Australian Economic Papers最新文献

Industrial policies influence national economic development by allocating industrial land resources. Unlike the market-oriented industrial land transaction systems in developed countries, China's industrial land transactions are significantly influenced by governmental intervention. However, there is insufficient research on the extent and mechanisms of industrial policy's influence on land use costs in this context. Therefore, this study combines land transactions, industrial policy, urban statistics, and listed company data, creating a dataset of 9705 land transactions from 2011 to 2020 to analyze industrial policies' impact on land use costs. The findings are as follows: First, different industrial policies have differentiated effects on land use costs, with lower costs for key industries and higher costs for heavily polluting industries. Second, the impact is more pronounced when the land parcel is situated outside the development zone, transferred by the prefecture-level city government, and the proportion of the tertiary industry in the province is relatively low. Third, local governments achieve regulation of land use costs through industrial policies by employing listing method and transferring land to state-owned enterprises. Furthermore, subsequent investigations reveal that industrial policies can mitigate the decline in total factor productivity caused by increased land use costs for enterprises. This article holds significant implications for optimizing industrial land resource allocation and facilitating industrial transformation and upgrading in developing countries.

This paper examines the hourly downward/upward multifractality and dynamic efficiency of four cryptocurrencies—Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and Litecoin (LTC)— before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and during the Russia–Ukraine tension. Using the asymmetric multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis method, the results show significant asymmetric multifractality in all series, which intensifies for BTC only throughout the COVID-19 crisis and narrows for ETH, XRP, and LTC. Moreover, we show that cryptocurrency markets are more inefficient during the upward (downward) trend and before (during) the COVID-19 crisis. LTC is the least inefficient market pre COVID-19, whereas XRP is the least inefficient during the pandemic crisis. The results show evidence of excessive asymmetric multifractality for all four crypto markets. Before the COVID-19 crisis, positive values of excess asymmetry in multifractality have been identified for BTC and LTC markets, whereas the excess asymmetry values were negative for ETH and XRP markets. BTC and ETH markets showed wider multifractality fluctuations compared to LTC and XRP, indicating a stronger reaction to the war's impact.

This paper evaluates the in-sample and out-of-sample forecasting performance of EPU vis-à-vis other widely used macroeconomic variables for volatility in exchange rate variability. Our findings, based on both in-sample and out-of-sample forecasting across a range of economies, indicate that the differential of the EPU between any two nations is persistently one step ahead of alternative macroeconomic predictors. Monte Carlo simulations and mechanism analysis indicate that a greater differential of the EPU is negatively correlated with bilateral trade, on the one hand, and positively with bilateral foreign exchange trading activities, on the other hand. The findings further indicate that EPU is a formidable predictor of both short-run and long-run exchange rate volatility once the endogeneity problem has been addressed, along with using multiple proxies. These results have important implications for studies about the causes of exchange rate fluctuations and enlighten policymakers and market participants on managing foreign exchange risks.

Inflation perceptions shape inflation expectations. However, little is known about the factors influencing these perceptions. In this study, we address this gap by employing threshold regressions to analyze the associations between changes in petrol and food prices—two of the most conspicuous prices—and inflation perceptions in New Zealand. Findings reveal a positive association between petrol and food price inflation on the one hand and inflation perceptions on the other, with some evidence suggesting closer associations for food price inflation. Furthermore, the relationships do not change when high inflation rates are considered instead of low inflation rates. Finally, inflation perceptions are more closely related to petrol and food price inflation over the previous year than just the most recent quarter.

This paper introduces a straightforward and effective estimation methodology for quantifying firm-level welfare losses attributable to market power in monopolistic competition markets. Our analysis underscores that welfare losses are primarily contingent on effective market power, expressed as the product of the Lerner index and market share. Furthermore, our study demonstrates that welfare loss computed using the Hicksian measurement is smaller than that obtained through the Marshallian measurement. Finally, we apply this methodology to estimate firm-level market power and welfare losses in the Chinese carbonated beverage industry.

In health care, decision-makers grapple with uncertainty, influencing production choices. This paper introduces a model exploring healthcare production under uncertainty using a state-contingent framework. Employing a parametric model and a general utility function, it calculates decision-makers' subjective probabilities for potential future states. Through numerical examples, it illustrates how optimal production choices are made. The model defines production technologies as state-allocable, facilitating resource allocation among various states and allowing for substitution of state-specific outputs. This approach offers more flexibility compared to traditional production analyses, empowering healthcare producers to better adapt and respond to uncertainties.

China's rapid economic growth in recent years has coincided with heightened environmental regulations and an upsurge in greenhouse gas emissions, necessitating a greater emphasis on green innovation to mitigate environmental risks. Concurrently, the US–China trade war has elevated trade policy uncertainty (TPU). This study uses the TPU surge from the trade war as a quasi-natural experiment, employing text analysis of annual reports to assess firms' TPU perceptions. Using a difference-in-differences method, we find that increased TPU significantly hinders green innovation. Firms' responses vary with environmental advantages, regulation levels, and government subsidies. Mechanisms include reduced environmental investment, decreased executive attention to environmental issues,  and corporate social responsibility. These findings underscore the importance of a stable trading environment for promoting green innovation.

Using panel data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) and the Digital Financial Inclusion Index (DFII) of Peking University, this paper investigates the impacts of DFI development on household financial asset allocation. The results show that DFI development significantly increases the diversity of household financial assets and enhances the breadth and depth of household participation in the investment of stocks, funds, and internet finance products. These effects remain robust to various tests, including the use of instrumental variables, reconstructing the dependent variable, and adopting different regression models. Specifically, DFI increases household asset diversity through two main channels: improving financial literacy and alleviating liquidity constraints. Additionally, the heterogeneity analyses indicate that the promotive effect of DFI is stronger for households with younger heads, higher risk aversion, and greater income uncertainty or those located in rural areas. This research underscores the importance of digital financial inclusion in fostering a more diverse asset allocation landscape in China, with potential implications for other economies as well.

This study examines whether the purchase of sovereign bonds leads to decreased bank risk and how this impact changes in worse macroeconomic conditions. For a broad picture of macroeconomic shocks, we concentrate on the dimensions of uncertainty (the cross-sectional dispersion of shocks to bank-level characteristics) and crises (the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 contagion). An empirical examination of the Vietnamese banking sector between 2007 and 2021 shows that banks purchasing securities issued by the domestic government tend to have lower risk. However, this impact is relatively weak on average, varying with the measures of bank risk. Through subsample tests, we document that the impact of sovereign bond holdings on bank risk is shaped by banks with high-risk-weighted assets and low diversification. Further results designate that sovereign bond holdings are necessary for banks as such activities help significantly lower their risk exposure in periods of crisis and uncertainty. This finding remains robust to different measures of bank risk.