China & World Economy最新文献

This paper improves the estimation of firm-level total factor productivity (TFP) by considering energy use and including small- and medium-sized enterprises using data from the Chinese National Tax Survey Database (2008–2011). It analyzes the production efficiency of Chinese manufacturing firms using the improved TFP data and finds that (i) the TFP data frequently used in previous studies overestimated firms' real production efficiency; (ii) the TFP of manufacturing firms decreased from 2008 to 2011 due to declines in both technical efficiency and allocation efficiency; (iii) the lower capacity utilization of production factors led to lower technical efficiency; and (iv) allocation efficiency decreased more in provinces and industries with higher shares of state-owned enterprises. The findings have policy implications for enhancing growth potential in the long run.

With rapid urbanization, millions of rural villagers have become urban citizens in China. This paper estimates the effect of the in situ urbanization policy on an individual's health by employing the difference-in-differences framework and using panel survey data from the China Family Panel Studies. Our findings show that this program, unlike other kinds of urbanization, which have had negative impacts on mental health or made people smoke or drink more, increased people's self-reported health status significantly. Further mechanism analysis reveals that the in situ urbanization policy affected health by increasing people's confidence in the future, their satisfaction with their current lives, and their medical insurance enrollment. This study highlights the importance of “the city comes to villagers” urbanization in China, and it can play an essential role in advancing the urbanization rate and avoiding the negative impacts of urbanization on health.

In view of its aging population, China initiated in 2012 a relaxed birth control policy after a three-decades-long implementation of the restrictive one-child policy. This paper examines how China's relaxed birth control policy leads to gender inequality. It specifically focuses on migrant workers because they account for a significant portion of the working group. Using the National Migrant Population Dynamic Monitoring Survey from 2014 to 2016, we found that China's two-child pilot policy reduced female labor force participation by 1.4 percentage points. This negative effect was more pronounced for women with higher educational levels or working in the private sector because employers foresee greater risks of productivity decline. We demonstrated that the gender pay gap increased from RMB956 to RMB1,053 during this same period. Pinpointing these unintended consequences brought about by the relaxation of the one-child policy helps provide a more complete picture of inequality and make sense of persistent relative poverty in Chinese society. To counteract gender discrimination, females are advised to work outside their home jurisdictions and take advantage of positive peer effects.

This paper exploits a novel and unique opportunity to reveal the evolution of income volatility and consumption insurance from 1992 to 2014 in urban China. We found that (i) the average household experienced a downward trend in income and consumption volatility. Although the global financial crisis in 2008 caused a slight spike, it did not reverse the downward trend. (ii) Households' ability to smooth income shocks improved significantly, and the consumption insurance against permanent (transitory) income shocks increased from 0.6172 (0.8307) to 0.7453 (0.8742) – that is, the transmission of permanent (transitory) income shocks to consumption decreased by 33.46 (25.69) percent from 2004 to 2014. (iii) Welfare analysis indicates that the positive insurance effect counteracted the negative effects of lower economic growth in the 2010–2014 period. Income and consumption volatility, and consumption insurance were heterogeneous across income sources, consumption categories, and various demographic characteristics, which have important implications for understanding China's economic transition.

This paper studies the impact of increased travelling efficiency on “innovation collaboration” between cities. It exploits China's recent high-speed railway (HSR) connections in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration. The paper instrumented HSR connections using the postal routes of the Yuan Dynasty and measured innovation collaboration using detailed information on patent applicants and citations. The results show that HSRs led to an increase in innovation collaboration by 121.7 percent from 1998 to 2016, and their overall quality increased by 111.3 percent. In comparison with universities (public sector), the paper found that private sector firms' patent outcomes showed a larger increase in both quantity and quality after the HSR connection. Interestingly, we found that the teams of researchers whose members changed after the HSR connection benefited the most in comparison with both continuing teams and newly formed teams. Additional results prove that HSRs contributed to the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration. The results remained robust using alternative model specifications.

The ongoing diffusion of digital technology into socio-economic activity has triggered hopes of minimizing environmental pollution. This research aimed to investigate the relationship between the digital economy and the intensity of SO₂ pollutant emissions and to examine the mechanism that explains how digitalization leads to the reduction of pollutants from the perspective of environmental regulations. We applied the criteria importance through intercriteria correlation approach to construct a comprehensive index system to measure the digital economy in China. Then we examined the correlation between the digital economy and SO₂ pollution intensity. To analyze the mechanism, we investigated the moderating effect of environmental regulations and also took macroscopic mechanisms (such as innovation and industrial structure) into consideration. Our empirical results indicated that the digital economy had a negative effect on SO₂ pollution intensity. The negative impact was greater for medium-sized provinces with abundant resources in eastern and southern China. We also found that environmental regulations (e.g., environmental legislation and environmental penalties) moderated the impact of the digital economy on SO₂ pollution intensity, and the same was true for several macro mechanisms (e.g., innovation, industrial structure, and labor productivity, etc.). This has implications for how the government implements environmental regulations in the future.

This study explored how the risks encountered by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) affected their decision-making on outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), using data regarding the relationship between the host countries and China. The following conclusions were drawn. Larger SOEs with fixed capital exhibited a higher probability of conducting OFDI and did so on a larger scale. Various risks in host countries significantly hindered the OFDI of Chinese SOEs. In pursuit of natural resources, Chinese SOEs chose to take risks. The amount of OFDI by SOEs was positively related to the political, economic, and geographical relations between China and the corresponding host country.

This paper reports the innovation effect of pharmaceutical industry agglomeration from the perspective of patterns of agglomeration and innovation, by using registration application data for innovative and generic drugs as indicators of pharmaceutical innovation. First, the distribution of the pharmaceutical industry in China is characterized by high agglomeration and low innovation. Second, no significant influence is exerted by regional industrial and development zone agglomeration on the development of innovative drugs in different regions; the effect of the promotion of generic drugs is reflected mainly in the location entropy index. Third, the existence of a crowding effect weakens the effect of the promotion of agglomeration on pharmaceutical innovation and the adverse impact on innovative drugs is significantly greater than the effect on generic drugs. In further research, we explored the bias effect of agglomeration in development zones and the synergistic effects of different agglomeration models. It is difficult to improve the quality of independent innovation by spatial agglomeration. Government-led development zones play a rather limited role in pharmaceutical innovation.