Economic Systems最新文献

I construct a novel dataset to measure the geographic complexity of cross-border African banks and relate it to their default and earnings risk. The results suggest that having a higher degree of geographic complexity decreases risk. Further results show that the negative relationship between geographic complexity and risk is significantly channeled through changes in banks’ loan quality. Following the recent exit from Africa by major international banks, indigenous African banks could be encouraged to expand further across the continent to take advantage of available opportunities, in addition to diversifying their risk. The success of such expansions, however, may largely depend on effective credit management.

The goal of this study is to examine the persistence of human capital development in 21 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for the period 1870–2019. Gross enrollment rates for secondary and tertiary education are both used as proxies for human capital development. Employing linear and nonlinear fractional integration approaches, our results suggest high degrees of persistence in the series under examination. However, lower orders of integration are observed in the data for tertiary education than for secondary education. Thus, no evidence of reversion to the mean is found in secondary education, and Australia and New Zealand have the highest coefficients for the time trends and the highest dependence. However, mean reversion in tertiary education is found in France, the US, and, in particular, Austria. Finally, evidence of nonlinearity is observed in about eight countries, though without altering the persistence in the series. The implications of the empirical results are also presented.

To what extent are the locational decisions for US FDI outflows affected by the nature of the political regimes along with the quality of institutions in the host countries? Using property rights protection as an indicator of institutional quality, this study analyses how sensitive US FDI outflows are to institutional factors and to the nature of the hosting countries’ political regimes. In other words, whether a democratic or an autocratic regime makes any difference in terms of attracting US FDI. A joint effect between democracy and the protection of property rights on US FDI flows is examined using a panel data fixed effect technique for forty-one countries during the period 1984–2021. The instrumental variable method is used to check the endogeneity concerns. The results predict that the protection of property rights can have a positive impact in attracting US FDI, provided the countries in question become more democratic in nature. The findings suggest that partial reform to enhance the institutional quality or unconsolidated democratization are insufficient to attract US FDI rather than complementing each other in bringing FDI. The implication of the findings reveals that a democratic country such as India can be a good location for US investment if its protection of property rights becomes stronger. Moreover, some highly democratic countries with strong institutions should be more market oriented and improve their quality of infrastructure to receive the maximum benefit. Our results are robust to alternate measures of institutional quality/democracy and endogeneity concerns.

We explore how a crackdown on organized crime affects stock returns. We theorize that a crackdown on organized crime is associated with both the governance effect and the uncertainty effect. Using stock earnings data on Chinese A-share listed firms, we find that, on one hand, stock prices experience salient decreases in short-term periods because the uncertainty effect dominates; on the other hand, significantly positive long-term returns have been documented because governance effects dominate. We further show that the stock return decline associated with the uncertainty effect is mainly driven by a change in discount rate, and the positive long-term return may stem from enhanced firm innovation and city business climate. Our findings pass a battery of robustness and endogeneity checks. We contribute to studies on organized crime and determinants of stock prices.

Overcapacity has long been a "chronic problem affecting China's economic development." Why is China's overcapacity intractable? This study takes the "Revitalization Plans of Ten Industries" (the RPTI) issued by the Chinese government in 2009 as a quasi-natural experiment. It deploys the data of China's A-share listed enterprises and the difference-in-differences (DID) model to investigate the impact of the selective industrial policy on enterprise overcapacity. The results show that the policy has a significant and persistently negative effect on the capacity utilization rate of the treated group. Mechanistic studies reveal that policy-induced overcapacity is caused by increasing government subsidies for the treated group, depressing corporate investment efficiency, and growing capital misallocation. After considering zombie enterprises, we find that the policy mainly leads to the overcapacity of regular enterprises but has no negative impact on zombie enterprises, and zombie enterprises crowd out the capacity utilization rate of regular enterprises in the same industry. This study indicates that a selective industrial policy that prevents the market elimination mechanism from functioning is an underlying cause of overcapacity in China. The study's findings reveal why the administrative de-capacity policies enacted by the Chinese government have failed to eliminate backward capacity but rather created a new overcapacity issue.

Climate mitigation in developing nations calls for a shift to renewable technologies from fossil fuels. However, such transformative change requires enormous concessional funding in the energy sector. This paper examines the impact of energy aid and its composition on the transition to clean energy infrastructure in the power sector in 67 developing countries during the period 2002–2017. The analysis is also conducted by segregating aggregate renewable technologies into hydro and non-hydro sources. Applying system GMM and panel quantile regression techniques, we find that the effectiveness of energy aid depends upon its composition and the maturity of renewable technology in the recipient countries. Renewable and distribution energy aid benefits the transition only with hydro sources and has a counter-productive effect on non-hydro renewable technologies, such as solar and wind. In contrast, findings reveal that energy aid for non-renewable energy generation and policy hinder the transition process with both hydro and non-hydro renewable technologies. These findings warrant a shift in the composition and technology target of energy aid by the donors in order to foster climate mitigation and mobilize private investments in relatively less developed non-hydro renewable technologies.

In this paper, we contribute empirically to the debate on the legitimacy of the African Union by exploring the question on whether individual opinions in support of African integration are sensitive to macroeconomic fluctuations? For this purpose, we use the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Afrobarometer survey data waves and a contextual logistic model. We find that an increase in GDP per capita is associated with a decline in the probability to support the African Union. Accordingly, economic growth discourages citizens’ positive appraisal for the union. Our results also show an asymmetry in the relationship between public opinion on supporting the African Union and economic growth. Policy implications are discussed.

This paper studies the impact of the liberalization of the Chinese stock market on company total factor productivity (TFP) and its mechanism of action by using the "Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect" program. The benchmark regression results based on the multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) model show that the implementation of the “Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect” program significantly increases the TFP of target companies, a conclusion that is still valid after a series of robustness tests. Further mechanism analyses shows that the program increases company TFP by both increasing a company's stock liquidity and information transparency and reducing the degree of financing constraints.

Using data from 180 countries and 24,833 publicly traded firms worldwide, this study examines how cultural and political factors influence the stringency of a government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and, in turn, the stock prices of firms and industries operating in a given country. Existing research demonstrates that government behavior during a pandemic can directly or indirectly affect stock prices. This study explores twelve political and cultural characteristics that might influence government policies. Interestingly, our results indicate that democratic and less long-term-oriented countries employ stricter responses to the pandemic. Furthermore, countries with higher individualism, coalition governments, and governments not battling for re-election appear to employ a smoothing strategy: although they implement stringent responses early on, they tend to react less aggressively when the number of COVID-19 cases increases. This study finds that increased stringency has a negative impact on corporate abnormal returns, especially during the early stages of the pandemic. Our study has important policy implications and offers valuable insights to investors: stock price reactions depend on political and cultural factors, industry, and firm characteristics. Most importantly, larger firms with more cash operating in collectivist and politically stable countries are more resilient.