中国经济评论最新文献

This study investigates inequality in diets in China during its economic growth using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (1997–2011). Overall, diet quality was significantly improved over the 14 years, as indicated by the increasing mean of Chinese Healthy Eating Index (CHEI) scores from 40.76 in 1997 to 54.52 in 2011. Initially, dietary improvement favored affluent populations, leading to widening inequality, but it became more equitable in later years. Socioeconomic factors are critical determinants of inequality in diets, with urban-rural disparity being a significant barrier to equalizing diet quality. The results of the Oaxaca decomposition indicate that changes in inequality in diets are primarily driven by the extent to which nutritional choices respond to income fluctuations rather than the actual change in income itself. While women exhibited lower inequality in diets quality compared to men, they were more likely to be situated at a relatively lower level of diet quality. Furthermore, differences in health insurance coverage also play a significant role in the changes observed in inequality in diets. This study highlights the importance of considering income elasticity and its influence on dietary behaviors when examining the dynamics of income-based inequality in diets. Non-dietary factors, including basic health insurance and rural development initiatives, are essential in addressing the developing challenge of inequality in diets during economic growth phases.

Accurately measuring the input of digital capital is of great significance for understanding the development pattern of China's digital economy, nurturing new quality productivity, and achieving high-quality development. However, existing representative studies often assume a constant depreciation rate for capital goods, which does not align with reality. In this paper, we address this limitation by introducing dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model that estimates the variable depreciation rate for each capital good. By setting the depreciation rate as a function of capital maintenance expenditures and utilization rates, we provide a more realistic approach. The empirical results obtained through Monte Carlo simulation demonstrate that the trend of depreciation rates for all types of capital goods aligns with China's economic development. Additionally, we find that investment-specific technology shock plays a significant role in affecting changes in the depreciation rates of capital goods. This shock leads to an increase in capital utilization rates and a decrease in capital maintenance expenditures, resulting in higher depreciation rates. Notably, the depreciation rate of basic digital capital is more sensitive to exogenous shock compared to non-digital capital. Furthermore, the paper estimates the basic digital capital service of 19 industries in China from 1981 to 2020. The results indicate a steady increase in the services provided by basic digital capital, with particularly rapid growth observed in industries such as information transmission, software and information technology services, and the financial sector. When comparing our estimation results with those of representative literature, we find that the national-level productive capital stock and the basic digital capital services estimated using our methodology closely align with existing literature. This validation confirms the effectiveness of our methodology and the reliability of the estimated industry-level basic digital capital services.

Ethnic stereotype threat is a feeling of being at risk of perceiving a negative stereotype about one's ethnicity. Conducting a lab-in-the-field experiment at 126 rural primary schools in northwest China with a sample of 10,431 students from grade 4 and grade 5, this paper examines the effects of ethnic stereotype threat on students' academic performance. We find that stereotype threat improved minority students' English test scores and had no effect on Han students. Investigations for underlying mechanisms show that stereotype threat improves the ethnic pride of minority students, further improving their English test scores. Heterogeneous analysis shows that the positive effects of stereotype threat on English performance are more evident for minority students whose English teachers are from Han, and also more evident for minority students whose best friends of different ethnicities have higher grades than them. This study provides evidence to support the benefits of inter-ethnic communication and integration among multi-ethnic settings at school.

The impact of trade liberalization on regional employment dynamics remains a topic of ongoing debate and scrutiny. This study aims to provide a nuanced understanding by focusing specifically on the effects of imported capital goods trade. Our study analysis reveals that capital goods trade liberalization predominantly leads to a substitution effect between capital and labor, resulting in a reduction in overall regional employment levels. However, we also find complementary effects between capital and high-skilled labor, alongside substitution effects on low-skilled labor, which collectively influence the regional labor market's skill structure. Furthermore, our study identifies the heterogeneous spillover effects of capital goods trade liberalization on regional labor markets, varying across different regions and city scales. We argue that investing in region skill development resources can help align the workforce with global factors, fostering positive interaction between regions.

This study contributes to the growing body of research on peer effects in educational contexts by examining the peer effects on learning behaviors, which are pivotal in understanding how peers impact academic achievements, especially in online education. Drawing upon an administrative dataset and a learning behavior dataset from an online education platform at a Chinese research university in 2020, we employ fixed effects and dynamic models to investigate the peer effects on undergraduates' class absence. Notably, we further consider partially overlapping networks of peers and utilize the class absence of “classmates of classmates” (who are not one's own classmates) as instrumental variables for peers' absence to address potential estimation biases. Our findings reveal significantly positive effects of classmates' class absence on individuals' both full-class and part-class absence in synchronous online courses. Additionally, heterogeneity analyses show that males, freshmen and sophomore students are more susceptible to peer influence and exhibit greater influence on their peers, and peer effects are stronger in subject required courses, courses with larger class sizes, courses with mandatory attendance policies, and among students in the same department or grade level.

Despite extensive research on the impact of corporate tax cuts on firm-level outcomes, their effects on worker health have yet to be examined. This study aims to address this research gap by utilizing individual-level panel data from the China Family Panel Studies between 2010 and 2018, and by exploiting exogenous shock in the corporate effective tax burden stemming from accelerated depreciation. Our results yield three key findings: first, that corporate tax cuts significantly reduce worker health; second, that this effect may be driven by increased working hours and poor health behaviors; third, that corporate tax cuts exacerbate health inequalities based on gender, education level, executive positions, and employed company. These findings shed light on the wider implications of tax incentives for corporate investment and contribute to stimulating interest in the welfare of workers in a global wave of tax cuts.

In this paper, we analyze how Chinese mutual funds' performance is affected by cross-border investments, following the relaxation of investment restrictions on Hong Kong stocks. We find that mutual funds underperform when they increase their H-share holdings, suggesting that easing investment restrictions doesn't improve fund performance. Information asymmetry and the limited ability of fund managers to access H-share information are key factors behind poor performance. And fund managers employ such “bad” strategy to cater to investor preferences. Furthermore, fund managers do not recognize their limitations in investing H-share. We hope our findings give insights into the investment behavior of funds and enhance the development of the Chinese asset management industry.

We study how mortality salience influences people's time preference and prosocial behavior in a laboratory experiment. We made mortality salient through priming subjects in the treatment group with grid tasks, and studied its impact on altruistic giving in an Andreoni-Miller dictator game. We found that the priming made subjects think bigger, and become more concerned with the overall social welfare, though it did not necessarily make them care more about their opponents' well-being per se. Subjects in the treatment group became more altruistic only when the price of giving is low. We built a two-period model to explain the mechanism of the findings. Our model showed that the priming altered altruistic giving through changing the subjects' time preference and social preference parameters. Finally, we strengthened our findings by showing that the priming didn't change subjects' mood.

Many scholars attribute the slowdown of economic growth to population aging and its negative impact on the size of the labor force. Meanwhile, government programs targeting an aging society can generate work disincentives. This paper studies the unintended labor market effects of Long-term Care Insurance (LTCI) among people of older age by exploiting the launch of the LTCI program in China. We find that policy-covered older adults decreased labor market engagement, significantly increasing the probability of exiting the labor market completely or not working full-time. We also document more substantial effects among those with low income, poor health, advanced age, and few children. The forgone wages of older adults account for >0.25% of GDP. These findings have policy implications for countries “growing old before getting rich.”

This study examines the impact of trade liberalization on the consumption welfare of urban households in China. The results indicate that trade liberalization in consumer goods has improved the consumption welfare of Chinese urban households with a “pro-poor” distribution across regions and households in a region, suggesting that the consumption effects are more pronounced for less developed regions and low-income households in a region. Within a city, differences in the consumption effects arise from variations in household consumption structures and the tariff-price pass-through among different types of products. Across cities, differences in the consumption effects stem from the dual heterogeneity in industrial structure and consumer demand. The variety effect resulting from changes in the types of imported consumer goods also enhances the consumption effects of trade liberalization.