Asian Economic Journal最新文献

This paper econometrically evaluates if collusion actually occurred in the negotiable certificates of deposit (CD) market during the period of Korea Fair Trade Commission's (KFTC) investigation. We propose a general mixture regression model to discriminate the collusion period from the competitive period. We apply our method to Korean CD market data from 1 January 2009 to 23 May 2019 and forecast the probability of collusion for each day. We find that only a small portion—163 days out of 2579 days—of the whole sample is discriminated as a possible collusion. We also find that the banks did not issue the CD on almost all dates discriminated as colluded in our empirical results. Our findings imply a strong possibility that the stickiness of the CD rates was induced by the depressed CD market conditions rather than collusion.

This article examines the long-term health effects of Agent Orange, a military herbicide containing the hazardous chemical compound dioxin that was widely disseminated in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1959–1975). Based on data from US military archives on the herbicide operations, we estimate the prevalence of disabilities among Vietnamese people using the 2009 Population Census. The results demonstrate that the legacy of Agent Orange continues, with ongoing adverse (although small) effects on health even more than 30 years since the end of the war. Critically, the health burden of severe mobility disability has been mostly borne by ethnic minority women in the affected areas.

Based on a panel of 31 provinces and cities from 1990 to 2019, we first conduct an empirical analysis using the maximum likelihood (ML) procedure to examine the effects of various disasters (i.e. droughts, floods, earthquakes, storms, typhoons and low and freezing temperatures) on the medium-term economic growth of China and its three economic regions (i.e. the eastern, central and western regions). We identify the transmission channels through which these disasters affect economic growth by investigating the medium-term relationships among disasters, capital accumulation, human capital accumulation and total factor productivity. The interprovincial empirical analysis demonstrates that the effects differ across the economic regions. Thus, disasters affect economic growth through different channels but mainly through capital stock. Further research indicates that the growth effect of disasters largely benefits from Chinese government expenditures on disaster relief.

We examine the effects of average test-day temperature on the mathematics test performance of all Vietnamese students who took the national university and college entrance examinations in 2009. Using individual fixed effects, we find that an increase of 1°F results in an approximate 0.006 standard deviation loss of in standardized test scores by age and test problem. The negative effects are persistent regardless of whether students were from the hottest or coolest climate regions in the country. We also find that female students and students from rural areas and townships are most vulnerable to the effects of heat.

This paper studies the causal effect of education on intergenerational transfers from/to adult children. Using micro-data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we use exogenous variations in parents' schooling induced by China's Great Famine to take account of the endogeneity of education and then estimate the effect of schooling on the probability of receiving/giving transfers from/to adult children. The instrumental variable estimates show that an additional year of schooling has a negative effect on the probability of receiving transfers but a positive effect on the probability of giving transfers at old age. Our results have some implications regarding social security and education policies in aging societies.

Universal free education, healthcare and food subsidy and land (and housing) for the landless were the key features of the Sri Lankan welfare state. In the 1960s and 1970s, Sri Lanka was an outlier among developing countries in that it had high human development indicators for a low-income country. Sri Lanka cannot make the same claims today. Many developing countries have surpassed Sri Lanka. Insufficient economic growth and perpetual budget deficits have resulted in an unsustainable build-up of public debt. A segmented trend analysis of the debt-to-GDP ratio shows that social welfare programs are not the main drivers of unsustainable debt trends at present. It is debt servicing that perpetuates the debt burden. In fact, the fiscal constraints of the country have taken a heavy toll on the quality of the social programs. The debt burden resulting from an aging population, although largely offset at present by the declining proportion of young people in the population, is bound to increase further. Interestingly, apart from higher GDP growth, a quality-adjusted road network seems to contribute to lowering the debt burden through indirect growth effects. By implication, essential infrastructure development increases the debt burden in the short run but reduces the debt burden in the long run when the growth effects start to kick in.

Financial literacy is an important factor that affects financial assets saved for retirement. Based on the China Household Finance Survey (2017) data and the two-stage life cycle model, we study the impact of financial literacy on retirement financial portfolios. The findings are as follows: (i) financial literacy has a significant positive impact on the choice of wealth management products, risky financial assets and the total amount of retirement financial assets, but it has a negative impact on the choice of bank savings; (ii) financial literacy has a significant negative impact on the proportion of savings but has a significant positive impact on the proportion of wealth management products and risky financial assets; and (iii) using a different financial literacy index, considering selection bias and the influence of financial practitioners in the household, we prove the reliability of the above results. The paper highlights the importance of financial education and provides strong support for public (government) involvement to strengthen financial literacy education and improve the awareness of retirement financial planning to reduce the financial pressures faced by many of China's elderly citizenry.

This study investigates the relationship between the diversified operation strategy of Chinese listed firms and corporate tax avoidance. In contrast to the traditional viewpoint that diversified firms are more prone to tax avoidance, the present study concludes that the tax avoidance level of diversified firms is lower than that of specialized operation firms. Further research also shows that the nature of the property rights and supervision faced by firms can affect the conclusion drawn from the baseline analysis. Our findings reflect that diversified state-owned enterprises have lower tax avoidance levels than diversified non-state-owned enterprises, and the impacts of internal and external supervision on tax avoidance are different. A possible explanation for the reduced tax avoidance with diversification is that diversification weakens internal control and reduces a firm's ownership concentration.

This study examines whether export credit insurance contributes to an increase in exports and investigates the channel through which export credit insurance affects exports. We use detailed Korean short-term export credit insurance data provided by K-SURE and conduct a regression with an extensive set of dummy variables using the Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood estimator. Our regression result shows that short-term export credit insurance increases exports by mitigating the financial constraints of exporting firms. Furthermore, the export-enhancing role of short-term export credit insurance is more significant when the destination country is a developing country or when the exporting companies are small.