Intensive and extensive margins of exports: What can India learn from China?

We decompose India's export performance in manufactured products during 2000–15 into changes at the intensive and extensive margins. India's performance, along different margins, is compared and contrasted with that of China. The results show that while China outperforms India at both the margins, the gap is particularly wide at the intensive margin. Decomposition of intensive margin along quantity and price margins shows that Chinese products are generally sold cheaper than Indian products. Higher price margin, however, has not translated into high intensive margin for India due to its abysmally low quantity margin. We examine different explanations for China's superior performance relative to India, along different margins, using a gravity model. Our results suggest that China's exchange rate policy was not the prime reason for its export success. Neither do we find that FDI inflows were significant in explaining the export performance gap between them. The results show that China's export relationship bias towards high‐income partner countries holds the key in understanding its superior performance. This bias is a natural consequence of China's high degree of specialization in labor‐intensive activities. India, by contrast, due to an idiosyncratic pattern of specialisation, has failed to exploit its export potential in high income countries.     

Risk assessment for public–private partnership projects: using a fuzzy analytic hierarchical process method and expert opinion in China

Public–private partnerships (PPP) have been widely used in China to procure public facilities and services. Complicated problems in PPP projects in China arise because of a variety of risk factors. A proper risk assessment model is needed to identify risks and provide risk response strategies for future Chinese PPP projects. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (F-AHP) method provides the ability to solve complex risk assessment of PPP projects. Current risk assessment models are limited to PPP projects in specific countries and do not consider unique risks in China, especially political, economic, social, and legal risks. This paper designed a risk evaluation index system for PPP projects based on the Delphi expert investigation method, and then established an optimized risk evaluation model for PPP projects in China using the F-AHP method. The risks identified are confirmed by interviewing experts from Chinese local government departments, private enterprise, third-party intermediary consulting and regulatory agencies, and academic organizations. The results show that the risks that ranked among the top ten are closely related to China’s political and economic policies and relationships among stakeholders. It can be concluded that government authorities play a critical role in providing a favorable political, social, and economic environment and an effective institutional framework for PPP projects. Furthermore, it is also important to deal with relationships among stakeholders based on the public–private ‘win–win’ principle. This study provides risk response strategies, addressing key issues from eight aspects: an impeccable legal and regulatory framework; a central coordinating and regulating PPP authority; supportive governmental authorities; institutional capacity-building; favorable economic conditions and viability; community, partner, and moral accountability; clear division of responsibilities through contracts; and effective advisory management. These effective measures may be useful in reducing the adverse effects of risk for PPP projects in China.     

Cooperative membership and farmers’ choice of marketing channels – Evidence from apple farmers in Shaanxi and Shandong Provinces,China

Cooperatives are established to improve farmers' production conditions, to increase their bargaining power and to enable them to benefit from modern value chains. In China, farmers are members of a cooperative for multiple reasons. Little is known on whether and how cooperative membership affects farmers’ choice of marketing channels. This paper examines determinants of farmers’ choice of marketing channels, especially how cooperative membership impacts upon this choice. Our analysis is based on survey data collected in 2015 among 625 apple growing farm households in the provinces Shaanxi and Shandong. We employ endogenous switching probit models to deal with potential endogeneity of membership in estimating the determinants of marketing channel choices. We find that cooperative membership has a positive impact on selling to wholesalers and a negative impact on selling to small dealers, but no significant impact on selling to the cooperative itself. As products sold through cooperatives generally comply with relatively stringent food quality and safety standards, these results imply that policies promoting cooperative members to sell their products through cooperatives are likely to have a significant impact on food quality and food safety in China.     

结构性去杠杆下的中国宏观经济*——2018年中期中国宏观经济分析与预测

2018年以来中国经济平稳运行，物价水平稳定，就业形势整体向好，经济增长质量稳步提升。不过，当前中国经济仍然面临一定的下行压力，尤其需要警惕消费增速过快下滑、宏观税负进一步加重、民间投资复苏乏力、部分企业效益状况显著恶化、去杠杆过程中金融体系不稳定性加剧等主要风险点。此外，杠杆率高企是现阶段中国经济面临的突出问题，而且中国的杠杆率在不同部门之间以及各部门内部均体现出明显的结构性特点。为此，中央在2018年专门提出了“结构性去杠杆”的新思路。在“结构性去杠杆”稳步推进的大背景下，宏观政策既要积极应对经济下行压力，谨防去杠杆带来的经济增速超预期下滑风险，又要激发经济内生增长动力，促使经济实现长期可持续发展和“高质量发展”。     

The dynamic role of small- and medium-sized multinationals in global production networks: Norwegian maritime firms in the Greater Shanghai Region in China

This article examines the role of small- and medium-sized multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the dynamic development of global production networks (GPNs) in the maritime industry. It studies the dynamism between subsidiaries of Norwegian maritime firms and regional actors and institutions in the Greater Shanghai Region of China from the perspectives of the subsidiaries. It argues that strategic coupling, recoupling and decoupling are partly the results of regional selection mechanisms. However, in the cases where the subsidiaries are embedded within the host region, the strategies and behaviour of MNEs are of decisive importance for the dynamic development of GPNs.     

Is China Living a Minsky Moment? Between the “Lender of Last Resort” and the Chinese Shadow Financial System

After Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008, the Central Bank of China (PBOC) created a big 1.8 trillion dollars package to boost the Chinese economy. It was a necessary key measure not only to prop up the economy, but also to try to preserve the two-digit growth of the GDP that existed before the Great Recession. The financial instability of international financial circuits made necessary the involvement of the central bank. Ten years later, China’s debt explosion went up during the financial crisis, from six to twenty-eight trillion dollars between 2007 and 2016. In other words, it went up from 148 to 260 percent of GDP during the same period. The goal of this article is to analyze whether China is living a “Minsky moment” or not, and what its implications are for international financial markets.     

Subsidiary-specific advantages for inter-regional expansion: The role of intermediate units

This paper explores the distinctive deployment of resources and capabilities by subsidiaries in order to develop an intermediate role within the MNC. Based on the regional management perspective, we focus on a specific intermediate role—the springboard subsidiary—that helps overcome the liability of inter-regional foreignness. Our results, which are based on a dataset covering 188 subsidiaries, show that the probability of taking on this role is contingent upon experiential knowledge about the target region, as well as a rich knowledge base derived from a wide range of activities and a broad geographical scope. Our findings also show that possession of slack resources does not necessarily mean that a subsidiary will take on this role, as such slack must be combined with experiential knowledge. This paper serves as a first step in helping MNCs plan resource allocation to handle inter-regional expansion.     

Yen or Yuan? The law of one price and economic integration in Asia

Using highly comparable local retail prices of 146 goods and services across 18 Asian countries over 1990–2014, we analyse price dispersion and test convergence to the law of one price (LOP ) for these prices around three price benchmarks—Asia‐average, Japan and China prices—to gain insight about market integration in overall Asia as well relative integration of Asian economies to Japan and China. Cross‐Asia price dispersion around China‐price benchmark, for both tradables and non‐tradables, diminishes significantly over the sample period whereas that around Japan‐price benchmark increases considerably, particularly after the 2008 crisis. There is convergence to the LOP for about half of goods and services in China‐ and Asia‐average price benchmarks. The percentage of convergent prices is significantly smaller in Japan‐price benchmark. Direct estimates of the convergence speed parameter also confirm these observations. Overall, our results show evidence of increasing economic integration in Asia in the last two decades. The process of price convergence appears to be driven by the emergence of China as the centre of economic gravity in the region. There is much room for improvement as economic integration in Asia is still far below that in Europe in the 1990s or USA in the 1980s.     

CAUSAL INFERENCE ON EDUCATION POLICIES: A SURVEY OF EMPIRICAL STUDIES USING PISA,TIMSS AND PIRLS

The identification of the causal effects of educational policies is the top priority in recent education economics literature. As a result, a shift can be observed in the strategies of empirical studies. They have moved from the use of standard multivariate statistical methods, which identify correlations or associations between variables only, to more complex econometric strategies, which can help to identify causal relationships. However, exogenous variations in databases have to be identified in order to apply causal inference techniques. This is a far from straightforward task. For this reason, this paper provides an extensive and comprehensive overview of the literature using quasi‐experimental techniques applied to three well‐known international large‐scale comparative assessments, such as PISA, PIRLS or TIMSS, over the period 2004–2016. In particular, we review empirical studies employing instrumental variables, regression discontinuity designs, difference in differences and propensity score matching to the above databases. Additionally, we provide a detailed summary of estimation strategies, issues treated and profitability in terms of the quality of publications to encourage further potential evaluations. The paper concludes with some operational recommendations for prospective researchers in the field.     

Employee creativity trumps supervisor-subordinate guanxi: Predicting prequitting behaviors in China's hotel industry

This study aims to explore the moderating roles of supervisor-subordinate guanxi and employee creativity in the perceived organizational support-organizational commitment-turnover intention link in the Chinese hotel organizations. Using a matched sample of 85 supervisors and 249 subordinates from 13 hotels in Shenzhen, China, we found that both supervisor-subordinate guanxi and employee creativity altered the relationships of perceived organizational support, affective commitment and employee prequitting behaviors. A significant conditional direct effect of perceived organizational support on prequitting behaviors was moderated by low supervisor-subordinate guanxi. Furthermore, a significant conditional indirect relationship between perceived organizational support and prequitting behaviors was found at high employee creativity. Moreover, interactive effect of affective commitment and employee creativity exerted a significant negative effect on prequitting behaviors. Findings shed light on the changing traditional values in modern management practices and the conditions under which organizations can improve employee retention. Theoretical and practical implications for talent management are discussed.