Journal of Asian Economics最新文献

With increasing the low-cost competition in international market, firm upgrading especially for Chinese labor-intensive firms is vital to strengthening their export competitiveness. Using a panel data of Chinese labor-intensive firms for 2001–2013, this paper explores whether export tax rebates (ETR) promote firm upgrading measured by technological sophistication and product quality. Results show that a positively significant effect of ETR on firm upgrading. An increase in ETR rates by 10 % upgrades technological sophistication by 2.3 % and product quality by 2.1 %. Moreover, there exists an inverse-U shaped relationship between the rebate rate and firm upgrading, and the turning point occurs when the rate is at 0.15 for technological sophistication and at 0.13 for product quality. Further mechanism analysis reveals that the internal knowledge creation and international knowledge transfer are two parallel pathways linking ETR and firm upgrading. The effect of ETR on technological sophistication is carried mainly by internal knowledge creation, while international knowledge transfer is more important for upgrading product quality. However, the ETR effects vary across firms with different characters.

This study aims to provide firm-level evidence on the burgeoning debate about the productivity effect of robotics technology. Taking China as an example, we find that city-level robot exposure plays a significant role in augmenting total factor productivity for firms in industries with high degrees of task replaceability. The results of the mechanism analysis further reveal that firms with substantial exposure to robotics technology are incentivized to improve their innovation performance and cultivate human capital. Conversely, there is evidence that firms characterized by low task replaceability experience a reduction in productivity as a consequence of robot exposure, potentially attributable to the effect of inter-industry resource reallocation. These findings offer empirical support for theoretical arguments regarding the productivity enhancements stemming from the development of robotics technology, while also shedding light on strategies to elevate productivity through the adoption of new technologies.

With China’s deepening opening-up to the world, its favorable business environment and investment attraction policies appeal to a growing number of multinational enterprises to enter the Chinese market. As a major form of FDI, foreign M&A has raised scholars' attention to explore its role in China's economic development. As one of these academic explorations, this study makes a pioneering effort to identify the inventory adjustment effect of Foreign M&A by adopting a large-scale, firm-level dataset from the Annual Survey of Industrial Firms (ASIF) database and the Bureau Van Dijk (BVD) database. The conclusions are presented as follows: (1) Foreign M&A has a significantly positive impact on non-finished products inventory through the effect of market scale. The result remains robust when we controlled a series of control variables, using PSM+DID method and carrying out heterogeneity test. (2) Foreign M&A has a significantly negative impact on the overall inventory. In addition, foreign M&A also shows a preference for top performers, a tendency that enterprises with higher total assets and capital, higher output value, higher added value, export trade competitiveness and high sales income are prone to be targets hunted by multinational enterprises.

Liquidity management is essential for the financial framework of any economy, especially for operationalizing monetary policy. The relatively resilient Indian financial system experiences the transmission of global liquidity shocks, which results in a reversal of portfolio flows from domestic markets resulting in central bank interventions. This paper examines the impact of global liquidity shocks on key financial and monetary variables of the Indian economy using quarterly data for the period 2000–2018 using an autoregressive distributed lags framework. We find the presence of long-run relationships between global liquidity variables (such as the US treasury bill rate, CBOE-VIX index, and US broad monetary aggregate) and the Indian financial markets (NSE Nifty index) and the monetary policy outcome (91-day Treasury bill rate). In the short run, the results were significant for the impact of the risk aversion measure on domestic policy rate in line with the expectations channel. The exchange rate channel and global money supply also significantly impacted the Indian policy rate. The results have significant policy implications as they indicate the most optimal transmission channels through which global liquidity affects the Indian economy.

How does trade affect formal and informal jobs in developing economies? This paper estimates the impact of exports on employment in the formal and informal sectors by exploiting the European Union (EU)’s reform in rules of origin for duty-free market access, which produced a large positive shock to Cambodia’s garment exports to the EU. We use nationally representative datasets on formally registered and unregistered establishments in Cambodia for 2009, 2011, and 2014. The results show that the export shock caused large employment growth in formal garment establishments, but had little effect on employment in informal garment establishments. While the positive effect is pronounced for incumbent establishments and female workers, our estimates are not magnified by transitions between formal and informal status in the garment industry. Thus, trade promotes employment disproportionately in the formal sector.

This paper uses the airports decentralization reform in China, 2003–2004, to explore the impacts of management structure of transportation infrastructure on the operational efficiency and the regional economy. The DID estimation shows that the operational efficiency of reformed airports significantly increase after the reform. We use a geo-coded micro-level panel dataset of Chinese manufacturing firms to estimate the economic impact of this reform. Our triple difference estimation explores three-dimension firm-level variations: location (i.e., near versus far from reformed airports), industry (i.e., high-skill-intensive industries relative to low-skill intensive ones), and year (i.e., before and after the reform). We find out that the high-skill-intensive firms with better airport access experience 8.6% more reduction in the inventory level, 2.4% more increase in manufacturing productivity, and 2.5% more increase in the value-added after the reform. Consistent with the existing literature, we show that the reform increases external investment and expands market access. Placebo tests on unaffected airports rule out alternative explanations. Our results are robust against various alternative specifications.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has a huge impact on economic development, while the literature focuses on the effect of AI on employment, and little is known about the impact of AI on intergenerational occupational mobility. Using a large, representative survey of individual-level data from the CGSS database, this paper presents novel evidence on the effect of AI on intergenerational occupational mobility. The results indicate that AI significantly increases intergenerational occupational mobility and induces more upward mobility, which stems from AI-induced demand for more high-skilled labors and changes in occupational task attributes. Furthermore, the effect of AI is heterogeneous for different groups in cognitive ability, family economic conditions, paternal educational attainment, and paternal occupational type.

This study employs a difference-in-differences approach to investigate the impact of the Korean Innovation City Project (KICP) on employment and productivity. KICP is a place-based policy that involved relocating public institutions and providing economic incentives to attract businesses. Our findings show that newly established businesses experienced positive employment effects mainly in the nontradable sector, but temporary negative productivity effects in the tradable sector. We also identified significant positive spillover effects on productivity for incumbent businesses. Moreover, our results suggest that the effectiveness of place-based policies should consider sectoral heterogeneity, between-firm spillover, and lasting effects.

We employ the daily data on bond yield, stock return, and exchange rate to explore their reaction to the large-scale asset purchase program for 8 emerging market economies during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Using event study analysis, we find that: (1) out of 8 emerging economies, 6 economies’ financial markets react to the asset purchase announcements. (2) Most economies witnessed a rise in stock return, and a fall in the yield rate. (3) 2 economies witnessed currency appreciation, while 3 economies experience currency depreciation. Overall, the asset purchase announcements have a mixed effect on the stock, bond, and foreign exchange markets. Hence, these should be included in the central bank’s toolbox as complementary instruments applied to address certain unprecedented economic circumstances.

We contribute to the literature by investigating the impact of monetary and fiscal stimulus and exchange rate on stock returns during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia, China, India, and Indonesia. By employing the machine learning approach, We find that monetary stimulus positively boosts the stock return of Indonesia. Contrary, fiscal stimulus adversely affected stock return in Australia. The exchange rate positively impacts stock return for both India and Indonesia during the COVID-19 Pandemic. However, the findings from this study reveal that both monetary and fiscal stimulus have no effect on the stock market return in the case of China and India. Policymakers needs better strategy to counter the extreme events like pandemic. Our model is robust to the alternative model specification.