中国经济评论最新文献

Information plays a crucial role in shaping parental decisions on nurturing their children's skills. However, empirical evidence is scarce on how parents determine their parenting style in response to information. To address this gap, we conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment focusing on the context of competitiveness. Our findings highlight a noticeable gender disparity in parental decision-making regarding participation in tournament schemes for children. Specifically, parents exhibit a significantly stronger inclination towards tournament schemes for boys than girls. Furthermore, our results indicate that the provision of information has a significant impact on parents' parenting styles. Interestingly, parents' response to information suggests a greater emphasis on promoting children's autonomy in competition rather than monetary rewards potentially obtained from the task. Analysis of the children's experiments reveals that parents valuing autonomy positively influence their children's motivation to enhance performance. Lastly, we observe a gender-based heterogeneity in the effect of information intervention, with a stronger influence observed among parents of boys compared to parents of girls. Our experiment underscores the importance of children's autonomy as a motivational factor and highlights the effectiveness of authoritative parenting. Additionally, our findings emphasize the role of information in updating biased beliefs, which can help mitigate the gender gap.

In this paper, we provide novel evidence on the effects of Chinese aid on China's country image. Our analysis exploits data on Chinese aid projects and local perceptions of China from 2002 to 2015 with a staggered difference-in-differences empirical strategy. We find that, on average, the Chinese aid has no significant effect on China's country image. More importantly. we further classify Chinese aid into five sectors and establish significant heterogeneous patterns: Chinese aid in the education and health sector has a positive and significant effect on local perceptions of China, while aid in the infrastructure sector yields a negative effect. Further investigations provide suggestive evidence that the economic development and local employment may be main channels. Finally, we highlight the vital role of bilateral political relations and substantial heterogeneity regarding geographical regions of recipient countries.

This paper examines the effects of a prominent place-based policies in China, special economic zones (SEZs), on human capital accumulation. Using a cohort difference-in-differences (DID) analysis and population census data, we find that exposure to the SEZ program led to an average increase of 0.14 years of education. Further investigation reveals that increases in educational expenses and inflow of highly educated talent are important factors in human capital improvement. We also find that the effects are only significant for females and senior high school education.

This is the first study to explore the relationship between extreme heat and firms' robot adoption. The findings demonstrate that, relative to a day in the reference temperature bin, an extra day with an average temperature above 30$°C$ reduces the probability of a firm adopting robots and the cumulative number of robots a firm has adopted. The channels of tightened financial constraints and the increased comparative advantages of industrial robots over labor are important in explaining the documented impacts. The negative effects of extreme heat are only pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises, firms with negative working capital, and firms in industries with fewer automation opportunities. Moreover, local adaptation in high-temperature regions mitigates the negative impacts of extreme heat on robot adoption. This study focuses on firms' adaptive behavior under extreme heat, which previous studies have largely overlooked, with implications for policymakers concerned with climate change adaptation and industrial automation.

In 2003, China launched the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS), a public healthcare plan targeting rural households. While the literature mostly considers the impact of NCMS coverage on health outcomes, we investigate potential impacts on labor supply and household savings levels. To mitigate endogeneity bias driven by households self-sorting into NCMS coverage, we use panel data spanning two decades to estimate difference-in-differences and instrumental variables (2SLS) models. We find NCMS coverage reduced aggregate labor supply by roughly 8%. Consistent with Borjas (2003), we find the NCMS impacts are larger for higher income households.

In this experimental study, we examine the efficacy of a novel anti-corruption approach that synergistically combines top-down institutional measures with grassroots monitoring by the public. Employing a repeated stranger matching harassment bribe game, we introduce a group monitoring mechanism where the likelihood of corrupt officials being punished increases as more citizens engage in monitoring. Our findings highlight that citizens' decisions to monitor are primarily driven by officials' harassment. Despite facing the social dilemma of anti-corruption, a substantial proportion of citizens willingly incur costs to monitor, resulting in a significant reduction in officials' bribe demands. Although an additional crackdown mechanism slightly decreases citizens' intrinsic motivation, it ultimately enhances the efficiency of anti-corruption outcomes over time, demonstrating its long-term effectiveness.

Historic preservation policies have garnered increasing attention and recognition from countries worldwide. However, most studies have focused on local livelihoods and housing, with few examining the effects on firms' production activities. Exploiting the awarding of the Historic City title in China, this paper provides the first empirical evidence of historic preservation's impact on industrial firms' output. Receiving the Historic City title reduces local industrial firms' output by 6.1%. The main mechanisms are restrictions on land use and industrial development. Furthermore, the historic preservation policy has a negative macro effect at the city level. These findings contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of historic preservation policies.

We evaluate the effects of China's large-scale county-based poverty reduction policy on children's human capital development. Based on a difference-in-difference model and multiple years' household and county-level datasets with national coverage, we find that this nationwide county-based poverty reduction policy significantly facilitates children's human capital development in poverty counties. The effects are more pronounced for children experienced consecutive treatment and those in more impoverished households. Our heterogeneity analyses indicate that there are not notable differences across the subsamples by gender, number of children, parental education attainment and ability. In addition, in terms of the channels through which this program increases children's cognitive outcomes, the program significantly promotes internet access in low-income families, extends children's learning time, and improves children's mental health condition, thus enhancing their human capital accumulation.

Given the size of the problem and the scientific evidence that timely intervention can improve long-term outcomes, an important question is how to best scale-up early childhood development (ECD) interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). A key component of the solution is financing. However, there has been little research on the question of whether cost-sharing models can equitably and sustainably finance ECD programs at scale in LMICs. We built parenting centers in two rural communities of Western China to teach caregivers how to stimulate child development through fun and interactive activities. We used the Becker-Degroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism to elicit the household willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a one-month pass to the parenting centers. The results of the BDM suggest that a cost-sharing model would not be suitable for China's rural population at least in the short-run. Demand was found to be highly elastic. In addition, we found limited evidence of selection effects. We also found no evidence of sunk-cost effects.