Journal of Asian Economics最新文献

Using quarterly data from 2007 to 2020 in China and the time-varying parameter vector autoregression model (TVP-VAR), this study systematically investigates the time-varying responses of corporate financialization to various macroeconomic shocks. The empirical findings reveal that nonfinancial corporate financialization is significantly and dynamically influenced by macroeconomic factors. Specifically, a decrease in economic policy uncertainty (EPU) generates a transient promotive effect on corporate financialization within six months, while monetary policy easing has a strong and persistent positive effect on the corporate financialization over two years. Conversely, the impact of economic growth on corporate financialization has experienced structural shifts throughout the sample period. Furthermore, a dynamic connectedness index based on TVP-VAR is employed for the first time to investigate the spillover effects among variables. The results show that nonfinancial corporate financialization is the net receiver of the fluctuations of M2, GDP growth, and EPU volatility. Quantitatively, 28.36% of corporate financialization variation is caused by M2 supply changes. Moreover, the spillover effects on financialization are time-varying and significantly greater during the extreme economic events. Our conclusions enrich the research findings of corporate financialization determinants.

This paper examines the relationship between global economic policy uncertainty (GEPU, Global economic policy uncertainty refers to the fact that market actors cannot accurately predict whether the government will change the current economic policy, if so, when the government will make changes, and what the content of the current policy changes will be. These are difficult for economic actors to accurately predict.) and crude oil prices from a global perspective within a non-linear analytical framework. Firstly, the non-linear dynamic trends between GEPU and WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil prices are examined using the VAR-filtered BDS test, followed by the test of the non-linear Granger causality, which shows significant non-linear causal relationship between GEPU and WTI oil prices. Further, this paper use threshold vector autoregressive model (TVAR) and threshold vector error correction model (TVECM) to analysis the long-term and short-term non-linear dynamic adjustment processes between GEPU and WTI oil prices, the result shows that there is an optimal threshold between GEPU and WTI. In the low global economic policy uncertainty regime, the relationship between GEPU and WTI is mutually beneficial, while in the high global economic policy uncertainty regime, the relationship between GEPU and WTI is mutually inhibited. Meanwhile, the TVECM results show that in the first regime, GEPU adjusts towards equilibrium at a faster rate, while in the second regime, WTI adjusts towards equilibrium at a faster rate.

This article fills the research gaps of existing studies on the mechanism between environmental policy and corporate performance in environmental, social, and governance (ESG). The study finds that implementing environmental protection tax can improve the ESG performance of heavily polluting firms. By examining the mediating effects of factors based on financing constraints, the study further explores the link between environmental protection tax introduction and ESG performance of companies. In addition, the heterogeneity analysis in terms of tax preference, total operating cost, and monopoly power, shows that heavily polluting firms with higher tax preferences, higher total operating costs, or weaker monopoly power are more likely to enhance their performance on ESG issues after introducing the environmental tax. This research provides essential theoretical and practical implications for revealing the connection that exists between environmental tax policy and the sustainability of companies.

Taking the event of China’s accession to WTO at the end of 2001 as an exogenous shock, using the “China Import Tariff database” from 1997 to 2007 and the “Uppsala Conflict database”, this study empirically investigates the impact of China’s import market opening on trade partners’ domestic conflicts by using the difference-in-difference (DID) method. The study results show that after China’s accession to WTO, the deeper market opening significantly reduces the trade partners’ domestic conflicts. The results of the robustness analysis using different estimation methods such as two-period estimation, replacement of explanatory variables, bilateral tailing, and sample exclusion continue to support the conclusion. The mechanism test shows that the import market opening brought about by China’s WTO accession reduces trade partners’ domestic conflicts by raising their employment level and improving income inequality. The heterogeneity test shows that China’s market opening has a greater mitigating effect on the domestic conflicts of least-developed countries, landlocked countries, African countries, and countries with poor institutional quality.

Is foreign capital withdrawal historical opportunity or realistic challenge for Chinese firms to upgrade their global value chain (GVC)? Based on the framework of demand and supply, this study examines the impact and main characteristics of foreign capital withdrawal on upgrading Chinese firms’ GVCs and finds that foreign capital withdrawal promotes the upgrading of firms’ GVC as a whole and the effect is a consequence technological innovation on the supply side and the market scale on the demand side, especially exploratory innovation, utilisation innovation and the domestic market demand. Further research shows that the effect of foreign capital withdrawal on GVC upgrading of small- and medium-sized firms, general trading firms, foreign capital holding firms and non-Hong Kong, Macao，and Taiwan foreign forms is stronger. Foreign capital withdrawal from firms with a low-technology organic composition has a significant GVC upgrading effect; besides, the GVC upgrading effect of foreign capital withdrawal in competitive industries is obviously stronger than that in monopolistic industry. These conclusions help in better understanding China’s foreign capital withdrawal and its economic impact, developing efficient and reasonable countermeasures and promoting Chinese firms in the global market.

Understanding the impact of industrial policies on residents’ health is of great significance. This study uses the large-scale national defense industry policy entitled the Third Front construction, which was implemented before China’s reform and opening up, as a quasi-natural experiment to empirically examine its long-term impact on residents’ health. The relevant findings are fourfold. (1) The policy significantly improves local residents’ health in the long term. (2) This improvement effect primarily operated through two channels of increasing residents’ income and improving medical security. (3) The effect is obviously heterogeneous for different genders and hukou, with a greater effect on men than women and significant health improvement effects for residents with agricultural hukou. (4) The findings demonstrate that local residents’ lifestyles and mental health were significantly improved due to Third Front construction.

Despite rising economic growth, low-income countries continue to exhibit a relatively low uptake of healthcare services and products. Short-term healthcare subsidies are commonly administered in low-income countries to promote long-term uptake of healthcare. To evaluate the impact of follow-up healthcare subsidies, we examined the effects of a one-time subsidy of providing free eyeglasses to school children in rural China. We contribute to the field by using a unique and rare 27-month, two-phase experiment that surveyed 4658 primary and secondary school students from Gansu and Shaanxi provinces in rural northwestern China. The sample was divided into an intervention group that received free eyeglasses for uncorrected refractive errors and a control group that received only prescription information. The impact of one-time subsidized eyeglasses on rural students’ long-term uptake of vision health care vision health was assessed using an instrumental variables (IV) approach. 90.0% of students from the intervention group that received one-time subsidized eyeglasses sought appropriate long-term healthcare, which was significantly higher (P < 0.001) than the control group at 61.3%. Multivariate logistic regression models (OR = 28.315, 95% CI = 10.972–73.074, P < 0.001) revealed that this one-time subsidy of free eyeglasses significantly predicted long-term uptake in related healthcare products and services. IV analysis suggested that wearing eyeglasses may increase the likelihood of students’ long-term uptake by 78.7% in the intervention samples compared to control schools; the magnitude of this coefficient provides evidence that wearing eyeglasses leads to a marginal improvement in long-term uptake within the sample. This result passed a series of robustness tests. Learning by doing and social learning are crucial pathways through which short-term, targeted subsidies might affect long-term adoption, at least for some classes of preventative health items. The provision of short-term, one-off healthcare subsidies can be an efficient and cost-effective strategy for boosting both short-term and long-term healthcare-seeking behavior. Providing a useful reference for promoting long-term health-seeking behavior in rural or other less developed regions in China and elsewhere in the world.

Parents play a crucial role in the mental health and development of their children. This study investigates the impact of parental non-cognitive abilities on the mental health of their children. Our findings show that parental non-cognitive abilities, especially conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism, positively influence child mental health. This effect varies based on the child’s gender and place of residence. Moreover, disparities in non-cognitive abilities between the father and mother yield a significant negative effect on child mental health. These effects can be ascribed to three primary channels: the influence of parental non-cognitive abilities on the child’s sense of happiness, confidence in the future, and the level of interpersonal communication skills. Furthermore, our findings suggest that cognitive abilities of parents can moderate the influence of their non-cognitive abilities on the mental health of their children.

In recent years, the impact of international trade on firm innovation has received increasing attention. Some scholars argue that knowledge spillovers from trade are beneficial to innovation, while others argue that the intense competition from trade leads to a reduction in innovative activity, based on the Schumpeterian effect. To address this issue, we creatively construct a dataset of Chinese listed firms from 2000 to 2014 and conduct empirical tests using propensity score matching to investigate the impact of firms' intermediate goods import behavior on innovation performance at the micro level. We construct models of firms' decisions under closed market conditions and of the impact of intermediate goods imports on firms' innovation activities under open market conditions. Our study shows that firms that import intermediate goods are more innovative, and we validate the robustness of this result. We further discuss the potential mechanisms of how exposure to international markets affects innovation, and we find that firms' import behavior affects innovation through scale effect, technology effect, and profit effect. In short, importing intermediate goods enhances firm-level innovation in developing countries. Our study provides significant evidence on the impact of imports on firm-level innovation performance, and our findings provide a rationale for promoting the co-development of trade and firm innovation. This paper also has important policy implications that governments should continue to reduce trade barriers, promote trade openness, and enhance technology transfer and cooperation in order to reap more innovation benefits from trade.

This paper investigates inequality and intragenerational economic mobility among formal workers in a developing country with large inequality. Understanding economic mobility is important because it shapes our perception of inequality. Despite its significance, evidence on intragenerational mobility, especially that based on administrative data, is relatively limited in developing countries. Using Thailand’s tax return data, we study the evolution of earnings inequality, estimate medium-term earnings mobility, and examine the heterogeneity of mobility across age, gender and employment arrangement. Our analysis yields three main findings. First, annual earnings inequality rises during the 2009–2018 period. We find that the inequality is largely permanent, and its increase is primarily driven by top-earnings workers. Second, medium-term mobility tends to be limited at both ends of the earnings distribution, with particularly pronounced persistence observed at the top decile. Our suggestive comparison indicates that Thailand’s earnings mobility is among the lowest in the pool of evidence from both developed and developing countries. Third, there is a considerable heterogeneity in mobility regarding employment arrangement. Workers in less-formal jobs have much lower upward mobility than those in more-formal employment. Our findings also indicate significant heterogeneity in mobility with respect to gender and age.