International Studies of Economics最新文献

Based on the input–output table and the supplier–customer data disclosed by the listed companies in China, this paper builds China's production network on both industry level and firm level. We describe the characteristics of such network using various network indexes and obtain the following results: first, China's production network on industry level is featured by “small world” and “sparsity,” and continues to become sparser. The existence of hub-like sectors makes the influence of sectoral shocks on macro fluctuations increasingly important. Second, China's production network on firm level has three types of structures: horizontal, ring, and star. Automobile and pharmaceutical industries show obvious intra-industry network cluster features. This paper aims to deepen the understanding of production network on both macro and micro levels, and provide a basis for future study on the propagation of external shocks in production networks.

This paper presents a general theoretical framework for understanding the Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI). We begin with an introduction to the connotations of the BRI and a review of the initiative's main achievements since its inception. From these achievements, we identify the existence of a potential match between supply and demand in jointly building the BRI to be the foremost necessary condition for win–win cooperation for participating countries. Several features of China's contemporary economic structure are shown to provide the huge potential of supply that matches the massive demand of many Belt-and-Road countries for infrastructure development. To unleash the full potential of the BRI, a series of sufficient conditions must be met so that supply and demand interact in a virtuous manner. In the first stage of jointly building the BRI, the key to turn the initiative's potential into reality is to develop the “Five Links” of policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and people-to-people bond. Now that the BRI has entered the high-quality development stage, we demonstrate that China has taken or needs to work on policy measures in 10 areas to ensure the continuing and sustainable success of the BRI construction.

The Chinese central government recently published a new regulation to strictly limit the time minors spend on online games, providing a favorable policy environment for the protection of their physical and mental health as well as their overall development. We first provide empirical evidence that children having more frequent online entertainment would suffer worse school performance. We then adopt analytic hierarchy process to analyze the possible hazards of minors' addiction to online games from such aspects as physical health, academic performance, family relationship, and teacher–student relationship. Recommendations are finally given on how to prevent minors from being addicted to online games.

Whether maintaining a close relationship with China can benefit economic performance in the postpandemic era is a crucial concern for countries around the world. This study employs the difference-in-difference (DID) model and propensity score matching to estimate the impact of connecting people proposed by the Belt and Road Initiate (BRI) on the subnational economic development of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) cities. The quasi-natural experiment of DID is based on the establishment of China–ASEAN friendship cities. We capture the ASEAN subnational economic development by calibrated satellite nighttime light data. Our findings show that the establishment of a friendship-city relationship has a positive impact on the subnational economic development of China–ASEAN cities. Further analysis indicates that bilateral trade, China's direct investment in contracted projects, and mutual visits by national leaders may be the underlying channels for boosting the economic development of China–ASEAN friendship cities. This study contributes to the literature on friendship city and provides ex-ante implications on the BRI from the perspective of connecting people with first-hand empirical evidence.

There is an ongoing debate about whether standards act as trade catalysts or barriers. This article uses a gravity model to analyze the effects of national standards on the trade of agricultural products between China and the 64 Belt and Road (B&R) countries from 1990 to 2019. Mandatory country-specific standards have positive and significant effects on total trade, exports, and imports. Mandatory international harmonization standards have positive and significant effects on total trade and exports. Voluntary country-specific standards positively (and significantly) affect exports, while voluntary internationally harmonized standards positively (and significantly) affect total trade, exports, and imports. The magnitude of coefficients of mandatory country-specific standards is the highest, followed by mandatory internationally harmonized standards and voluntary internationally harmonized standards. It is beneficial for China and the B&R countries to strengthen standards cooperation, actively adopt international standards, and evaluate the implementation effect of standards over time.

We employ the data of 290 cities in China from 2006 to 2019 as a research sample and use the Multi-period DID method to test the policy shock of National E-commerce Demonstration Cities (NEDC) pilots on high-end service industry agglomeration. We find that after becoming pilot cities, the specialized agglomeration level of its high-end service industry increases by about 14.1% on average, and the diversified agglomeration level decreases by about 2.7% on average. And NEDC policy can affect the spatial agglomeration of high-end service industry through three channels: Enhancing the inclusiveness of digital finance, improving the degree of market competition, and promoting regional innovation ability. Moreover, NEDC policy has the characteristics of spatial heterogeneity. NEDC policy has a significant spillover effect on the specialized agglomeration of high-end service industry in the first-tier cities, while the second-tier cities show the characteristics of diversification dispersion. In addition, NEDC policy has a more obvious impact on the agglomeration effect of high-end service industry under the radiation and driving effect of megalopolis.

After China launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, the Chinese government has invested over 1200 infrastructure projects in countries along the Belt and Road, and nearly 10% of the projects have failed or been delayed. China has also concluded free trade agreements with many countries along the Belt and Road to reduce trade and investment barriers to promote economic and trade cooperation. This paper analyzes whether the signing of the free trade agreement (FTA) is conducive to promoting China's infrastructure investment projects’ success in the countries along the Belt and Road. We conclude that the signing of the FTA agreement is conducive to reducing the failure rate of China's infrastructure investment in the countries along the Belt and Road. For deeper FTAs, the effect is more pronounced. This paper further explores the investment provision of FTA and concludes that investment provision can improve the success rate of investment, especially if it includes provision of national treatment in the pre-establishment and the dispute settlement mechanism.

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.