Provincial Output Spillovers in China： Global Vector Autoregressive Approach

The paper uses a global vector autoregressive model to examine provincial output spillover effects in China. We find that there are effective output spillovers from Guangdong, Liaoning and Zhejiang to other provinces in China, but trivial effects from Shanghai, Shandong, Sichuan and Xinjiang, and negative effects from Beijing. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Guangdong and Liaoning is the main channel for creating provincial output spillovers, compared with domestic investment and exports. However, FDI spillovers tend to decrease, with spillovers from exports and domestic investment rising over time, so that the spillover effects in Guangdong and Liaoning are non‐persistent and highly volatile. Other channels of output spillover, such as domestic investment, should be enhanced. Impacts of shock from government expenditure on GDP vary significantly across time and provinces; inland and western provinces are most negatively affected. The heterogeneous spillover structure shows that regional policies might achieve better results than nationwide policies in reducing regional disparity.     

Spatial Concentration of Innovation Activities in China and the Role of Mega‐economic Zones

This paper analyzes the development of spatial concentration of various innovation activities in China from 2000 to 2015 by using a generalized Theil index based on a balanced provincial dataset. It tracks concentration development back to the developing heterogeneity within and between regions in general and the mega‐economic zones in particular. Results show that innovation activities tend to be distributed unequally across provinces in China, with more pronounced unequal distribution of innovation outcomes than innovation inputs. Over the research period, the innovation activities considered became more and more equally distributed across provinces. The between‐region inequality of innovation activities has, however, not yet significantly improved, despite the implementation of Chinese regional policies to encourage more equal regional development. Instead, more equal distribution of innovation activities within mega‐economic zones is observed.     

INDONESIAN POLITICS IN 2007: THE PRESIDENCY,LOCAL ELECTIONS AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY

This article begins by reviewing the politics of the presidency, including the relationship between the president, the political parties and the House of Representatives (DPR). Referring to survey data, it analyses the dynamics of public support for President Yudhoyono, and takes a preliminary look at the 2009 presidential election. It also discusses the manoeuvring between Indonesia's two largest parties, Golkar and PDI-P, in the context of recent debates in the DPR concerning a package of draft political laws.

Indonesia is undergoing continual reform with regard to local, as well as national, politics. The introduction of direct elections for heads of government at the local level is a major political development that may help accelerate democratic consolidation. Based on an examination of local election results, this article concludes that the advent of direct elections has fuelled the formation of unprecedented cross-ideological political alliances. It appears that the ideological polarisation of national politics is often no longer reflected in provincial and local politics.     

PAC Contributions from Sectors of the Financial Services Industry, 1998–2002

This paper explores the relationship between House committee membership and campaign contributions from financial services industry political action committees (PACs) over the 1998–2002 election periods. Three significant pieces of banking legislation were passed during this time. Because members of the financial services industry were affected greatly by this legislation, it seems logical that PACs might attempt to influence the legislative process through the distribution of campaign contributions. We examine the relationship between PAC contributions to individual legislators for the 1998–2002 election cycle and membership on the House banking committee using a sample selection model. We find committee membership matters and the different financial services industry PACs give disproportionately more to representatives with the power to write legislation favorable to the industry. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the October 2007 International Atlantic Economic Conference.     

浅议美国的选举人团制度

本文以美国大选为线索,介绍大选中的选举人团制度,其中对胜者全得这一选举细节进行了分析,美国的大选并不一定能选出美国人民想要的总统,而美国的政治其实是一场"富人的游戏"。     

SOCIAL CLEAVAGES AND ELECTORAL SUPPORT IN TURKEY: TOWARD CONVERGENCE?

Studies on Western democracies have shown that deep‐seated social cleavages stabilize the electoral behavior and thus reduce electoral volatility. But how do social cleavages affect a party system that is undergoing democratic consolidation, such as in Turkey? In this study, investigations were carried out on long‐ and short‐term relationships between social cleavages (religiosity, ethnicity, and sectarism) electoral volatility in Turkey during the 1961–2002 period. Cross‐sectional multiple regressions were applied to electoral and demographic data at the provincial level. The results showed that in the longterm, social cleavages on the whole have increased volatility rather than reduced it. The cleavage‐volatility relationship, however, has changed over time. Repeated elections have mitigated the volatile effect of social cleavages on the voting behavior, as political parties have become more representative of the existent social cleavages.     

地区主义与东盟的制度变迁相关性分析

地区主义的发展推动着东盟自身的制度构建，东盟制度变迁的动力来源于地区经济合作和内部政治、经济整合的压力。东盟扩大、经济一体化、冲突的管理与解决、地区架构之形成，都反映了地区主义与制度变迁的深刻相关性。这种相关性必将影响到亚太地区的整合与国际关系。     

Swing States,the Winner-Take-all Electoral College,and Fiscal Federalism

The impact of the Electoral College on U.S. presidential elections is often criticized by academics and political commentators. One facet of its impact, the winner-take-all allocation of states’ Electoral College votes, serves in practice to overweight some votes in some states relative to other votes in other states. These disparities in the relative impact of votes in a presidential election can be large. Here, a metric is introduced to quantify the magnitude of these disparities in each presidential election. Using that metric, we show that states whose votes were overweighted in a presidential election subsequently received higher levels of federal grant spending under the newly-elected (re-elected) administration.     

A note on the effect of elections subject to judicial review

The most recent U.S. presidential election raised the questions of whether or not agents who believe that losing candidates will contest the results of close elections perceive their vote as more important and whether or not they will be more or less likely to vote. The analysis involves a two-player voting game with one of the players initially in a weaker position because he loses all ties. The key variable is the probability of the weaker player winning the post-election judicial review process. The relationship between this probability and the level of voting for the weaker player is non-monotonic. Also, if this probability is sufficiently close to one-half, contesting close elections leads to increased voting, lowering social welfare.     

Designing the DPD: Indonesia's Regional Representative Council

This paper examines the design of the Regional Representative Council (DPD) that Indonesia set up in 2002. Why was it established with its current electoral system and responsibilities? The design of the DPD had to fit within a compromise made between the two then dominant parties and their leaders. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle wished to preserve the revered People's Consultative Assembly structure, but without losing the power it then wielded by virtue of being the biggest party in the parliament. The other major party, Golkar, obtained the provincial chamber it sought, but was denied control of it when membership was closed to political parties. The public's demand for greater electoral power was appeased through the method of election chosen for the DPD. Institutionally, the design has not made the workings of the legislature more complicated for the established political actors, because the new chamber has little influence.     

中国相邻省份经济增长的溢出效应分析

本文基于中国29个省市1990年-2006年间的数据,引入省份产出变量,在Solow增长模型框架下对全国29个省份与其相邻省份之间的相互溢出效应做了分析。结果发现,京津唐地区经济联系度低,区域合作性较差;长三角地区形成了良好的经济互动,在自身发展的同时,带动周围地区快速发展;南部沿海地区中的广东省对邻省的经济带动作用不足,福建省对邻省的溢出效应为负值;中部地区中的河南、安徽、湖北以及西部地区中的宁夏与其相邻省份互动性良好;东北地区之间区域合作较差,辽宁省的经济辐射作用不大。     

中国出口贸易垂直专业化的地区差异及其影响因素

本文采用2002～2008年中国省级面板数据,计算了各地区出口贸易的垂直专业比重,并在此基础上实证分析了垂直专业化的影响因素。研究结果显示,中国出口贸易的垂直专业化存在着明显的地区差异,东部与中西部地区之间的差异尤为突出。工业基础、人力资本、对外开放度、服务业水平对垂直专业化水平的影响显著为正,工资水平和自然资源变量系数均显著为负,这些因素也是造成中国出口贸易垂直专业化地区差距的主要原因。     

Policing the provinces: A budgetary analysis

This article examines the impact of the Financial and Fiscal Commission's (FFC) new provincial financing dispensation on the allocation of police resources and on the deliv ery of police services at provincial level. Trends in the police budget since the late 1989s are examined, and the existing provincial allocation of police resources is analysed, as well as the relationship between crime rates, socio‐economic variables and the provincial allocation of police resources. A new framework for the provincial allocation of police resources is subsequently proposed. This framework is based on the FFC's proposed provincial grants formula and the establishment of a Crime Equalisation Fund (CEF) which allocates additional police resources based on each province's per capita crime rates and specific priority crimes. The article argues that the phased reallocation of po lice resources to provinces via this new framework will contribute to a more equitable and effective utilisation of existing police resources, which in turn should have a positive impact on the delivery of police services and the levels of crime. It also suggests that the further devolution of the police budget to provinces is likely to be inhibited by the ANC's commitment to retaining a national, centralised police service. Thus, any further devolu tion of budgetary powers with respect to policing will be determined by the outcome of centre‐province political dynamics rather than by the need to combat crime more effec tively at provincial levels.     

The regional effects of macroeconomic shocks in China

The extent and persistence of the inequality of regional output is an important policy issue in China and its sources have been the subject of considerable empirical research. Yet we have relatively little empirical knowledge of the effects on the regional distribution of output of shocks to national macroeconomic variables such as GDP and investment. This is an important gap in the empirical literature since much government macroeconomic policy seeks to influence GDP using instruments such as investment expenditure. It is likely that such national shocks will have differential regional impacts and so affect the regional output distribution. Policy-makers need to know the sign, size and timing of such effects before making policy decisions at the national level. We simulate the effects of aggregate shocks on individual provinces' GDP within the framework of a vector autoregressive (VAR) model restricted in a manner following Lastrapes (Economics Letters, 2005). We use annual data from 1980 to 2012 to estimate the model which includes 28 of China's provinces and simulate the effects on provincial outputs of shocks to aggregate output and investment. We find great diversity of effects across the provinces with discernible geographic patterns. There is evidence that output shocks benefit coastal provinces with developed industrial structure, export-exposure and less reliance on SOEs; the opposite is found for the effects of an investment shock and we conjecture that this is likely to have been the result of the strong bias in central government investment policy in favour of the interior provinces during a substantial part of our sample period.     

The impact of economic geography on wages: Disentangling the channels of influence

This paper evaluates the role of economic geography in explaining regional wages in China. It investigates the extent to which market proximity can explain the evolution of wages, and through which channels. We construct a complete indicator of market access at the provincial level from data on domestic and international trade flows; this is introduced in a simultaneous-equations system to identify the direct and indirect effect of market access on wages. The estimation results for 29 Chinese provinces over 1995–2002 suggest that access to sources of demand is indeed an important factor shaping regional wage dynamics in China. We investigate three channels through which market access might influence wages beside direct transport-cost savings: export performance, and human and physical capital accumulation. A fair share of benefits seems to come from enhanced export performance and greater accumulation of physical capital. The main source of influence of market access remains direct transport costs.     

Opening up,Market Reform,and Convergence Clubs in China*

This paper evaluates the relationship between initial government policies and the emergence of convergence clubs in post‐reform China. We test the structural stability of a global convergence equation using China's provincial data over the period 1985–2000. We find that the provinces cluster around two basins of attraction defined by initial opening‐up. Domestic market reform exerts a positive and significant influence on provincial economic growth but has no threshold effect. The two convergence clubs exhibit strikingly different growth behaviors, suggesting that the roles of some growth‐promoting factors, such as human capital and infrastructure, depend on whether an openness threshold is passed.     

地方政府投资效率的阶段性和地域性特征——基于中国省市面板数据的分析

当前,地方政府投资对经济增长发挥着重要影响,因而地方政府投资效率的高低显得十分关键。结合中国省市1998-2008年间的面板数据,基于Pooled OLS、一阶差分模型、固定效应模型以及GMM方法,本文尝试深入分析地方政府投资效率的阶段性和地域性特征。在计量模型构建方面,本文创新的综合考虑到TFP分解问题,控制了基尼系数、教育财政支出比重和劳动份额等结构性变量。实证结果表明,自2001年入世以来,地方政府投资效率有所降低,幅度为7%;而东部地区省份的投资效率相对于西部地区省份要高10%,这一结论具有较强的现实意义。     

我国投资政策的省际差异效应:基于SVAR模型的估计

以各地的人均实际GDP、实际投资、消费者价格指数等为变量,本文建立了一个结构向量自回归SVAR模型。脉冲响应模拟结果显示,我国的投资政策存在明显的省际差异效应,投资对东部省份经济增长的推动作用最大,其次是中部,对西部的影响甚微。各地人力资本水平的差别是造成投资政策省际差异效应的主要原因。为了加快中西部落后省份的发展,充分发挥投资政策对区域协调发展的促进作用,在加大对中西部物质资本投资力度的同时,要着力提高其教育,特别是中学教育的水平。     

Do Inland Provinces Benefit from Coastal Foreign Direct Investment in China?

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China is heavily concentrated in the coastal regions. Do inland provinces benefit from coastal FDI? We use a provincial‐level panel dataset and employ the fixed‐effects instrumental variables regression technique to investigate the interregional spillovers from coastal FDI to inland provinces. The study finds that, on average, coastal FDI has a negative impact on the economic growth of inland provinces. In addition, depending on the different trade activities engaged in (i.e. whether processing trade or ordinary trade), coastal FDI has different impacts on the economic growth of inland provinces.     

Evidence of panel stationarity from Chinese provincial and regional income

The aim of this paper is to examine whether Chinese provincial and regional real GDP and per capita real GDP are panel stationary for the period 1952–2003. We allow for multiple structural breaks based on a technique developed by Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. [Carrion-i-Silvestre, J. L., Barrio-Castro, T, D., & Lopez-Bazo, E. (2005). Breaking the panels: An application to the GDP per capita. Econometrics Journal, 8, 159–175]. Allowing for at most five structural breaks, we find that for 67% of the provinces, per capita real GDP is stationary; while we only find stationarity of real GDP for 17% of the provinces. However, when we extend the analysis to panel data models, we find statistically strong evidence of panel stationarity of Chinese provincial and regional income.