Waste of money or growth opportunity: The causal effect of EU subsidies on Hungarian SMEs

Although EU subsidies aiming at economic development play a pivotal role not only for Hungary but for the entire European Union as well, there is a debate regarding their effectiveness in the literature. This paper investigates the impact of direct economic development subsidies extended in the context of Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund as part of the 2007–2013 programming period of the European Union on Hungarian micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. Based on a micro database, we evaluate the impact of corporates’ first subsidies on various performance indicators, using a combination of propensity score matching and fixed effects panel regression. According to our results, economic development funds had a significant positive effect on the number of employees, sales revenue, gross value added and, in some cases, operating profit. However, the labour productivity of enterprises was not significantly affected by any of the support schemes. Furthermore, by explicitly comparing non-refundable subsidies (grants) and refundable assistance (financial instruments), we find that there is no significant difference in the effectiveness of the two types of subsidy.     

Does computer penetration increase farmers’ income? An empirical study from China

The diffusion and adoption of modern information technology provide new chance for China to close urban-rural income gap. This paper uses China's provincial panel data from 2002 to 2013 to investigate the effect of computer penetration on rural residents' income. A public program aiming to connect every village with broadband Internet and other rural facilities provides plausibly exogenous variation in rural residents' availability and adoption of the broadband Internet, which is used to explore the instrument variable for rural computer penetration. The results show that rural computer penetration tends to increase rural residents' income over time, but the average effect remains limited. The dynamic panel threshold effects model, which allows for both the threshold variable and other covariates to be endogenous, is further used to explore the constraints of the income-increase effect of rural computer penetration. It shows that the effect is at least doubled over the average effect estimated from instrument variables method, once the digital divide causes are removed. Our findings have important implications for the government to increase rural residents' income and reduce urban-rural income gap by encouraging rural computer usage and removing the digital divide.     

Supplier empowerment: Mediating situational factors and perceived performance

The understanding of the behavioral and cognitive factors that affect organizations' performance has attracted increasing attention of scholars and practitioners. Based on the literature of psychological empowerment at the individual and the team levels, this study develops the concept of supplier empowerment in the context of purchasing and supply management. Further, this study proposes a research model that explores the role of supplier empowerment as a cognitive concept in mediating the relationship between situational factors (a supplier's process modularity and the mutual trust with its customers/buyers) and the supplier's perceived performance in its operations and customer service. This model is tested with 208 responses from automotive industry suppliers. The findings highlight the importance of empowered suppliers in decreasing inventory levels and increasing order fulfillment performance.     

Foreign direct investment and inequality: Evidence from China's policy change

In this paper, we examine the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on local urban inequality in China. Specifically, we consider the FDI policy change as an exogenous shock on the local labour markets. We find that cities that have experienced a bigger policy change in promoting FDI between 1997 and 2002 are significantly more unequal in 2005. This pattern is mainly driven by the positive association between FDI liberalisation and skill premia. The result holds after we control for other policy changes, such as privatisation of state-owned enterprises, infrastructure and trade liberalisation. We then turn to investigate the mechanisms using firm and individual-level information. Our firm-level evidence shows that FDI firms not only hire relatively more high-skilled workers but also provide relatively higher wages to high-skilled workers compared to domestic firms. Moreover, the individual-level analysis shows that FDI has a significantly positive spillover effect on wages received by skilled workers employed by state-owned enterprises, but not wages of unskilled workers.     

A train of thought in product experientiality: Working memory,distraction, and inconsistencies in cue order effects

The sequence of informational cues and the level of distraction have an impact on the judgment of a product’s quality and preference. Two quasi-experimental studies (N_total = 340) investigate the influence of the force behind the processing of these cues – working memory (WM). Previous research found that, in the presence of a distractor, high WM individuals are more able to recall the initial cue, and thus derive their product judgment from the initial strong cue. Study 1 contradicts these findings and raises important methodological questions regarding the conceptualization of strong and weak cues. Specifically, commonly accepted strong cues (e.g., product reputation) might not influence consumers as expected. Additionally, in a sequence of product evaluation with high vs. low degree of experientiality, study 2 reveals that consumers tend to show a primacy effect that is stronger for higher levels of WM capacity. Moreover, in a sequence of assessing low vs. high degree of experientiality products, consumers reveal stronger recency effects, thus showing that WM reinforces this recency effect. Our findings have important implications for marketers by suggesting that consumers with high WMC are more able to process complex stimuli and retrieve previously presented information on a product quality. These consumers also have a higher tendency to retrieve more information from product scenarios with a high degree of experientiality.     

Fire sales by euro area banks and funds: What is their asset price impact?

The assets under management of investment funds have soared in recent years, triggering a debate on their possible implications for financial stability. We contribute to this debate assessing the asset price impact of fire sales in a novel partial equilibrium model of euro area funds and banks calibrated over the period between 2008 and 2017. An initial shock to yields causes funds to sell assets to address investor redemptions, while both banks and funds sell assets to keep their leverage constant. These fire sales generate second-round price effects. We find that the potential losses due to the price impact of fire sales have decreased over time for the system. The contribution of funds to this impact is lower than that of banks. However, funds’ relative contribution has risen due to their increased assets under management and banks’ lower leverage and rebalancing towards loans. Should this trend continue, funds will become an increasingly important source of systemic risk.     

基础设施对中国经济增长的影响及机制研究*——基于扩展的Barro增长模型

基础设施既可以作为特殊的资本存量直接促进经济增长，又可以通过促进投资和劳动力增加（增加生产要素数量）以及提高存量资本和劳动力的边际生产率（提高生产要素效率）间接促进经济增长。本文构建了一个扩展的Barro经济增长模型，并利用中国1992—2016年省级面板数据和中介效应模型对两条机制进行实证检验。结果发现：基础设施对经济增长具有促进作用，但对交通、能源、通信三类基础设施的影响以及在2008年金融危机前后均表现出异质性。直接效应呈动态上升趋势，中介效应则逐渐下降。针对异质性的原因，本文进一步采用非线性模型进行检验。结果表明我国基础设施对经济增长的促进作用主要表现为规模扩张型、数量型或外延型，而不是以质量型和内涵型为主的形式。能源和通信基础设施对经济增长的总效应具有规模效应，交通基础设施的规模效应不显著，但也对经济增长具有持续促进作用。这说明目前我国三类基础设施仍然具有较大投资潜力。其中的关键是要通过基础设施建设提高生产要素效率。     

Foreign direct investment and economic growth: Is more financial development better?

We investigate the extent to which an increase in financial development affects the positive effect of foreign direct investment on economic growth. Although the financial sector is beneficial for economic growth, the effect of further financial development on growth is found to become insignificant. Using a dynamic panel threshold model on 62 middle- and high-income countries spanning the period 1987–2016, we re-examine the possible nonlinearity between finance, foreign direct investment, and growth. Consistent with the “vanishing effect” of financial development, we find significant evidence that foreign direct investment fosters growth in general, but the growth effect of foreign direct investment becomes negligible when the ratio of private sector credit to gross domestic product exceeds 95.6%. This finding is robust to different econometric methods, various subsamples and interaction analyses, and distinct financial development indicators.     

Does foreign direct investment expand the capability set in the host economy? A sectoral analysis

Most empirical studies examining the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic development use aggregate monetary-based measures such as GDP or TFP growth as indicators for development. We deviate from this approach and use instead the recently developed economic complexity index; this measure summarises the complexity of the productive structure of an economy, and its values can be interpreted as the number of capabilities present in a country. These capabilities are units of productive knowledge necessary for the production of goods, and goods differ in the number of necessary capabilities. Furthermore, we use sectoral FDI data to take differences between sectors of an economy into account, since the number of necessary capabilities also varies between the sectors. In our empirical analysis, covering 63 developing and developed countries over the period 2005–14, we find that FDI in the tertiary sector has a statistically significant and robust positive effect on the number of capabilities, whereas FDI in the primary and secondary sectors generally does not increase the capability set of an economy.     

Life Course Perspective on Economic Shocks and Income Inequality Through Age-Period-Cohort Analysis: Evidence From Finland

Utilizing age-period-cohort analysis, this paper examines the development of income distribution across periodic economic fluctuations in relation to cohorts and age groups. The empirical analysis is based on the Finnish Income Distribution Statistics and Household Expenditure Surveys covering the period of 1966–2015. The findings suggest that the period and cohort effects can be identified as the main effects on relative income, while the age effects have no meaningful impact when the control variables are taken into account. This result reveals a connection between the effects of economic shocks and cohort placement on labor market entry. Additionally, absolute income analysis suggests that economic shocks create stagnation points in income development, which are especially detrimental to cohorts who are transitioning into labor markets. Additionally, middle-income attainment has not changed due to periodic shocks but rather is related to inter-cohort inequalities and relative income differences, where the baby boomer generation is a clear winner.