Journal of Economic Surveys最新文献

Meta-analyses in economics frequently exhibit considerable overlap among primary samples. If not addressed, sample overlap leads to efficiency losses and inflated rates of false positives at the meta-analytical level. In previous work, we proposed a generalized-weights (GW) approach to handle sample overlap. This approach effectively approximates the correlation structure between primary estimates using information on sample sizes and overlap degrees in the primary studies. This paper demonstrates the application of the GW method to economics meta-analyses, addressing practical challenges that are likely to be encountered. We account for variations in data aggregation levels, estimation methods, and effect size metrics, among other issues. We derive explicit covariance formulas for different scenarios, evaluate the accuracy of the approximations, and employ Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate how the method enhances efficiency and restores the false positive rate to its nominal level.

This paper estimates the effects of foreign investments on the environmental expenditure of listed companies in China by differentiating pre-IPO foreign investors from post-IPO foreign investors. Our findings indicate that while pre-IPO foreign investments make significant and positive contributions, the influence of post-IPO foreign investments is negligible. These results are particularly pronounced for enterprises that are privately owned, located in coastal China, operating in heavily polluting industries, and whose management lacks prior experience in environmental protection and international vision. Furthermore, research efforts are devoted to uncovering potential channels through which pre-IPO foreign investments affect corporate environmental expenditure, including environmental regulations in home countries or regions, government attention to environmental issues, media coverage, and corporate financial constraints.

Academic interest in insurance and economic growth nexus has prospered in the last two decades. There needs to be more review-based research in this area. We, therefore, reviewed the literature and presented future research directions helpful for the further development of the research field. This literature review seeks to enrich the discourse on insurance and economic growth through a comprehensive and detailed review of 126 articles covering 96 journals from 2004 to 2023. Using Theory, Context, Characteristics, and Methods (TCCM), a detailed analysis has been conducted on the prominent theories, research context, key variables, and the methodologies and analysis techniques employed in the literature over the past 19 years. Through content analysis, we present the findings across three knowledge dimensions related to insurance and economic growth: research focus, country focus, and insurance focus. Our research sheds light on under-researched contexts, variables, and analytical techniques.

We extend the existing framework for decomposition of production length structure in global value chains and propose a novel concept and measure of industrial chain risk exposure on both the demand-side and supply-side at the region-sector level in China. Using data from WIOD, ADB-MRIOT, and China's multi-regional input-output tables, we measure and analyze the industrial chain risk exposures, and risk-return ratios on the demand-side and supply-side of each region-sector in China from 2002 to 2017. Our results reveal the following key insights: First, inland regions exhibit high domestic industrial chain risk exposures, while coastal regions have high global industrial chain risk exposures, a pattern consistent at the region-industry level. Furthermore, demand-side industrial chain risk exposures surpass supply-side exposures within region-sectors. Second, High-tech manufacturing industries display greater risk exposure compared to other sectors. Third, Guangdong and Shanghai, as the main regions of China's international trade, share similar global industrial chain risk exposures to those of Germany and South Korea. Fourth, the bilateral demand-side exposures of the industrial chains in each region are asymmetric.

We provide a survey of the main mechanisms of market selection used in economics. We categorize existing theories into three broad classes—evolutionary selection, reduced form selection, and rational equilibrium—based on their adopted selection mechanisms. Each paradigm is explored in terms of underlying laws of selection, searching for elements of convergence and divergence in epistemological approaches, hypotheses, and results. The comparison of these paradigms reveals convergences in research directions, particularly in replicating empirical patterns related to firm heterogeneity and acknowledging the role of increasing returns. However, these paradigms diverge in key assumptions and results, including emphasis on model outcomes, sources of increasing returns, mechanisms generating firm heterogeneity, and assumptions regarding firm rationality. The discussion highlights that these differences stem from the epistemological foundations of paradigms. The survey contributes to a nuanced understanding of market selection mechanisms within diverse theoretical frameworks, emphasizing both areas of convergence and divergence among them.

Economists and social scientists have widely contributed to the so-called “Beyond GDP” debate—the view that current measures of economic growth are inadequate to measure well-being and multidimensional indicators. While economic history has not been prominent in these debates, multidimensional indicators have captured the interest of economic historians, with both theoretical and empirical contributions. In this contribution, we examine the areas of consensus and debate in economic history. A comprehensive literature review shows a lack of consensus on how to use multidimensional indicators and that they face substantial critiques. We use two case-studies (a long-term series for the Netherlands and one on the basis of the CLIO-INFRA panel dataset) to illustrate how common findings emerge in the literature and empirical exercises despite methodological differences. We argue that debates on the relation between economic growth and well-being in the long-run using these indicators can not only contribute to many founding questions in economic history—though greater precision and transparency in our assumptions about well-being measurement are necessary—but also to better understand present-day challenges such as how to better pursue growth in well-being and not merely in GDP.

Utilizing long-term and high-resolution pollution remote sensing data, this study examines the dynamic impact of export expansion on the local environment in China from 2000 to 2020. Regions facing larger export expansion experience more pronounced initial deterioration in local air quality, while followed by a more prominent subsequent environmental improvement, indicating that the environmental impact of trade varies over time. Further analysis reveals that a key driver behind this dynamic change is the adjustment in environmental policies, particularly when local government faces higher pressure in achieving the environmental goals and when the central government takes over environmental monitoring powers. Additionally, under more stringent environmental regulations, regional export growth leads to increased environmental expenditures, concurrently driving localities to reduce heavily polluting engergy inputs such as coal. Our study suggests that environmental policies can facilitate the synergistic development of trade and the environment.

Since the global financial crisis, a rich and expanding literature on the so-called global financial cycle (GFCy) has emerged. This has fueled a debate in academic and policy circles on how to measure the GFCy, and how it impacts international capital flows, possibly in a time-varying way. We review the literature that has shown the relevance of the GFCy, as well as the heterogeneity of its impact on capital flows and its variations over time. We assess how various indicators of the GFCy affect episodes of large capital flows, and find a robust effect especially on episodes driven by non-resident investors. Non-linearity and instability over time, notably a less strong impact after the global financial crisis, are found at least for some GFCy indicators.

We review work that has linked economic inequality and culture to governance quality. We start with contributions that have considered the relationship between inequality and governance from a long-run perspective. This historical perspective yields a range of insights and helps identify the deep drivers of specific cultural traits that relate to both economic inequality and governance in contemporary societies. We then survey work that has linked inequality and culture to governance in present-day settings. We identify the complexity of the relationships with causality between any pair of these variables running both ways. These causal patterns, in turn, imply that countries may end up in either a good equilibrium characterized by lower economic inequality, the “right” culture and good governance, or a bad equilibrium described by greater inequality, the “wrong” culture and bad governance. We conclude with a range of policy implications.

This paper surveys the literature on historical national accounting, discusses the importance of relative income benchmarks for, in particular, historical income estimates, and presents an update of long run global economic development with a new version of the Maddison Project Database (MPD). As benchmarks are central to methodologies for global income comparisons over time, and therefore vital to MPD, we analyze the consequences and biases of three benchmarks, the 1990 benchmark, the 2011 benchmark and the multiple benchmark method following the recent Penn World Tables (PWT) methodology, for pre-1940 income estimates. We develop a methodology to determine which benchmark in combination with time series produces the best anchor for the historical income estimates in the MPD. We conclude that the best way forward for the Maddison Project is to stick to the original 1990 benchmark, yet with two important changes. First, we integrate the 2011 benchmark for the post-1990 period, and second, we fine tune the dataset for the pre-1940 period by integrating a new historical benchmark for the US/UK comparison in 1909. By integrating more benchmarks, the MPD moves closer to a multiple benchmark approach as developed by the PWT.