Journal of Asian Economics最新文献

In the pursuit of sustainable economic development, many cities have initiated the relocation of government offices as a strategy to optimize resource allocation. This study examines the environmental impacts of local government relocations in China between 1999 and 2016, with a focus on PM2.5 concentration data in the areas surrounding the relocation sites. Utilizing a difference-in-differences estimation approach, our findings indicate that (1) relocating local government offices significantly reduces pollution levels in nearby areas, with more pronounced effects closer to the relocation site; (2) environmental quality improvements intensify over time before stabilizing; (3) the relocation reform enhances the overall environmental quality of the entire city; and (4) government site relocations ultimately lead to regional environmental quality improvements by fostering the development of clean industries and reducing industrial pollution emissions. These results underscore the policy significance of green development principles and the spatial optimization of public resources.

Foreign direct investments (FDI) in developing countries are found to affect local domestic firms by introducing competition and spillover effects. This study investigates the effect of FDI on domestic firms’ social security contributions. It exploits China’s 2002 FDI liberalization and applies the difference-in-differences strategy for a causal identification. Using a Chinese firm-level dataset of the manufacturing industry, the estimates show that foreign investments have a positive effect on domestic firms’ social security contributions as a share of the wage base. The estimated effects are more pronounced in private firms, higher-wage firms, and firms facing lower contribution costs. Evidence also indicates that the increase in firms’ propensity to contribute plays an important role in explaining the overall increase in social security contribution rates. The promotion of social security compliance among domestic firms by FDI inflow suggests that market competition could be an attractive and effective approach to combating non-compliance with social insurance regulations.

Tax authority leaders have a significant impact on organizational efficiency, which is mainly manifested in tax collection efficiency. Based on provincial tax administrative data and data on listed companies from 1998 to 2017, we examine the impact of the capabilities of leaders of the National Taxation Bureaucracy (NTB) on tax collection efficiency. We adopt the fixed effects approach and isolate the individual effects of NTB directors as a proxy of leaders’ capabilities. We find that directors with stronger capabilities enhance tax revenue growth and complete tax revenue tasks by affecting corporate income taxes. The findings suggest that more capable directors are found to severely combat tax evasion and avoidance. Specifically, taxable income approved by the NTB, preferential tax policies and tax auditing have been used to combat tax evasion. We also clarify the boundaries of leaders’ capabilities. We provide supportive evidence for leaders’ individual impact on tax collection efficiency and enrich the study of tax collection and administration.

This study investigates the impact of the improved social credit environment on entrepreneurial activity. We conduct the time-varying difference-in-differences model based on the quasi-natural experiment of constructing China’s Social Credit System (SCS) and find that the implementation of this institution significantly improves entrepreneurial activity, which remains robust to a series of tests. Mechanism tests reveal that the SCS influences entrepreneurial activity through material, human, and social capital agglomeration effects, as well as by alleviating information asymmetry. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the positive impact of SCS is more obvious in promoting entrepreneurial activity within private enterprises, high-tech, and manufacturing industries. Furthermore, this entrepreneurial effect is more pronounced in cities with lower administrative levels and on the southeast side of the Hu Huanyong Line.

The provision of safe and clean drinking water is a key component of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This paper examines the long-term economic benefit to rural residents in China from a major water treatment program started in the 1980s. By employing a data set covering almost three decades and utilizing Difference-in-Difference (DID) approach, we find that, on average, the program led to a 28.4 % increase in individual gross income. Residents with access to treated water in early life experienced significantly higher gains in income. Villages that are poorer and more remote also benefit more. Mechanically, the program has saved time spent on fetching water, spent more time on agricultural activities, improved health status, and alleviated the negative impacts of drought, through which it helps raise individual gross income.

To explore the relationship between flexible tax enforcement and enterprises’ business decisions, we use a difference-in-differences (DID) model to investigate the impact of flexible tax enforcement on enterprises’ TFP through China’s tax credit grading system. The findings of the study are as follows: Firstly, flexible tax enforcement will enhance the TFP of A-grade taxpayers. Secondly, two mechanisms exist to improve firms’ TFP through flexible tax enforcement. One is to stimulate enterprises to carry out R&D and innovation, and the other is to enhance the long-term awareness of managers. Finally, the promotion effect of flexible tax enforcement on non-state-owned enterprises is greater than on state-owned enterprises, and the effect on total factor productivity is more pronounced in areas of high fiscal pressure.

Manufacturing servitization is an effective way to improve both environmental performance and economic benefits in developing countries. In this paper, we first propose the firm-level manufacturing servitization (FMS) measurement method. Then, based on Chinese firm-level data for 2000–2015, we take low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policy implementation as a quasi-natural experiment to investigate the effect of low-carbon city governance on FMS. The propensity score matching-difference-in-differences (PSM-DID) model results indicate that the construction of LCCP policy could significantly improve FMS. In addition, we explain the promoting effect of low-carbon city governance on FMS by enhancing innovation intensity and promoting pollution factor substitution. Specifically, low-carbon city governance increases the innovation intensity of enterprises and promotes service factors as substitutes for other pollution production factors, changing the service factor input structure. Furthermore, by dynamically decomposing aggregate FMS growth, we found that LCCP policy generates a positive within-firm effect for surviving enterprises. However, the role of the resource reallocation effect has not been fully explored. Based on the findings, this study offers more theoretical backing and empirical substantiation for developing countries' pursuit of simultaneously achieving sustainability and economic growth under environmental regulations.

The traditional notion that inflation is a domestic monetary phenomenon has been challenged by the existence of global inflationary factors that cause inflation comovement patterns. Understanding and estimating such comovement and its drivers is critical for effective policymaking. This study analyzes the temporal pattern and determining factors of inflation comovement of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, comparing it to other former Eastern Bloc economies that entered the European Union (EU), and to other groups of advanced economies. We use monthly data on 26 countries classified into four groups and examine headline, core, food and utilities inflation from December 2006 to October 2021. We find that inflation comovement increased over the study period for all inflation categories, except food inflation, for all groups of countries, with comovement in CIS countries being the lowest. Moreover, positive changes in global energy prices significantly impact CIS inflation comovement, but not negative changes.

The vigorous development of the digital economy will reshape labour demand, which in turn will affect the workplace choice of migrant workers and then their location. Taking the large-scale and highly-mobile immigrant workers in urban China as the research population, this paper conducted an empirical research on the impact of the digital economy on labour location using the data from the China Labour-force Dynamic Survey (2012–2016). Results show that the more developed a city’s digital economy is, the more immigrants the city can attract and absorb. Analysis of the impact channels shows that the attraction of the digital economy to immigrants stems mainly from entrepreneurial opportunity provision and skill utilization enhancement effects. There is individual heterogeneity in the impact of the digital economy, with low-skilled, rural, or high communication ability migrant workers likely to be positively impacted by the development of the urban digital economy. While local governments are committed to digital technology-driven economic transformation, they should nonetheless promote the training of workers in the new era to achieve a better match between digital development and labour market.

We exploit a staggered reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the late 1990s in China to provide plausibly causal evidence that job insecurity has a first-order impact on fertility. Prior to the reform, unemployment rates were low and job security for SOE workers paralleled that of government employees. Post-reform, numerous SOE employees were laid off and their contracts were no longer permanent, but government employees continued to enjoy high levels of job security. We find that the reform caused SOE employees who retained their positions to delay having their first child by 0.718 years. The spillover effects are sizable: employees in the untargeted private sector delay starting a family by 0.387 years. Despite the importance of family lineage in China at the time, our findings indicate that the fertility response transcended mere birth timing adjustments, and decreased couples’ likelihood of having children. Specifically, the reform initially reduced the number of births by 8.4 % in the short run and had a more pronounced long-term effect on completed fertility at age 45.