International Studies of Economics最新文献

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.

Economic policy uncertainty is proven to have an important effect on household consumption. However, the literature on its transmission mechanism and on comparing the consumption response of urban and rural households, especially in China, is limited. In this paper, we propose two channels through which economic policy uncertainty affects household consumption, the precautionary saving channel and the investment-employment channel. Then, we use the household survey data (China Health and Nutrition Survey) to explore the heterogeneous effect among urban and rural households. We verify that an increase in economic policy uncertainty can significantly reduce household consumption through both channels. Further, the precautionary saving channel is more important in the urban household sample, while the investment-employment channel is more pronounced in the rural household sample. In addition, the heterogeneous effect also exists across households in different regions. Our results are robust with consideration of different estimation methods, the lagged effect of the uncertainty, and other characteristics of households.

Using a sample of 124 countries assisted by China from 2000 to 2019, this paper examines the impact of foreign aid on outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) and the mitigation mechanism of risk. The research finds that, first, foreign aid can significantly reduce the country risk of recipient countries, especially political risk and financial risk, and thus play a role in promoting the inflow of OFDI of donor countries, and there is a lagged effect of this role; Second, foreign aid from other countries has a negative impact on China's OFDI to recipient countries, indicating that foreign aid is nonaltruistic and exclusive; Third, the mitigation effect of foreign aid on country risk is achieved through five channels: compensation effect, synergistic effect, pioneer effect, assimilation effect, and redistribution effects.

With the construction of ecological civilization, central government's direct inspections have become the new norm of environmental protection supervision. Since 2016, the central government has been dispatching supervision teams, one batch after another, to conduct environmental protection supervision in the provinces. In this paper, the regression discontinuity designs were used to study the impact of central environmental protection supervision on the quality of air and water. Our results indicate that air quality was improved significantly during the supervision, while water quality was improved significantly during the rectification period after the supervision. A heterogeneity analysis shows that supervision had a significant impact on highly polluted areas. The results further suggest that for the continuous improvement of environmental quality, it is necessary to build a long-term governance mechanism.

Family is the basic unit that constitutes social relations, and marriage-matching determines the development trajectory of a household. Education has become one of the most important ingredients of marriage in modern society, and the proportion of homogamy is increasing day by day. This article employs the data from the Chinese General Social Survey to research the mechanism of educational attainment on the educational homogamy. To eliminate the effect of endogeneity, we use the Probit model and instrumental variables for testing. The empirical results indicate that social members with higher educational backgrounds are more likely to choose educational homogamy. After controlling for other variables, social members and female members with lower ages are more likely to choose spouses with similar educational backgrounds.

What explains huge wage gaps between different hukou and gender groups in China? This paper uses an overlapping generation model with human capital investment and occupational choices to quantify how much wage gaps between these groups can be imputed to two types of talent allocation frictions, labor market discrimination, and human capital accumulation barriers. The calibrated model indicates that the two types of talent allocation frictions can explain a significant proportion (four-fifths, one-third, and three-fifths) of the wage gap between each non-urban-men group (urban women, rural men, and rural women) and urban men in 2013. Our counterfactual exercise also shows that eliminating these two frictions since 1995 would result in about half a percentage point increase in China's economic growth rate between 1995 and 2013.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an important strategy for China. This study examines the effect of political involvement on firms' outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in belt-road countries after the BRI. Using merged Chinese nonfinancial listed firm data, the fDi Markets database, and the Thomson One database (formerly known as SDC Platinum) for the period 2008–2018, we find that political involvement has positive effect on firms' OFDI in belt-road countries after the BRI. Furthermore, we find that the positive effect is heterogeneous across state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-SOEs. Political involvement has a positive effect on M&A for SOEs and Greenfield investment for non-SOEs in belt-road countries after the BRI. Our findings suggest that political involvement promotes firms' OFDI in belt-road countries after the BRI and is helpful to the macro-policy implementation.

This paper examines how Chinese policy banks responded to China's Belt Road Initiative (BRI) using transaction-level international syndicated loan data. Employing a difference-in-differences (DID) estimation, we show that Chinese policy banks increased aggregate lending (number of loans and loan amounts) to firms from the BRI countries compared to those from the non-BRI countries after the initiative. This increase was more pronounced among firms along the continental route and in the infrastructure sectors. We also find that Chinese policy banks' loans to the BRI borrowers were associated with reduced spread, lowered collateral requirement, and extended maturity. Moreover, our results suggest that Chinese policy banks gave more support to firms from the BRI countries with weaker economic performance, more fragile institutional quality, and closer political interests. Overall, our study highlights the supportive role played by Chinese policy banks in implementing a national globalization strategy.