Economic Analysis and Policy最新文献

Employment Stabilization has always been a key focus of the Chinese government's work. Exploring the influencing factors of employment stability is of great significance for promoting the realization of high-quality employment. Based on the manually collected national expressway data and the China Industrial Enterprise Database from 1998 to 2015, this paper conducts an empirical study on the impact of transportation infrastructure development on enterprise employment fluctuations using the multi-timepoint difference-in-differences method. We find that the development of expressways has a significant inhibitory effect on enterprise employment fluctuations. Compared with areas where expressways have not been opened, the opening of expressways reduces local enterprise employment fluctuations by approximately 0.9 %. The development of expressways affects the demand side or supply side of the enterprise labor force through market scale effects, labor allocation effects, etc., thereby influencing enterprise employment fluctuations. The impact of expressway development on employment fluctuations of enterprises with different ownership natures, different economic regions, and different scales varies to some extent. Finally, this paper proposes relevant policy recommendations, providing practical and effective references for coordinating and promoting the goal of Employment Stabilization under the background of the strategy of building a strong transportation country.

This research focuses on informal club-based institutions to boost a firm's engagement in environmental practices. Specifically, we investigate the effect of a firm's climate club membership on its corporate environmental performance. Our empirical analyses rely on a sample of firms from 142 Western European regions during 2011-2019. Results show that stronger climate club engagement of firms within a same region of a focal firm may act as an informal institution, improving the latter's environmental performance. We also find that the impact of those informal club-based institutions outsizes the effect exerted by the quality of formal regional institutions, and that strong informal climate club-based institutions might be able to partly replace the role of regional formal institutions in that ESG domain. Finally, we delve into several mechanisms potentially driving the observed impacts of regional formal and informal institutions on firms’ environmental performance.

Air pollution affects people's livelihoods, and China's environmental governance is a defensive battle that must be fought. Combining several comprehensive datasets, this study uncovers the underlying mechanisms of urban environmental regulation that affect labor demand from the perspective of firms’ choice of emission reduction strategies. Utilizing a difference-in-differences method, this study finds that on average, the Key City Demarcation Scheme for Air Pollution Prevention and Control (KCDS) has a drive-out effect on employment while improving urban environmental quality, making it difficult to achieve the double-dividend of de-pollution and employment promotion. These conclusions still hold after considering various specification checks, including the instrumental variable method. Underlying mechanisms indicate that manufacturing firms strengthen both front-end productive “changes-in-process” and non-productive “end-of-pipe” treatment to respond to stricter urban environmental enforcement, and ultimately, KCDS has triggered a drive-out effect on employment. Heterogeneous effects investigate that firms’ emission reduction strategies have path dependence and that the drive-out effect on employment is particularly pronounced for large-scale, technology- and capital-intensive domestic firms in large cities. This study provides policy insights for the smooth realization of the urban green transformation while safeguarding the livelihood of society.

Land expropriation can incur not only economic costs but also political costs. Using panel data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we investigate the impact of land expropriation on the compliance behaviors of rural residents for the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), which is an extremely important public policy led by the government in China. To exclude the potential confounding impacts of reduced social security levels resulting from land expropriation, we focus on farmers in the same village who have not suffered land expropriation. The results of the difference-in-differences (DID) regression model suggest that land expropriation significantly reduces the probability of farmers within the same village, who have not suffered land expropriation, enrolling in the NRPS. The primary reasons are that land expropriation significantly decreases the trust of non-land expropriated farmers in local officials and the NRPS. Additionally, land expropriation has a stronger impact on unexpropriated farmers with lower levels of education, as well as unexpropriated households without Communist Party of China membership or with a high level of dependence on agriculture. Our findings suggest the cost of land expropriation is larger than previously thought, as it generates broader political trust and policy compliance issues.

The outward expansion of city centers is a typical feature of rapid urbanization in developing countries, leading to complex environmental pollution effects due to evolving urban spatial patterns. This study examines the impact of government-led urban expansion on pollution and carbon emissions by firms, utilizing firm and city-level data. Employing the staggered difference-in-differences (DID) method and taking the county-to-district conversion (CDC) as a quasi-natural experiment, the study finds that CDC reduced SO₂ emissions by 80.95% and CO₂ emissions by 13.12%. The key to this synergistic emission reduction lies in a series of source control strategies, including enhancing energy efficiency and innovation, industrial restructuring, and production reduction. Furthermore, the study reveals that CDC has a more significant effect on emission reduction for NOEs and small firms. Additionally, large cities, cities with high fiscal self-sufficiency, and cities with high per capita GDP exhibit greater environmental regulatory strength, leading to more effective emissions reduction. This paper seeks to explore potential gaps in research on the environmental impacts of government-led urban expansion, and it may provide empirical support for relevant policies in developing countries.

This cross-country empirical research investigates the impact of maternity leaves and the child care enrollment rates on increasing maternal employment. By analyzing data from OECD countries with country-fixed effects, we find that the child care enrollment for 0–2 year olds increases the maternity employment rate. We confirm an inverted U-shaped relationship between the maternity leave duration and the maternity employment rate, as evidenced in prior studies. More interestingly, we find that an interaction term between child care enrollment and maternity leave duration is significantly positive, suggesting that two variables play a complement role in enhancing maternal employment rate. By examining the independent and complementary effects of extended maternity leave and child care enrollment rates, our study suggests that their combined use significantly enhances maternal employment rates, highlighting a complementary relationship that policymakers should consider to support working mothers effectively.

This research aims to empirically investigate the relationship between bank digital transformation and lending distance. In traditional financial geography theory, banks have a natural geographical proximity preference in their credit decision-making, which might lead to suboptimal credit allocation. Can the rapid development of digitalization improve the situation that banks are only capable of undertaking ex ante due diligence and ex post monitoring of proximate borrowers, given that fintech has greatly improved the overall efficiency of the financial industry? Using bank loan data of listed enterprises in China from 2013 to 2021, this paper finds that the digital transformation of banks can significantly extend the lending distance between banks and enterprises. The moderating effect analysis suggests that distance extending effect of bank digitalization is more pronounced for firms with poor information quality and in competitive banking sector. Further, digital transformation extends the lending distance without increasing risk preferences, as evidenced by the empirical finding that the non-performing loan ratio remains unaffected by the increased distance. Also, geographical expansion in lending distance reduces loan concentration. The research in this paper supports the conclusion that banks' digital transformation positively impacts corporate credit allocation and is beneficial to achieving financial stability by improving loan performances.

This paper investigates the impact of banking competition on corporate labor income share in China. Utilizing hand-collected unique data on bank branches within a certain distance of firms and a large sample of Chinese A-share list firms spanning the period 2000–2022, we find that banking competition significantly boosts corporate labor income share. A 10 percent increase in banking competition, the corporate labor income share increases by 0.06 percent on average. The results remain robust after replacing proxies, changing estimation methods, controlling for other shocks, and addressing endogenous concerns. Easing financing constraints, improving investment efficiency, and enhancing human capital are three essential channels through which banking competition promotes corporate labor income share. We also find that the impact of banking competition on corporate labor income share is more pronounced for firms with higher external financing dependence, higher financing gaps, more investment opportunities, higher governance efficiency, and higher information asymmetry. Our findings highlight the significance of enhancing banking competition to promote income distribution, foster common prosperity, and drive high-quality economic development.