examine its impact on firm-level FDI activities. Our results indicate that more stringent environmental regulations encourage firm-level FDI participation. Furthermore, (1) firms are more likely to carry out FDI in developing countries instead of developed ones; (2) Compared with distribution-oriented FDI, firms are more likely to engage in production-oriented FDI. All results remain robust after controlling for possible policy endogeneity, missing variables, and expectation effect issues, which provides positive support for the pollution haven hypothesis.

China, the world's largest energy consumer, has been increasingly relying on pricing policies to improve energy efficiency in recent years. This paper estimates the impact of Differential Electricity Pricing (DEP) policy, which covers the most energy-intensive industries in China. Under the DEP policy, electricity surcharges are imposed on enterprises using “eliminated” and “restricted” production technologies, of which the “eliminated” enterprises are more backward in technology level and are charged much higher electricity tariffs. We exploit a differences-in-differences approach to assess the effect of the DEP policy on fossil fuel consumption. The results indicate that the DEP policy led to a reduction in coal consumption intensity (CCI) of “eliminated” enterprises, which can be explained by the obsoleting of backward equipment in these enterprises. As for the “restricted” enterprises, it was economically optimal to continue to use “restricted” equipment; consequently, the DEP policy had no significant impact on CCI.

Technology variations among countries account for a significant part of their income differences. In this paper, a firm's technology choice is embedded in a search theoretic framework for unemployment. More advanced technology is assumed to have a higher setup cost, but it is more productive. The model is tractable and the following results are derived analytically. An increase in the unemployment benefit leads to an increase in the equilibrium wage rate, giving an incentive to firms to choose a more advanced technology. Thus, this result regarding unemployment insurance in models with wage posting carries through with Nash bargaining as well. As a consequence, the equilibrium unemployment rate increases. Furthermore, an increase in the bargaining power of workers increases the unemployment rate but has an ambiguous impact on the equilibrium level of technology and the wage rate. Finally, an increase in the exogenous job separation rate or the interest rate increases the unemployment rate and decreases the wage rate but does not affect the equilibrium level of technology.

Based on 2010 China Family Panel Studies, we use Ordered Probit, Instrumental Variables, and Conditional Mixed Process to analyze the effect of different ways of love on after-marriage well-being. The findings are: (i) Compared with arranged marriage, free love can significantly increase the well-being of married residents. (ii) In heterogeneity analysis, the promotion effect of free love on well-being is more obvious among the couples 2 years after marriage, residents with positive personal values, the post-80s, and rural areas. (iii) In mechanism analysis, married residents who met through free love will significantly enhance their ability to get along with others, increase their intimacy with their spouses, improve family harmony, and reduce their emphasis on family succession, thus further enhancing their well-being.

In the digital age, the internet has become an essential source of information gathering and maintains a network of social contact. In this paper, we use microdata from the China Family Panel Studies to examine the effects of guardian's internet use on teenager's cognitive skills. Using mobile internet users and base station density as instruments, we found that guardian's internet use had a significant impact on teenager's cognitive abilities as measured by math and verbal tests. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact is more substantial for guardians in rural areas and less-educated guardians. Further exploration of the mechanism shows that internet usage affects cognitive skills through monetary investment, time investment, and parental environment. The result suggests that promoting internet usage for less educated families in rural areas can potentially improve children's academic performance and decrease inequality across regions and generations.

Using a country-level panel data set of China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) during 2003–2015, we find that China increases its direct investment in an economy endowed with natural resources, which increases the exports of the resources to China. Facilitated by the industry-level data between 2003 and 2008, we further show that the increase of China's OFDI in the economies abundant in natural resources would boost the output of Chinese industries which use the resources intensively but shrink the industries that are less intensive in the resources. These findings are consistent with the Rybczynski theorem and suggest that China's OFDI increases its domestic supply of natural resources.

This study uses the gravity model to estimate the effects of food safety regulations implemented by the partner countries on agri-food exports of China. Annual bilateral trade data are compiled for major agrifood export items of China like apples, kidney beans, garlic, mandarins and orange, meat of swine, and tea. The panel data are estimated using both the fixed- and random-effect models. Results of the study show that all the standard gravity-type variables carry signs according to prior expectations and economic theory. The study concludes that food safety regulations have no effect on exports of all the selected commodities except meat of swine.

This study is an attempt to examine similarities and differences in the patterns of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) of India and China in the global market at different levels of classification. The study analyses whether RCAs of these economies have undergone any structural shift/change or whether the pattern of specialization in these economies is competitive or complementary in the world market. The study reveals that India holds a comparative advantage in 9 out of 16 product groups of Harmonized System (HS) classification, 41 out of 97 HS chapters at HS 2-digit level, and 2377 out of 4163 traded commodities at HS 6-digit level, while China holds a comparative advantage in 6 out of 16 HS product groups, 45 out of 97 HS chapters at HS 2-digit level, and 2075 out of 4381 traded commodities at HS 6-digit level in 2018. Major findings suggest that both the countries have been performing well and broadly maintained their comparative advantage, especially since 2000. A comparative analysis of India and China reveals a small structural change in RCA over time in both economies at disaggregated levels. The study highlights that India and China neither have a competitive nor a complementary relationship in the global market. These findings reflect a scope of independent expansion of the economies of both India and China, without hurting mutual interest in the global market. It may be inferred from the results that mutual cooperation will enhance the competitiveness of both economies and contributes to global economic progress.