中国经济评论最新文献

In 2009, China launched a vertical integration pilot program to promote collaboration between tertiary and county hospitals to reduce rural-urban disparities and strengthen capacity building in healthcare services delivery in county healthcare facilities. Through the program, tertiary hospitals implemented a workforce mobility program to temporarily assign selected physicians and healthcare staff to paired county hospitals. This study uses hospital-level data from 2009 to 2015 to investigate the program's impact on medical expenditures and healthcare utilization among patients visiting the paired county hospitals. A difference-in-differences method with hospital and year-fixed effects is used to address the unobservable heterogeneity of hospitals and the potential impact of national healthcare reform. We find that the average outpatient expenditure experienced a 4.0% decline after the county hospitals received paired assistance from tertiary hospitals. The decline is mainly driven by a reduced proportion of diagnostic testing expenditures. However, there is no evidence that the program affected inpatient expenditures. In addition, county hospitals had 5.1% more outpatient visits after receiving paired assistance, while the average length of stay remains stable. These results are robust when we control the effect of the Zero-Markup drug policy and conduct permutation tests of sample assignment. We conclude that the paired assistance program has successfully improved hospital healthcare services delivery and controlled patient expenditures. Vertical integration has improved healthcare system performance in East China from 2009 to 2015.

This study investigates how the development of digital infrastructure in China affects the geographical layout of supply chains of listed companies. This work finds that (1) The development of digital infrastructure has led to firms prefer suppliers or customers nearby, rather than looking for distant supply chain partners. (2) The development of digital infrastructure can reduce the costs of the firms, and improve their productivity. However, firms with cost reduction and productivity improvement will not expand the geographical scope of their supply chains. From the perspective of the concentration of supply chains, firms reduce their dependence on the top five customers and suppliers, indicating that with the support of digital technology, firms are willing to seek new partners to achieve closer and more diversified supply chains. (3) Heterogeneous analysis shows that firms with longer operational time, located in developed regions and eastern regions, or in primary and secondary sectors will choose a closer supply chain partner under the influence of digital infrastructure. (4) Extended analysis shows that digital infrastructure in neighboring cities will weaken the preferences of firms in those regions to find supply chain partners nearby.

Employing a quasi-natural experiment of the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration County (NRECDC) policy, our research aimed to explore the causal effect of e-commerce development and residents' subjective well-being (SWB) in rural China. By adopting the data of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2014 to 2020 and using a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) method, we found that rural e-commerce development resulted in an average increase of 2.40% in happiness scores. This positive effect can be explained by absolute material welfare enhancement, relative disparity reduction, and social capital accumulation. Further evidence suggests that e-commerce users are more likely to benefit from the NRECDC policy and that the synergistic effect of digital finance and e-commerce contributes to rural residents' SWB. However, we revealed that the potential digital divide effect in e-commerce development, due to technological barriers and self-digital exclusion, has not enhanced the SWB of some relatively disadvantaged groups in rural China. Our findings enrich the research field of digital well-being and shed light on the potential digital divide effects of digital tools such as e-commerce in rural China.

The paper utilizes data from the China Family Panel Studies (2014–2018) and China's Input-Output Table to investigate how digital development affects labor mobility decisions at industry level. Our findings demonstrate that the increased levels of digitalization, both in manufacturing and services dimensions, significantly boost the likelihood of labor mobility across industries. This relationship remains valid even after considering endogeneity issues. Mechanism analysis shows that digitalization affects the cross-industry mobility decision of workers by affecting the quality of skill matching, income level, and occupational prestige. The heterogeneous results show that the impact of digital development on industry mobility decisions in the overall and manufacturing dimensions exists in the labor force in economically underdeveloped regions, the labor force engaged in consumer services, and entrepreneurs. The development of digitalization in the services dimension mainly has a strong industry crowding-out effect on the workers from economically developed regions, the workers engaged in non-productive service industries, and the workers with employment security.

The aim of this study is to examine whether digital finance affects residents' overall and mental health. Findings show that increasing digital finance is positively associated with residents' self-rated health and leads to a lower probability of feeling depressed for them. It is mainly driven by the larger positive health effect on low-socioeconomic residents or those in the eastern region. The possible channels through which digital finance plays a critical role in enhancing residents' health are also analyzed. Digital finance increases residents' consumption on health services, such as family fitness expenditure, raises their probability of purchasing commercial medical insurances, has a positive effect on their hours spent on physical exercises, and enhances their social interaction level, which may mediate the health effect of digital finance. These findings imply that digital finance development is not only an effective tool to stimulate economic growth, it also offers insight into the methods of enhancing individual health and narrowing health disparity among people.

Compared with command-and-control regulations, it is less known about the labor market consequences of environmental taxes. This study examines the employment impact of the 2018 Environmental Protection Tax (EPT). Applying a triple-difference framework, we empirically establish the employment-suppressing consequence of EPT, which is primarily attributable to output reductions and green technological advances. Moreover, our analysis highlights a size-dependent strategy adopted by companies to navigate the escalating environmental costs: while small companies opt for production downsizing, larger counterparts tend to invest more in technical abatement initiatives. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the unemployment effect is more pronounced in companies facing higher financial constraints and greater public environmental attention, with low-skilled workers bearing the brunt, albeit without significant wage inequality. Further, we find that government green subsidies can mute this job-reduction effect. Our study illuminates an unintended incidence of environmental policy costs on labor in China and underscores comprehensive policy evaluation.

This paper investigates the unexpected positive effect of the government-firm relationship on environmental governance in the context of the reform of official performance appraisal (OPA) in China. In 2013, the central government launched an OPA reform that aimed to reduce the dependence on GDP growth and increase the focus on environmental protection in the appraisal process. According to the empirical results, in cities with mayors who have promotion incentives, firms that received favor from local governments can significantly reduce air pollutant emissions after the OPA reform. These findings remain robust even after conducting various tests, such as parallel trend test, omitted variables, and alternative explanations. This paper demonstrates that a reciprocal relationship between governments and firms can benefit society with the appropriate incentives.

The role of contracting institutions, particularly the contract enforcement efficiency in shaping corporate vertical boundaries, has been largely overlooked. Using a quasi-natural experiment of the policy of “Announcement of Dishonest Persons” in China, we find that improved contract enforcement efficiency significantly promotes corporate vertical specialization, reflected in the improvement of corporate vertical specialization after the policy implementation. Reduction of transaction costs is the plausible mechanism. Moreover, the above impact is more pronounced when the exposure of firms to Laolai partners (i.e., the policy target), is higher. Finally, we find that efficient contract enforcement promotes total factor productivity through facilitating vertical specialization. This study identifies the causality between contracting institutions and corporate vertical specialization and extends research on consequences of the policy of “Announcement of Dishonest Persons”.

This paper examines the effect of uninsurable divorce risks on individuals' pre-marital homeownership by using an exogenous shift of the property division regime upon divorce from an equal-division regime to a title-based regime in China. This shift in 2011 aimed at protecting individuals' pre-marital assets, leading singles who worry about divorce risks to purchase a home prior to marriage. We find that singles' probability of owning a house prior to marriage increases by 3.2% in response to a one standard deviation increase in the divorce rate of their residing provinces. This effect is greater for female singles and singles above 30. Furthermore, the effect is stronger for singles with higher incomes, and singles living in the province with higher house prices. The empirical patterns are consistent with singles adopting pre-marital housing as a self-protection mechanism if they perceive great divorce risks after the regime shift in 2011. Our results provide important implications that housing serves not only as a durable consumption or an investment, but also as a self-protection mechanism against uninsurable divorce risks.