Economics of Transition and Institutional Change最新文献

In China, between 1995 and 2018, the proportion of workers employed in unskilled job categories grew, while the share holding middle-skilled jobs declined. The resulting income polarization magnified a major redistribution of wages within job categories, which is not only the main component of total income inequality but is also the driving factor contributing to changes in total income inequality over the 1995–2018 period. Our counterfactual simulation results support our conjecture that the large employment shift from middle-skilled to unskilled jobs reflects the adoption of labor-saving technologies and the response to increased demand for services. We believe that our study sheds light on similar transformations in other developing economies.

This paper traces the institutional root of China's rural industrialization to a historical policy, which paired factories in urban areas with people's communes in the countryside during the Send-Down Movement in the 1970s. The policy, initially intended to improve the lives of sent-down youth (SDY), is believed to have provided some initial impetus for industrial development in rural areas before the marketization reform that began in the late 1970s. Based on a manually collected county-level panel dataset of Zhejiang Province, we find that following the implementation of the pairing policy in 1974, counties that received a higher concentration of SDY, relative to their rural population, achieved faster growth in per capita industrial output of commune enterprises. Our results are consistent with various historical accounts. In addition, our tentative evidence shows that the pairing policy had a prolonged effect on rural economic development, lasting into the 1980s. Overall, our findings reveal the importance of some pre-reform institutions in shaping China's unique paths towards industrialization.

This paper assesses the impact of constitutional changes on foreign direct investment (FDI) in 49 African countries during the period 1980–2020. The paper uses a dummy variable related to the year of the constitutional change and the number of changes during the study period to capture the frequency of constitutional changes. The results reveal that an increase in the frequency of constitutional changes negatively affects FDI. The negative relationship between constitutional change and FDI is consistent across different measures of constitutional change and FDI and is robust to alternative empirical approaches. These results suggest that frequent constitutional changes may create uncertainty and instability in the investment climate, which may discourage foreign investors from investing in these African countries. The study provides evidence for policymakers that a stable constitutional framework may attract FDI in African countries.

Rural-to-urban migrants account for more than one-third of the total population in China. However, because of China's hukou system, urban migrants can have limited access to different public services in urban areas. Consequently, this can affect their consumption and savings behaviour. However, little is known about how the hukou system changes migrants' allocation of savings across different savings instruments. In this study, we utilize the 2013 round of the Urban and Rural Residents Income Distribution and Living Conditions Survey of China to see if migrants' hukou status affects allocation between short-term and long-term assets. Propensity score matching is used to match migrants with migrants who have obtained urban hukou. When comparing the urban migrants having rural hukou with hukou holders who converted their hukou from rural to urban, we find that the migrants hold significantly higher proportions of savings in cash and other short-term assets. Those who have obtained urban hukou, appear to hold a greater share of their portfolio in long-term, higher returning assets. The differences in portfolio allocations appear to be larger for migrants with lower household income. We argue that these results are consistent with savings behaviour driven by a precautionary motive.

This paper builds a bilateral FDI-output model to study intermediary roles played by the relative differences in human capital and technology in triggering the gross-output-enhancing effect of inward foreign direct investment (FDI). Our model develops several testable hypotheses to assess how these intermediary factors—the differences between leader and follower countries' capabilities—determine the technology transfer and shorten the gross output gap between the frontier and follower countries. In our empirical work, we employ country-level panel data that contain 67 countries from 1977 to 2013 and find that the differences in human capital and technology, which take into account the gap in capacity between the leader and follower countries, are the determinants that trigger the gross-output-enhancing effect of FDI. Our results are robust to the non-linear effects, cyclical fluctuations, endogeneity of FDI per se, and the variation of the host countries' institutions and inflation.

The relationship between international investment and the environment is always concerned around the world, but the literature mainly focuses on the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) (especially from developed countries to developing countries). Currently, many developing countries have regarded outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) as a critical task of economic development and encourage firms to ‘Going global’. After OFDI, how do firms' pollution emissions change? In this study, we employ the data of Chinese industrial firms to empirically answer this question. In particular, we combine inverse probability weighted matching with a difference-in-difference approach to identify the causal effect of OFDI on firm-level pollution emissions. Our result indicates that OFDI leads to the reduction in both emission intensity and emission levels. This pollution reduction is driven by improving abatement technology and decreasing energy intensity. It potentially implies that OFDI reduces pollution emissions mainly through the ‘reverse technology spillover’ effect rather than ‘pollution transfer’ effect. In addition, pollution reductions caused by OFDI are prominent for local production OFDI and resource exploitation OFDI, OFDI to high-income countries as well as capital-intensive industries. Overall, this study not only provides an initial evidence for the relationship between OFDI and the environment at the firm level but also provides enlightenments for international investment and sustainable development.

While the diffusion of industrial robots has had a significant impact on the economy and society, more research is needed to understand how robots contribute to sustainable growth. This study uses paired data on China's county-level carbon emissions and industrial robot installations from 2008 to 2017, employing a Bartik shift-share instrumental variable design to estimate the economic and sustainable effects of industrial robot diffusion. The study finds that industrial robots significantly promote economic growth and contribute to carbon emission reduction as confirmed by robust IV 2SLS and general PSM-DID methods. Additionally, a heterogeneity analysis shows that industrial robots have a stronger impact on sustainable growth in underdeveloped and small-medium cities, especially in low-skilled industries. Finally, the study identifies industrial structural change, clean energy use, and improved productivity and innovation as key factors that mediate the impact of industrial robots on sustainable development.

This paper uses a patient discharge dataset from China to study whether and how medical expenses increase for those patients who have better insurance coverage. It uncovers consistent increases in total medical expenses and across each of the three broad categories of expenses (prescription drug expenses, diagnostic test expenses, and other service expenses), no improvement in the quality of care delivered. These increases in expenses can be attributed to patients, physicians, or both. The study provides evidence that physicians' financial incentives play an important role in inducing the increase in medical expenses and that physicians' workload level affects the role of their financial incentives.

We explore the role of staff training and experience for banks' efficiency and profitability, while accounting for size, solvency, liquidity and business model of the banking sector. We try answering two questions: (i) are banks with higher levels of staff training and experience more efficient and profitable and (ii) do banks that spend more to increase the quality of their staff have better outcomes in terms of NPLs, in case of a downturn? We use two novel sources of microdata from a one-off survey about banks' HR policies and a database on banks' balance sheets and P&Ls regarding the Romanian banking sector. We apply the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach to estimate production frontiers and rank banks by cost and income efficiency. Our main findings support the conclusion that it pays off to invest more in the quality of bank staff, from both risk management and revenue efficiency perspectives.