Journal of Asian Economics最新文献

This paper empirically investigates the impact of the property tax on housing wealth inequality using the property tax pilot program in China as a quasi-natural experiment. Our findings uncover a significant decrease in the Gini coefficients of the housing wealth in the pilot cities. The main channels at work include evolutionary housing demand from home buyers and the convergence of housing prices for different sizes. Two typical tax-exemption scenarios, based on per capita housing area or total number of housing units, present significant differences in the magnitude of the policy effectiveness as well as the effective channels.

The South Asian region has a wide range of problems that significantly influence its path towards environmental sustainability. The region's rapid population expansion, rising urbanization rates, rising industry, and increasing resource demands primarily determine these challenges. The quest for environmental sustainability in this setting is complex and multidimensional, made more difficult by the shadow economy, corruption, and the need to improve renewable energy alternatives. Therefore, the current study examines the multifaceted and interrelated dynamics of the shadow economy, corruption, economic inequality, and environmental sustainability in South Asian nations from 2004 to 2018. We have used sophisticated methodological strategies to tackle cross-section dependence, non-stationarity, and heterogeneity issues by employing a pooled mean group (PMG). However, we use panel FMOLS and DOLS techniques for robustness checks. The findings of the PMG analysis show that the shadow economy, corruption, and industrialization significantly negatively impact environmental sustainability. On the other hand, renewable energy consumption and urbanization are positive and substantial elements that lead to improved environmental sustainability. The robust procedures applied to check the consistency of the estimators also confirmed the long-run relationship among variables. Research findings suggest that reinforcing legal frameworks for environmental rules is crucial for adherence. Incentives such as legal protection and financial rewards can encourage environmental responsibility among businesses, reducing shadow economy operations and risks. Promoting renewable energy resources and urbanization helps to support a sustainable green economy.

This paper considers the demonetisation event of November 2016 in India and its impact on labour force participation and incomes with a view to understand the role of governance in how individuals weathered the shock. We measure governance at the state level by measuring if the state was ruled by Bhartiya Janta Party at the time of demonetisation which was also the ruling party in the centre under whom demonetisation was introduced. We use a difference in difference approach to compare outcomes before and after demonetisation for individuals in politically aligned states. We control for financial inclusion by the banking penetration at the state level and whether individuals had a bank account. We find evidence of a gendered impact of the macroeconomic shock of demonetisation. While we find that demonetisation is associated with an overall drop in labour force participation, we find that individuals residing in BJP ruled states fared relatively better and this was particularly true for females. We find that while incomes continued to rise post demonetisation, individuals residing in BJP ruled states had relatively better outcomes. We additionally controlled for states which were up for election in 2017 and find that individuals in states which were BJP ruled and up for reelections showed better employment and income outcomes.

In this paper, the effects of entering the labor market during the Asian financial crisis on the labor market outcomes for vocationally oriented college and academically oriented college graduates were analyzed. Using panel data on South Korea, it was found that adverse economic shock significantly affects the labor market outcomes for academically oriented college graduates after graduation. Specifically, male graduates from academically oriented colleges experienced severe and persistent wage and employment losses. Vocationally oriented college graduates did not experience significant employment or wage problems during the recession. Finally, graduates from prestigious colleges can offset their wage loss due to adverse economic shock through the wage premia of college prestige. College prestige can alleviate the negative effects of the recession on graduates’ wages. The findings suggest that graduates during a recession, depending on their college type, experience different paths of labor market outcomes in the years after their college graduation.

The traditional view is that China is a strong son preference country, and some empirical studies support such view. We argue that demand for children, including sex of children, and family size, is the outcome of economic decisions in which social and economic factors could interact with gender preference. Thus, it is possible that strong social and economic factors counteract the strong son preference and lead to daughter preference. To investigate this possibility, we propose an indirect utility function approach and apply it to a recent Chinese data set. We find strong evidence on preference reversal as incomes and child rearing costs rise substantially for Chinese urban parents. Given that China is now a middle-income country and child rearing costs have skyrocketed during the last four decades, we find that Chinese parents with one child have little interest in rushing to have a second child. This does not bode well for the Chinese government’s programs to improve demographics.

This paper introduces a novel framework for analyzing the performance of cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) activities in international business. It investigates whether the contraction of overseas market activities can mitigate financial crises, using the case study of a Chinese multinational enterprise (MNE). Traditional event study methodology, commonly used for assessing business performance changes, relies on assumptions of normality and homoscedasticity in data. However, real financial data often exhibits high volatility and non-normal distribution, rendering traditional methods inadequate for estimation. To address this limitation, we propose an enhanced analytical framework integrating the Shapiro–Wilk test, event studies, quantile regression, and nonparametric rank tests. This approach provides more robust estimates, facilitating a more accurate and comprehensive analysis of business performance changes under specific events. Applying this methodology to assess the short-term performance of HNA Group, a cross-border airline in China, during its financial crisis, we find that while overseas market contraction events generate overall positive short-term value for enterprises, the impact varies depending on the assets sold. However, given HNA Group's substantial debt burden, the positive effect is minimal, indicating that overseas market contraction alone is insufficient as a "self-help" strategy in addressing corporate financial crises.

Using regional panel data from Korea, this paper investigates the differential impact of monetary policy on output, consumption, and employment by region. Depending upon distinctive regional characteristics, the effects of monetary policy are heterogeneous across regions. Specifically, regions with a lower share of manufacturing, a lower income level, a higher proportion of the elderly population, and a higher household debt ratio exhibit more pronounced responses in output, consumption, and employment to monetary policy shocks. Further, we show that the share of net exports, the share of small businesses, and the share of non-wage workers are pivotal factors that drive the primary results. These findings imply that vulnerable regions may experience a stronger impact from recent rapid interest rate hikes, underscoring the importance of supplementary fiscal support for the regions.

Income inequality has moderated in the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam, three middle income countries in Southeast Asia, over the past two decades, with multiple factors at play. In each country, wage, nonfarm business income, and overseas remittance concentrations declined as less well-off households increasingly engaged in better-paying activities. In Thailand and Viet Nam, transfer incomes became more pro-poor and better targeted. Major contributors to lower income inequality also included a narrowing in regional disparity and a reduction in the urban-rural income gap, and, in the Philippines and Thailand, a fall in the education premium. This recent trend of moderating income inequality might be the combined outcome of rising income opportunities generated by structural transformation and government policies promoting social inclusion. Nonetheless, income inequality remains high, especially in the Philippines and Thailand. More policy efforts are needed to make growth more inclusive.

This study uses a multi-period DID (difference-in-difference) model and data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2019 to analyse the relationship between capital market opening and insider trading profitability. We find that capital market opening can significantly inhibit insider trading profitability. This relationship remains substantially unchanged after a series of robustness tests. Enhancing stock pricing efficiency and corporate governance are two plausible mechanisms through which capital market opening reduces insider trading profitability. A cross-sectional analysis finds that the mitigating role of the capital market opening is more pronounced in bull stock markets, and in firms with higher price sensitivity and investor attention. Overall, these results enrich the literature on capital market opening and provide new insights into its effects on emerging markets.

We investigate the impact of macroprudential regulations on systemic risk in Chinese banks. Applying the approach of unconditional quantile regressions to a panel dataset of major Chinese banks from 2002 to 2018, we find supportive evidence for non-linear impacts of macroprudential regulations in mitigating the systemic risk of banks. Specifically, the risk-reducing effects of macroprudential regulations increase with the distributional quantiles of bank systemic risk, implying that macroprudential regulations may be implemented more rigorously on banks with a greater potential to influence systemic stability.