Financial literacy and support for free trade in the UK

Recent events in Europe and the United States suggest that open economies are increasingly under stress as nationalist, protectionist and populist political entrepreneurs are gaining significant ground across the Western world. Many theories have been formulated as to which factors are more likely to explain such policy preferences. The hypothesis tested in this paper is that financial literacy affects economic policy preferences. I analyse data from the British Election Study and test my theory on support for free trade in the United Kingdom. Findings suggest that financial literacy does affect economic policy preferences. On average, financially literate individuals are more likely to think that free trade is good for the British economy. Furthermore, this is true regardless of economic self-interest, as both financially literate winners and losers from globalisation are more likely to support free trade than their illiterate counterparts.     

Impact of an urban growth boundary across the entire house price spectrum: The two-stage quantile spatial regression approach

This study provides evidence for the impact of an urban growth boundary (UGB) on house prices. The study employs a two-stage quantile spatial regression method on a dataset that inventories sales transactions of single-family houses within two miles of either side of the eastern boundary of the primary UGB in King County, Washington. The results show that while the UGB decreases house prices across the entire house price spectrum, the impact is uneven; it is most pronounced for houses in the 5th to 8th decile of prices. These findings should encourage policy makers to adopt sub-housing-market-level policy approaches to address UGB and other urban and regional development policies’ potential impacts on house prices.     

中国反垄断的政治经济学解读

大企业通常会利用市场支配力获得转移收益，这会扭曲合理的财富分配进而抑制整个社会的价值创造，因而应该受到反垄断行为审查。同时，经济全球化使得大企业依仗其市场支配力获得的转移收益不再局限于国内，利益受损者可能是他国民众，因而世界各国的反垄断行为呈现出明显的倾向性。事实上，尽管那些知名外资大企业凭借其规模经济为中国社会提供了物美价廉的产品和服务，提高了国人的消费剩余和经济福利，但也因独占市场而挤压了国内相关企业和产业的发展空间，造成长远的国家福利损失，因而当前中国政府的反垄断调查集中在具有市场支配力的大型外资企业上。     

Second-party and third-party punishment in a public goods experiment

We experimentally investigate whether third-party punishment is more effective than second-party punishment to increase public goods contribution. In our experiment, third parties first played the standard public goods game and then made punishment decisions as independent bystanders. We find that third parties punished more frequently, severely and less antisocially, resulting in a higher contribution level than that driven by second-party punishment. The third party’s exaggerated emotion towards free riders is proposed to explain their superior punishment effectiveness.     

“一带一路”背景下中蒙俄经济走廊贸易潜力研究

在我国大力倡导“一带一路”，推动全球对外经贸合作深入发展的今天，建立“中蒙俄经济走廊”，充分发挥中俄蒙三国的经济互补性，挖掘三国之间的贸易潜力和合作空间，对三国的经济发展均有重要的战略意义。基于此研究背景，本文利用2002～2015年中俄对外贸易面板数据，通过引力模型分析了中蒙俄三国的贸易潜力。结果表明，近几年中俄两国之间的实际贸易额呈下降趋势，贸易增长潜力较大；中蒙两国之间的贸易虽呈现“贸易过度”的状态，但贸易额波动较大，且贸易总量较小。最后，从加强基础设施建设，增强政治、经济和文化交流以及完善边贸管理体制等3个方面对建立“中蒙俄经济走廊”提出了政策建议。     

International aid from the recipient perspective: public or private good input assistance?

This article proposes a theoretical model from the recipient perspective that considers what type of assistance a donor country should provide: public good assistance or private good assistance. We investigate the effects of migration and free riders under both types of assistance. We empirically apply this model to the rapidly growing economies and a large official development assistance disbursement for East Asia.     

Free trade agreement and transport service trade

This study investigates the effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) on trade in transport services using OECD data from 2003 to 2006. Our analysis found that FTAs had a positive overall impact on transport services for multiple countries (i.e., 26 home and 56 partner countries). The resulting positive overall impact assures that, even with the challenges associated with different layers of services and the obstacles formed by generally low trade openness in the sector, the provisions in FTAs (e.g., national treatment and market access for goods and services) promote transport service trades. Our findings suggest that the provisions in FTAs encourage economic agents to increase engagement in transport services because of expanded openness of the physical movement of goods across international borders.     

Free‐riding in multi‐party alliances: The role of perceived alliance effectiveness and peers' collaboration in a research consortium

Research summary : Multi‐party alliances rely on partners' willingness to commit and pool their efforts in joint endeavors. However, partners face the dilemma of how much to commit to the alliance. We shed light on this issue by analyzing the relationship between partners' free‐riding—defined as their effort‐withholding—and their perceptions of alliance effectiveness and peers' collaboration. Specifically, we posit a U‐shaped relationship between partners' subjective evaluations of alliance effectiveness and their free‐riding. We also hypothesize a negative relation between partners' perceptions of the collaboration of peer organizations and their free‐riding. Results from a mixed‐method study—combining regression analysis of primary data on a major inter‐organizational research consortium and evidence from two experimental designs—support our hypotheses, bearing implications for the multi‐party alliances literature. Managerial summary : Free‐riding is a major concern in multi‐party alliances such as large research consortia, since the performance of these governance forms hinges on the joint contribution of multiple partners that often operate according to different logics (e.g., universities, firms, and government agencies). We show that, in such alliances, partners' perceptions have relevant implications for their willingness to contribute to the consortium's shared goals. Specifically, we find that partners free‐ride more—that is, contribute less—when they perceive the effectiveness of the overall alliance to be either very low or very high. Partners also gauge their commitment to the alliance on the perception of the effort of their peers—that is, other organizations similar to them. These findings provide managers of multi‐party alliances with additional levers to motivate partners to contribute fairly to such joint endeavor. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The welfare effect of a free trade agreement in the presence of foreign direct investment and rules of origin

This paper investigates the welfare effect of forming a free trade agreement (FTA). To receive tariff‐free treatment, firms must comply with the rules of origin (ROO). Outside firms could undertake either market‐oriented or export‐platform foreign direct investments (FDIs). ROO have the following effects: (i) An infeasible FTA may become feasible by deterring outside firms' FDIs, (ii) an FDI of a less efficient firm could replace that of an efficient firm, or (iii) FDIs made before the FTA is concluded might be eliminated. These potential effects complicate the welfare effect of the FTA and could decrease the consumer surplus.     

China's One‐Child Policy: Some Unintended Consequences

This paper gives a brief overview of China's family planning policy which, although recently relaxed, still controls a large swath of the population. Unofficially known as the ‘one‐child policy’, it resulted from the social strife of the 1970s coupled with a Malthusian pessimism concerning the capability of the still largely closed and isolated Chinese economy to care for itself. We discuss the motivations for the policy, the unfortunate demographic future that it will create, and some policy reforms that can be undertaken today.