The Effect of Child Care Costs on the Employment and Welfare Recipiency of Single Mothers

This paper considers the effect of child care costs on two labor market outcomes for single mothers—whether to work for pay and whether to receive welfare. Hourly child care expenditures are estimated using data drawn from the 1992 and 1993 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). These expenditures are then used to predict the probability of welfare recipiency and employment. While the direction and significance of key variables are robust to changes in specification, the quantitative results are found to be sensitive to identification restrictions. All results show a substantial positive effect of child care costs on welfare recipiency, with the child care price elasticity of welfare recipiency varying from 1.0 to 1.9. Similarly, we find a significant negative effect of child care price on employment with elasticity estimates from -.3 to -1.1, showing that controlling for the welfare choice does not reduce the price elasticity of employment found in other studies.     

Public policy and health-care delivery: A practitioner’s perspective

Primary health care for inner-city residents is generally provided in institutional settings. This article describes a successful alternate model for health-care delivery: privately owned, for-profit, fee-for-service ambulatory care facilities. The Paul Robeson Health Organization in Harlem is described as an example of such a facility. Most of PRHO’s patients are black; 55% are adult females. Some of the special health needs of inner-city women and the range of services available to them at PRHO are described. A conclusion of this article is that the economic and social benefits derived from a health delivery center like PRHO make this model one worth consideration for replication in other communities.     

公共服务设施步行可达性对住宅价格的影响——基于累积机会的可达性度量方法

构建节能环保低碳的“绿色交通体系”是目前解决城市交通及其一系列衍生问题的重要举措。“将生活与服务混在一起”对于提升步行效能、促进步行和降低机动交通需求有重要的现实意义。公共服务设施步行可达性,反映居民获取公共服务设施的难易程度,对住宅价格具有资本化效应。文章以厦门岛1840个普通多/高层住宅为样本,通过累积机会法评价教育、商业、医疗和文体4种公共服务设施的步行可达性,并构建特征价格方程来检验公共品在住宅市场的资本化方向与程度。研究发现,教育、医疗和商业3类公共服务设施的规划布局已资本化入住宅价格：教育和商业服务步行可达性对住宅价格有正向影响,而二/三甲医院步行可达性有负向影响;省示范小学步行可达性对房价的正向影响大于重点中学;市区级文化体育中心对房价的影响不显著;此外,建筑面积、小区内部环境、商业中心距离等因素对房价都有显著的影响。特征价格模型也实证估计了各特征变量对住宅价格的影响程度。     

The basic needs approach to development: The question of health care for black people in Natal 1

Health care is an important facet of the basic needs approach. Health care for black people in Natal is fragmented both with regard to the responsible authority (Department of National Health and Population Development, Natal Provincial Administration, Development Services Board, local authorities and welfare clinics) and spatially (since there is an overlap with KwaZulu health services). Access to health facilities (permanent and mobile), although adequate in some areas, is insufficient in others: the deficiency is most marked in rural areas and with regard to permanent health facilities. Crucial statistical data pertaining to health status are inadequate partly because of the aforementioned fragmentation and partly because they are collected for administrative rather than monitoring purposes. Questions are posed regarding future access to health care in the light of the new constitutional dispensation, privatisation and the inadequate attention being given to primary health care.     

Private-Pay Demand for Nursing Facilities in a Market with Excess Capacity

Several researchers have modeled the demand for nursing-home care by private-pay patients in markets with excess demand. This paper examines private-pay demand using 2002 data from Texas, a large market where most nursing facilities are underutilized. The demand for private nursing-home care increases with facility size, per-capita income, and the percent of population at least 65 years old. On the other hand, private-care demand decreases in nursing homes operated for profit and in facilities facing greater competition. The price elasticity of demand for private care is estimated to be −0.69. These results are statistically significant at the 10 percent level or better in regressions estimated by instrumental variables using the full sample as well as a sample from which probable outliers have been removed. However, the relationship of demand to the nursing home's case mix is statistically imprecise, and our measure of nursing staff per bed seems to be affected by outlying observations. The findings tend to support previous research showing that private-pay demand reflects economically rational decisions made by nursing-home residents and their representatives.     

How China's accession to the WTO affects global welfare?

Conventional wisdom suggests that, if a large nation reduces tariffs, the Rest of the World (RoW) as a whole should immediately experience gains from trade. However, little simulation evidence has been provided to evaluate the welfare effects of China's tariff reduction upon its WTO accession on each of its trade partners. This paper addresses the above issue under both the perfectly competitive model and the monopolistic competition framework à la Eaton and Kortum (2002) and Melitz (2003). Armed by the method of Dekle, Eaton, and Kortum (2007, 2008) to quantify the individual countries' responses to the “China (trade liberalization) shock” at equilibrium, we could check the extent to which global welfare benefit from the import tariff reduction after China's entry into the WTO. The quantitative results show that, both China and the RoW benefit from Chinese participation into the WTO, with estimated welfare gains falling in a range of [1.4697%, 3.8743%] and [0.0743%, 0.1015%], respectively. That is to say, about 58.24% of total benefits extracted from China's accession into the WTO worldwide flow to countries other than China under perfect competition; while under monopolistic competition, the whole world enjoys a 0.1571% welfare increases if firms' entry is restricted, of which 42.64% are injected into the RoW, an equivalent amount of 23.3903 billion US dollars. Since allowing for firms' entry and exit would lead to adjustments in both aggregate price indices and government tariff revenues, welfare gains of the world significantly increase (0.2474%), but these adjustments would slightly distort the welfare changes for other countries in the sense that only 36.50%, which is equivalent to 32.1008 billion US dollars, overflow to the RoW. As a result, some countries gain more, while some less.     

Health risks of exposure to waste pollution: Evidence from Beijing

Waste pollution is a major environmental problem in big cities in China such as Beijing. The phenomenon of “cities besieged by waste” has received substantial attention of local residents, social media and policymakers. We investigate the causal impact of exposure to waste pollution on the health outcomes of migrants, who are in a more disadvantageous position than native residents of Beijing. Using administrative waste disposal data and the China Migrants Dynamic Survey, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in the level of emission from the nearest waste disposal site (WDS) increases by 10–11 percentage points in the probability of a migrant's sickness, but we do not find significant evidence when using the proximity to waste disposal sites as an indicator of waste pollution exposure. Our flindings suggest residence near WDSs poses a health risk.     

反倾销政策与研发竞争

借助异质产品的Bertrand双寡头模型,本文分析了一国反倾销政策对该国企业和外国企业的研发、产品价格及社会福利的影响。研究结论表明:与自由贸易相比,当产品的差异度较小时,受反倾销政策保护的企业会策略性地利用反倾销政策而退出国外市场,减少研发投入,进而提高产品价格,而遭受反倾销政策约束的外国企业由于其研发投入的边际收入增加,因而会增加研发投入,降低产品价格。此外,反倾销政策的存在还有可能促进各国社会福利的提升。     

农村基础设施投资是拉动还是挤出了居民消费

公共投资对居民消费存在拉动和挤出两种效应。文章利用2000-2010年全国30个省份的数据计算出农村基础设施投资存量,采用动态面板模型对农村基础设施投资存量与农村居民消费之间的关系作了实证分析。结果表明：从全国范围来看,基础设施投资对居民消费具有"挤出"效应,中部地区也同样呈现出"挤出"效应,东部和西部地区效应不明显。从基础设施结构来看,电力、燃气、水利和环境基础设施,卫生、社会保障和社会福利、文化体育和娱乐业基础设施对居民的消费具有"挤出"效应;交通运输、仓储、邮政以及信息传递和软件业基础设施,教育设施、科技服务和地质勘探基础设施对农村居民消费影响不显著。就此,应加大对西部及落后地区的投入,中、东部地区适当控制投入;完善基础设施的投资结构,增加对电力、水利、交通、教育、科技等基础设施的投入;引入民间资本投资农村基础设施等。     

Who Benefits from Inconsistent Multinational Tax Transfer‐Pricing Rules?*

This paper uses a strategic tax compliance model to examine taxpayer reporting and tax authority audit strategies in an international setting with two tax authorities. The setting features both information asymmetry between the taxpayer and the tax authorities and inconsistent tax transfer‐pricing rules. The latter creates the possibility of each country trying to tax the same income. We study the effect of the probability of transfer‐price rule inconsistency on the strategies and payoffs of the taxpayer and the tax authorities. We find that an increase in the probability of transfer‐price rule inconsistency induces more aggressive auditing by governments. It therefore deters taxpayers from shifting income to the country with the lower tax rate in situations in which the transfer‐pricing rules are consistent, and can either increase or decrease the income reported to the low‐tax‐rate country in cases in which the transfer‐pricing rules are inconsistent. We find that an increase in transfer‐price rule inconsistency could either increase or decrease the taxpayer's expected tax liability and could either increase or decrease the deadweight loss from auditing. Our results call into question the conventional wisdom that the prospect of double taxation due to transfer‐price rule inconsistency increases a firm's expected tax liability and governments' expected audit costs.     

The consequences of health shocks on households: Evidence from China

Unexpected health shocks may bring catastrophic consequences for households. This paper examines the effect of unexpected adverse health shocks on household members' physical and mental health, labor supply, household income and asset, and health behaviors in China by analyzing two nationally representative datasets and adopting a difference-in-differences method augmented with coarsened exact matching. We find that an unexpected health shock results in a discounted out-of-pocket medical expenditure of 16,943 RMB (US$ 2647) over five years for an average household, a reduction of household income per capita of 841 RMB per year (US$ 131, or 6.0% of household annual income per capita), and a loss of net household asset per capita of 13,635 RMB (US$ 2130, or 9.7% of household asset per capita). It raises the probability of an average household applying for public poverty relief allowance by 2.8 percentage points. In addition, we document a strong intra-household spillover effect of health shocks on mental health and health behaviors. A simple back-of-envelope calculation shows that the health shock induces a private cost of 34,966 RMB (US$ 5463) over 5 years for an average household, and incurs a social financial burden of 6066 RMB (US$ 948) in 5 years per household in medical reimbursement and social welfare transfers. At a national scale, the total social burden of health shocks from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases amounts to 1.1 trillion RMB (US$ 172.1 billion) over 5 years.     

The impacts of China's drug price zero-markup policy on medical expenditures and health outcomes

Drug overuse and high drug expenditures have long been of concern in China. In 2012, the Chinese government implemented the drug price zero-markup policy (ZMP) to contend with these problems. This paper investigates the impact of the ZMP on the hospitalization expenses and health outcomes of inpatients, using administrative data from Beijing. The findings show that the ZMP reduces inpatients' medicine expenses by an average of 20.4%, while total hospitalization expenses do not change significantly. The findings also show that the average length of hospital stay increases by 0.588 days. The results jointly indicate that hospitals adopt substitution behavior to make up for the drug revenue loss. The paper finds no evidence that the ZMP has a negative impact on patients' probability of death or readmission.     

Does New Rural Pension Scheme decrease elderly labor supply? Evidence from CHARLS

This paper examines the effect of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) on the labor supply behavior of the elderly in rural China. Using pooled data from two waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) and an analytical framework of combination of regression discontinuity design and difference in difference method (RD-DiD), we find no evidence that pension receipt from the NRPS program does significantly induce the elderly to withdraw from the labor market. The heterogeneous effects by health status indicate that pension recipient slightly decreases the probability of labor force participation for those individuals with chronic diseases; however, the effect is not statistically significant. The empirical findings suggest that the introduction of the NRPS program does not improve the welfare effect of the originally targeted elder individuals with illness.     

The paradox of developing agricultural mechanization services in China: Supporting or kicking out smallholder farmers?

Developing agricultural mechanization services (AMS) is commonly regarded as an important step in the modernization of smallholder farmers in China. However, given the increase in the opportunity costs of agriculture and the high cost of AMS, further study is needed to determine the relationship between AMS and smallholder farmers' exit from agricultural production. In this paper, data from the China Family Panel Survey collected in 2017 and 2019 are used to investigate this issue. Our findings show that the development of AMS reduces the probability that smallholder farmers exit from agricultural production though land abandonment, but increases the probability through land renting-out. Further analysis shows that with the emergence of large farm operators and the increase in land size rented by large farm operators, the development of AMS induces smallholder farmers' exit from agricultural production through both land abandonment and land renting-out. We also find that AMS can increase the market demand for land transfers and the marketization of land rentals, and as land markets develop, AMS induce smallholder farmers' exit through the abandonment of fragmented and distant land plots.     

The effect of health insurance reform: Evidence from China

This paper estimates the impact of a health insurance reform on health outcomes in urban China. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey¹ we find that this reform increases the rate of health insurance coverage significantly among workers in Non-State Owned Enterprises. The double difference (DD) estimations show that the reform also leads to better health outcomes: workers are less likely to get sick and more likely to use preventive care. Using an instrumental variable (IV) approach to look at the causal effect of health insurance, we find those with health insurance use more preventive care but do not report significantly better health outcomes, an increase in health care utilisation, or an increase in out-of-pocket medical expenditure.     

Health-seeking behavior and patient welfare: Evidence from China

The inefficient use of healthcare resources is a persisting challenge to almost all healthcare systems, making it imperative to understand the underlying factors of healthcare demand. This paper investigates patients' health-seeking behavior in rural China using a random coefficients logit model. We further perform a counterfactual simulation and welfare analyses to evaluate the inefficiencies in health services utilization. The counterfactual simulation reallocates patients to more efficient health providers following the principles of the hierarchical medical system. Our analysis suggests that out-of-pocket expenses and distance to providers discourage patients from utilizing healthcare, while quality of care has a positive effect on patients' hospital choices. However, significant heterogeneity exists in patient preferences over quality of care, out-of-pocket expenses, and distance to providers. The simulation results show that the overall welfare change may have masked variations related to the hypothetical change, with societal welfare loss from switching to higher-tier providers. Our analysis provides support for policies to improve hospitals and assist rural patients in financing healthcare in China.     

The upgrading effect of voluntary export restraints

Summary Given that a volume-defined VER is introduced on two differently priced varieties of a good,(i) the transfer of the VER-rent to the exporting country will cause imports of both varieties to fall,(ii) the relative price change in favour of the high cost variety counteracts this import fall and could in fact outweigh it,(iii) an ad valorem tariff restoring the original relative price of the two varieties would increase welfare and that welfare increase could in fact outweigh the welfare loss due to the VER-transfer to the exporting country.     

廉租住房保障退出机制:现状、问题与对策——以上海市为例

退出机制对于有效利用公共资源,维护低收入住房困难群体的居住权益具有重要意义。通过调研上海市廉租住房实施情况后,课题组发现退出机制建设滞后,＂退出难＂、＂救助性福利固化＂趋势严重。实践中暴露出的机制设计漏洞多、主管部门收入资产动态监控能力差、惩罚措施力度软化、部门职责不清、各保障制度间衔接不畅等问题,已经威胁到廉租住房制度的可持续发展。解决上述问题可以从家庭收入资产动态监控机制、惩罚退出机制、激励机制及保障方式选择等方面入手。     

Labor price distortion and export product markups: Evidence from China labor market

In the context of expanding the new pattern of opening-up, how to improve export product markups is of great significance to China's high-quality export development. This paper systematically investigates the impact of labor price distortion on the markups of export products by using the combined data of Chinese industrial enterprise database and customs database from 2000 to 2013. The results show that labor price distortion significantly inhibits the increase of export product markups of China's manufacturing enterprises, and the above conclusion is still robust after using various methods for robustness test, but this effect is heterogeneous due to different factor intensity, export destination, trade mode, region and ownership. The mechanism tests demonstrate that labor price distortion inhibits the increase of markups through inhibiting R&D innovation, reducing factor allocation efficiency and causing low efficiency of enterprise scale, among which R&D innovation is the most important channel. In addition, this paper examines the impact of labor price distortion on the change of industry aggregated markups, and finds that intra-enterprise effect and entry effect are the main channels for labor price distortion to inhibit industry aggregated markups, while inter-enterprise effect and exit effect have little impact on industry aggregated markups. Our findings provide a new perspective for reinterpreting the mystery of low markups of Chinese export product, and provides an important decision-making basis for the improvement of China's export product markups.