Structural Change and Economic Dynamics最新文献

Enterprises, including multinational ones, play a crucial role in harmonizing economic growth with environmental conservation through green transition efforts. Based on a panel dataset of 1,916 publicly listed Chinese companies, this study investigates how overseas investment activities conducted by multinational enterprises (MNEs) influence their green transition performance. We find that the increase in overseas investment significantly contributes to MNEs’ transition toward greener practices, with this positive effect being particularly pronounced in greenfield investments. Mechanism analysis suggests that overseas investment benefits the green transition performance of MNEs through competitive effects, economies of scale, and profit feedback from overseas subsidiaries. Moreover, reverse technology spillovers derived from overseas investments are effective in promoting MNEs’ greening, an effect amplified when MNEs possess a higher technology absorptive capacity or operate in flexible intellectual property protection.

It is highly necessary to conduct a more detailed assessment of the economic impacts caused by the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), especially for numerous developing countries. This study utilizes the input-output (IO) model to evaluate the inequality consequence of CBAM. Results indicate that 1) the overall impact of output decline and production cost increase on non-OECD countries is greater than that on OECD countries; 2) regionally, African countries experience a more severe output decline, while Asian countries see a higher increase in production costs. Apart from BRICS, other developing countries demonstrate low reduction efficiency; 3) a refund mechanism based on historical emission responsibility results in larger benefits for the LDCs. Conversely, green innovation contribution and emission reduction efforts primarily benefit developed economies and large developing countries. We recommend 1) prioritizing assessments for developing countries before designing cross-border climate policy; 2) considering both fairness and efficiency when designing a refund mechanism.

This study analyzed changes in the carbon emissions of China's top five trading partners using a structural decomposition model based on inter-country input-output analysis. The main influencing factors were analyzed using constant price input-output tables for 2007, 2012, 2017, and 2021. Changes in the carbon emissions of the trading partner economies during 2007–2021 were decomposed into 15 essential factors to investigate the impacts of intermediate and final demands, and then isolate the influence of intermediate and final demands of China. The results revealed the following: (i) Carbon emissions in the developed economies experienced decline followed by increase after the Covid-19 pandemic, whereas ASEAN economies experienced steady increase in carbon emissions. (ii) Carbon intensity was one of the most important factors affecting carbon emissions. (iii) The size of China's expanding final demand contributed to an increase in carbon emissions in the primary and natural resources industry, capital-intensive manufacturing industry, and knowledge-intensive manufacturing industry.

Existing studies on the employment effects of a low-carbon economy predominantly focus on sectoral dynamics instead of regions, providing limited references for prefectural policymaking. We address this gap by employing a fixed effects model and a dataset of Chinese cities from 2006 to 2020. Our findings highlight the significant contribution of a low-carbon economy to regional employment through the industry agglomeration effect and innovation effect. Heterogeneities are evident in the employment-promoting influence of a low-carbon economy, as cities with lenient environment enforcement, ample education investment, and non-resource-dependent structures benefit more significantly. Notably, a low-carbon economy exhibits a disproportionately higher employment promotion effect in cities with mid-range employment populations. In addition, we identify co-benefits of a low-carbon economy, including higher average salaries and mitigation of aging trends. These insights foster a better understanding of the low-carbon economy and offer valuable guidance for prefectural governments seeking to develop targeted low-carbon economy strategies.

Identifying the driving forces of structural transformation is crucial for understanding economic development. In the early 21st century, China experienced a rapid labor shift from agricultural to non-agricultural sectors. This shift is often attributed to the industrial sector’s “pull” force, while the agricultural sector’s “push” force remains less understood. This paper investigates the role of the Agricultural Tax Exemption (ATE) reform in promoting inter-sectoral labor reallocation in China, which ended over two millennia of agricultural taxation on farmers. Our results show that the introduction of the ATE reform contributed to a significant increase in the share of non-agricultural workers. Mechanism analysis reveals that this reform encouraged capital investment among farmers and improved agricultural productivity, consequently displacing surplus agricultural workers. Further analysis shows that the labor reallocation induced by the reform had significantly increased employment and output within the secondary sector, although its effect on the tertiary sector was relatively minimal.

This paper estimates the multipliers of two types of government spending in the 20 Italian administrative regions throughout 1960–2017, distinguishing between phases of expansion and recession. We derive regime- and region-specific multipliers through a nonlinear Bayesian heterogeneous panel threshold VAR model and provide a wide-ranging sensitivity analysis. We find that both government consumption and government investment multipliers are higher in recession than in expansion. In almost every region, government investment multipliers exceed unity in recession phases and are generally higher than their government consumption counterparts regardless of the business cycle. An exploratory analysis of the region-specific multipliers suggests that the difference between the region-specific multipliers in recession and expansion is positively associated with structural labour slack and negatively associated with trade openness. Factors related to the quality of local institutions, such as corruption and the relative size of the informal economy, also have a negative impact.

Resource-based cities (RBCs) encompass the east, middle, and west of China, covering an important economic hinterland. The improvement of RBC resilience can significantly impact the overall resilience of cities in China. This study analyzes the spatial characteristics and overall evolution trend of four types of RBCs based on regional differences and convergence theory. The results vivid showed sustainable development positively influenced growing-type RBCs also showed that the overall RBC resilience coupling coordination degree improved throughout the study period (2009–2019), and that the evolution of RBC resilience demonstrated good convergence characteristics. Furthermore, a distinct gap is evident between high resilience-level growing RBCs and relatively low-level regenerative RBCs. All RBCs will eventually converge to the third level with a higher level of coupling coordination. However, compared with the traditional Markov chain, the transition probability of the spatial Markov chain is reduced due to the influence of surrounding cities. Thus, policies are given.

The strategic importance of total factor productivity (TFP) in the high-quality development phase of enterprises is increasingly prominent, and understanding the impact of regional judicial capacity on corporate TFP is crucial. We treat the establishment of Circuit Courts as a quasi-natural experiment for regional judicial capacity and construct the staggered difference-in-differences model to examine how regional judicial capacity affects corporate TFP. We find that the establishment of Circuit Courts significantly enhances corporate TFP. Mechanism tests show that the establishment of Circuit Courts improves the macro-level market competition environment, legal environment, and contractual environment, enhances micro-level resource allocation efficiency, strengthens innovation capacity, reduces bribery expenses, eases financing constraints, and promotes specialized division of labor, thereby improving corporate TFP. The positive effects of Circuit Courts are more pronounced among firms in regions with higher levels of local protection and administrative intervention, lower levels of intellectual property judicial protection, weaker product market competition intensity, and among non-state-owned enterprises without political connections. Our results remain robust after a series of robustness and endogenous tests. Overall, this study not only reveals the important role of judicial capacity enhancement on enterprise development, but also provides evidence support for deepening the reform of the judicial system and improving the Circuit Courts system.

We use a staggered difference-in-differences model to empirically investigate the relationship between airports and entrepreneurship, based on county airport data and the number of newly registered companies in China. The data has advantages in the long sample research framework from 2000 to 2019. We find that counties with airports have 14 more entrepreneurial opportunities per 10,000 people compared to samples without airports. The main conclusions still hold after conducting various robustness checks. We also find that airports have a spillover effect on entrepreneurship. A county without an airport still has higher entrepreneurship if there are more airports in the surrounding county-level city or province. Heterogeneity analysis shows that airports boost entrepreneurship more in service industries and other tertiary sectors. The effect is strongest in poorer regions and private firms and knowledge-intensive areas benefit more from airports for entrepreneurship. Finally, we find that airports increase entrepreneurial activity in a region by bringing in foreign investment, improving innovation, and upgrading industries.

We calibrate a network model and monetary shocks based on empirical data from input-output tables for the Russian economy. We examine various aspects of the propagation of monetary shocks, such as the dispersion of relative prices and the local peak values of the aggregated price index achieved during the convergence to the new equilibrium. We show that these developments depend significantly on the way new money is injected into the economy.