Entrepreneurship,private economy and growth: Evidence from China

This paper examines the impact of entrepreneurship on economic growth by using a panel data set of 29 provinces in China over 20 years. Two indicators of entrepreneurship are defined and introduced into the traditional growth regression framework that is estimated using the system generalized method of moments. We also use the ratio of staff and workers of state-owned enterprises and per capita sown land area as the instrumental variables to identify the causal effect of entrepreneurship on economic growth. Our results suggest that entrepreneurship has a significant positive effect on economic growth and this finding is robust even after we control for other demographic and institutional variables. Our study provides some evidence that may be used as a basis for evaluating the effect of China's policy on private business which has been increasingly relaxed since the late 1970s.     

Corruption and private firms' survival in transition economies: Evidence from China

This article explores whether and how regional corruption determines private firms' survival in transition economies from a political favoritism perspective. We argue that regional corruption facilitates the likelihood of private firms' survival, but the magnitude to which private firms' survival responses to corruption is contingent on not only officials' power and power stability but also firms' power. Building on firm-level data and regional registered cases of corruption from 1998 to 2012, the findings confirm that corruption has a positive effect on private firms' likelihood of survival in China. Our studies also demonstrate that the positive effect is strengthened before the 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2002, in the case of regulated industry, regional leadership stability, large size, low export and privatized firms. Asset turnover and credit are viewed as the channels through which corruption fosters private firms' likelihood of survival.     

Financial stability gap and private investment nexus: Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

The illiquidity status of financial institutions widens up the financial stability gap, hence affecting other economic agents that depend on the financial sector. The objective of the study is to determine how the financial stability gap affects private investment in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Annual time series secondary data from 33 SSA countries for the period 2007–2018 was used. Using the general methods of moments (GMM) estimation technique, we found that the financial stability gap beyond 109.9% becomes detrimental to private sector investment while government effectiveness and investment by the government improve private investment. The study recommends that financial institutions undertake liquidity protection measures as a means of protecting the stability status, while SSA governments invest in the economy and provide the needed business environment for private sector investment.     

外国直接投资与旅游业:来自中国的证据

本文将Zaptata和Rambaldi(1997)提出的方法应用于中国的季度数据,以便检验中国的外国直接投资(FDI)和旅游业之间的因果关系。实证结果表明,由FDI到旅游存在着单向因果关系。这一发现有助于解释过去的十几年中中国旅游市场的快速发展。     

Retirement and health: Evidence from China

One typical feature of China's pension system is that retirement is mandatory. By exploiting the exogenous change created by this mandatory retirement policy, we use the mandatory retirement age as an instrument for retirement status to examine the effect of retirement on individual health using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Our main finding is that the probability of “fair” or “poor” self-reported health among white-collar workers decreases by 34 percentage point after retirement. This result is generally robust to different model specifications, alternative measures of health, and different subsamples. In addition, we deliver evidence that increased health-related exercises and the cultivation of a better lifestyle are two possible channels through which retirement affects health.     

Tax and leverage: Evidence from China

This study exploits two institutional features of China to test the causal link between tax and capital structure. First, the central government exclusively determines the corporate tax rate in China, which results in changes in corporate income tax rates across different Chinese public firms over the period of 2000–2011. Such mandatory tax shifts provide a quasi-natural experimental setting for our difference-in-differences analysis investigating the impact of tax on leverage. We find evidence supporting the dynamic trade-off theory, namely that firms are unresponsive to tax cuts but increase long-term leverage when taxes rise (particularly those in low statutory tax regimes). Second, governmental intervention in capital allocation is common in China such that political connections are usually regarded as an asset for firms in accessing bank loans. Using anti-corruption events as shocks to the value of political connections over the sample period, our research is the first study to show that political connections become a liability that enables banks to recall loans from affected firms during the anti-corruption campaign periods. This change overturns the typical tax-leverage relationship observed, as we find anti-corruption affected firms reduce long-term leverage when taxes are cut and they become insensitive to tax increases. Our results reveal the importance of political ties in explaining how firms adjust their capital structure to tax changes, which is extremely relevant to policy makers and regulators when monitoring bank loan markets.     

Corruption and firm growth: Evidence from China

Corruption is one of the most pervasive obstacles to economic and social development. However, in the existing literature it appears that corruption seems to be less harmful in some countries than in others. The most striking examples are well known as the “East Asian paradox”: countries displaying exceptional growth records despite having thriving corruption cultures. The aim of this paper is to explain the high corruption but fast economic growth puzzle in China by providing firm-level evidence of the relation between corruption and growth and investigating how financial development influences the former relationship. Our empirical results show that corruption is likely to contribute to firms' growth. We further highlight the substitution relationship between corruption and financial development on firm growth. This means that corruption appears not to be a vital constraint on firm growth if financial markets are underdeveloped. However, pervasive corruption deters firm growth where there are more developed financial markets. This implies that fast firm growth will not be observed until a later stage of China's development when financial markets are well-functioning and corruption is under control. Furthermore, the substitution relationship exists in the private and state-owned firms. Geographically, similar results can be seen in the Southeast and Central regions.     

所有制改革与OFDI:中国的证据

所有制改革为中国对外直接投资(OFDI)提供了制度保证,是经济转型过程中促进中国OFDI扩张的一种机制。文章采用2003~2014年187个中国对外直接投资国(地区)的跨国数据,实证研究了所有制改革及其引起的对外直接投资主体多元化对中国OFDI的影响效应。在控制了市场寻求、资源寻求与技术寻求动机以及东道国市场风险和人民币汇率等影响因素后,实证结果表明:所有制改革对OFDI具有显著的正向影响;在对外直接投资主体多元化方面,有限责任公司投资主体占比的增加对OFDI具有显著的正向影响,国有企业与集体企业投资主体占比的增加对OFDI具有显著的负向影响,股份有限公司、股份合作企业、外商投资企业和私营企业投资主体占比的增加对OFDI的影响效应不显著或具有负向影响;进一步考虑东道国异质性的研究发现,金融危机前所有制改革与对外直接投资主体多元化对中国OFDI的影响在发达国家和发展中国家或欠发达国家之间是有差异的,而金融危机后对中国OFDI的影响差异不明显。     

Green creates value: Evidence from China

This study explores whether and how the issuance of green bonds affects firm value in China from January 2015 to September 2020. Based on a multiperiod difference-in-differences model, we observe that firm value increases with the issuance of green bonds, but this positive effect is unsustainable and weakens gradually. The heterogeneity analysis suggests that the expected positive effect of green bond issuance on firm value is highly evident in non-state-owned firms, small firms, firms in green finance pilot zones, and firms in the eastern region. Moreover, we explore the mechanism in terms of financing condition, government support, and green investment and find that the financing condition, tax burden, and government subsidy of firms improve following the issuance of green bonds. However, green investments erode firm profits, which may lead to the unsustainability of the driving effect of green bond issuance on firm value. Further analysis reveals that when the volume of the green bonds issued by firms increases by one standard deviation, firm value increases by 0.032 units on average.     

临淄——足球的故乡

足球是当今风靡世界的第一运动。但是,围绕足球的起源却一直是个有争议的未解之谜。2004年2月4日,国际足联在伦敦举行的新闻发布会上正式对外宣布:足球最早起源于中国——中国古代的蹴鞠就是足球的起源。同年5月,中国体育史学、考古学和齐文化研究领域最权威的36位专家、学者齐聚淄博市临淄区,本着对历史高度负责的科学态度,对足球起源地进行了认真、细致、严谨的探讨论证,并对历史文献中关于“蹴鞠”活动记载最早、各历史时期对“蹴鞠”活动记载不间断为主线索进行了充分的考证。《战国策·齐策》和《史记·苏秦列传》就有关于公元前300多…     

Financial development and economic growth: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the relationship between financial development and economic growth for the case of China over the period 1952–2001. After considering the time series characteristics of the dataset, a multivariate vector autoregressive (VAR) framework is used as an appropriate specification and the long-run relationship among financial development, growth and other key growth factors is analyzed in a theoretically based high dimensional system by identification of co-integrating vectors through tests of over-identifying restrictions. The empirical results suggest that there exists a unidirectional causality from economic growth to financial development, conclusions departing distinctively from those in the previous studies.     

Firm-level human capital and innovation: Evidence from China

This paper examines the role of human capital in firms' innovation. Based on a World Bank survey of manufacturing firms in China, we use two firm-level datasets: one from large metropolitan cities, and one from mid-sized cities. Patents are used as an indicator of innovation. The human capital indicators we use include the number of highly educated workers, the general manager's education and tenure, and the management team's education and age. We use the Negative Binomial and Instrumental Variables estimators to estimate patent production function models that are augmented by our human capital variables. We also use the zero-inflated Negative Binomial model to examine the likelihood of innovation. We find that the human capital indicators play an important role in influencing patenting, and that some of the human capital variables appear to have a greater impact on patenting in mid-sized cities. Our human capital estimates are obtained after controlling for firms' R&D, size, market share, age, and foreign ownership, as well as fixed effects to control for industry-specific characteristics, and firms' location and geography.     

Gender norms and marriage satisfaction: Evidence from China

This paper examines the association between the traditional gender division norm — “men are breadwinners, and women are homemakers” — and the marriage satisfaction of each gender using Chinese couple-level data. The results reveal that married couples tend to be less satisfied with their marriage if the wife earns more than the husband. Moreover, it seems that the drop in the husband's marriage satisfaction matters more for the drop in the couple's overall marriage satisfaction. By exploring the difference between husbands and wives in their attitudes in terms of economic contribution and housework contribution, we confirm that husbands may have a specific self-image regarding the traditional gender division norm, and can also respond to the wives' gender role preference.     

出口退税率对分行业资源错配的实证分析

出口退税是政府常用来提升出口企业在国际市场竞争力的工具。文章指出,出口退税有可能抑制出口企业的生产率提升并导致行业内的资源错配,出口退税率的降低会促进出口企业提升生产率及改善行业的资源配置效率,同时使得行业的整个生产率提升。基于垄断竞争模型的分析发现,出口退税率与出口商的收入生产率负相关。另外,基于2003~2004年工业企业数据库信息的实证也表明降低出口退税率可以使得企业和行业生产率提升,而在市场竞争越充分的行业这一提升效应越明显。     

Trade Destruction and Trade Diversion: Evidence from China

Over the past three decades, we have seen a dramatic increase in the incidence of temporary trade barriers such as antidumping duties and countervailing duties. China has been at the receiving end of a large number of such measures. In this paper, we study how China's exports to its major trade partners have been affected when its major trade partners have used these measures either against China or against other countries. We find that Chinese exports to the country that imposed an antidumping duty decreased by approximately 35 percent. At the same time, an antidumping duty used by the importing country that was directed towards other countries but not against China led to an approximate 30‐percent increase in China's exports to the policy‐imposing country. These results remain robust across various specifications. Our findings have important policy implications. In particular, the magnitude of these effects highlights why it is important to curb the recent widespread use of these barriers.     

Foreign trade and innovation sustainability: Evidence from China

By using data on firms listed on Chinese A-share markets from 2011 to 2017, this study analyzes whether the implementation of China’s the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) affects the sustainable innovation ability of firms. To address endogeneity concerns, we construct a quasi-natural experiment that focuses on firms with overseas business relationships, which had further expanded its foreign trade scale due to the BRI policy in 2014 to explore the casual relation between foreign trade and firm innovation sustainability. Baseline results indicate that the sustainable innovation ability of firms has improved significantly since the promulgation of the BRI policy in 2014. In addition, we find that the improvement of sustainable innovation ability is caused by the “going-out” effect, rather than the “bringing-in” effect, which is the result of the BRI policy. Results suggest that free trade has been conductive to promoting firm sustainable innovation ability, which is also confirmed in additional robustness and placebo tests.     

Political ties and VC exits: Evidence from China

We examine whether political ties (PTs) benefit VCs in China and find a positive relationship between PTs and successful VC exits. Our findings indicate that PTs are crucial for VCs to exit via Chinese mainland stock markets and M&As. The impact of PTs depends on the nature and compositions of PTs. We document that VCs with management-level PTs enjoy greater success than those with ownership-level PTs, whereas no significant difference between central and local government PTs on VC exits. Our results remain stable after controlling for selection bias, alternative measures for VC exits, and legal and institutional differences across regions.     

Family structure and home ownership: Evidence from China

This paper studies how individuals, particularly low-income individuals, have financed housing purchases since the housing market was privatized in urban China in the 1990s. To the surprise of many policy makers and economists, more than 80% of the households in urban China owned private housing by the end of 2010. In contrast to most developed countries, we find that male siblings are important borrowing resources to purchase housing. Conditional on the number of siblings, having more brothers instead of sisters increases the probability of owning housing among male individuals born during the baby boom (1949–1978) in urban China. However, there is no such brother effect for females. The brother effect is stronger for males with low income or low levels of education and is also stronger when brothers are wealthier. Our results are robust to different model specifications. Our results suggest that females are likely to be excluded from family-based informal financial market for housing purchase among baby boom generations in China.     

Social credit and patent quality: Evidence from China

We combine the discredited people database disclosed by the China People’s Supreme Court and the China industry business performance database from 2003 to 2014 and examine the effect of regional social credit on the quality of patents, measured by knowledge breadth. We find that a loss of social credit can result in a significant decline in patent quality. The result remains robust to a series of sensitivity checks, including using the alternative measures of key variables and exploiting the number of missionary universities established since the Opium War as an instrument for social credit. The possible mechanisms for the effect of social credit on patent quality are further verified, including attenuating external financing constraints and enhancing the innovation incentive.