Why has China’s vertical specialization declined?

Vertical specialization (VS) is quantified by the VS share, which measures the average import content per dollar of exports. A characteristic of China’s export trade is its strong dependence on assembly and processing activities. To take proper account of this, China’s VS shares should explicitly distinguish processing export production from other production. We estimate China’s annual VS shares from 2000 to 2012—the latest year for which a special input–output table is available that makes such an explicit distinction. We find that VS shares increased from 2000 to 2004 and subsequently started to decrease. To explore why it has declined, we introduce a new structural decomposition approach. We find that the decrease of the VS share appears to have been driven mainly by the substitution of imported intermediates by domestic products. This occurred in particular in the production of exports, which implies an upgrading of China’s position in global value chains.     

土地整治对中国粮食产出稳定性的贡献

研究目的:研究土地整治对粮食产出稳定性的贡献,为制定合理高效的土地整治政策,促进粮食增产稳产提供依据。研究方法:采用H-P滤波法实证分析中国粮食产量的波动性及增长趋势,然后基于C-D生产函数,分别建立趋势产量和波动强度面板回归模型,分析土地整治对粮食产出稳定性的影响。研究结果:(1)粮食作物播种面积、农业机械总动力、农用化肥施用量均对粮食长期趋势产生不同程度促进作用;农业劳动力对主产区粮食长期趋势影响显著为负,对非主产区却有正向影响。(2)土地整治面积和单位面积投资额均降低了全国及主产区粮食产量的波动程度,土地整治规模在全国和主产区的影响系数分别为-1.4162和-2.2215;单位土地整治面积投资额在全国和主产区的影响系数分别为-0.7589和-1.3509。(3)土地整治新增耕地面积对全国和主产区的粮食产量波动强度影响为正,影响系数分别为0.8018和1.3931。可能是通过土地整治新增的耕地质量较低,产出不高,导致了粮食产量波动。土地整治投入在非主产区均表现为不显著。研究结论:应继续推进尤其是主产区的土地整治项目实施,加大土地整治投资强度,建立长期稳定的投入机制,合理使用整治资金,注重提高新增耕地质量和综合生产能力,同时将土地整治投入和管理机制与农业生产系统运行机制、自然因素等有效结合,并制定差别化区域政策,以保障粮食增产稳产和区域协调发展。     

中国企业跨国并购的动因--基于制度分析的视角

过去几十年来，国际生产的增长主要是通过跨国并购的模式实现。不过以前的研究主要集中在运用行业和企业层面的因素来探讨FDI的进入模式。邓宁(2009)强调宏观经济变量可以解释FDI，并呼吁进行更多的研究，以提高我们对宏观经济变量影响重要性的认识。在前期研究的基础上，文章采用2006-2012年6534起中国企业并购交易作为样本，分析中国企业跨国并购交易的决定因素。借鉴诺思的制度理论框架，探讨中国和东道国的正式制度与非正式制度对中国企业发起跨国并购可能性的影响。文章研究的重点在于国家宏观经济和投资者保护状况对中国企业进行跨国并购交易的可能性的影响。通过单因素分析和logistic回归分析发现，中国宏观经济的发展和目标企业所处的商业环境越好，越会促进中国企业跨国并购的可能性。实证结果还显示中国对投资者保护强度越大，中国企业进行跨国并购的可能性更小。     

Audit Firm Attributes and Auditor Litigation Risk

This study examines the association between auditors' litigation risk and audit firm attributes. Using professional liability insurance premiums as a proxy for auditors' litigation risk, we present evidence that the risk is lower in audit firms having: (1) separate non-audit and audit divisions; (2) a higher proportion of partners; and (3) a higher annual growth in number of CPAs employed. Additionally, we find that the risk is higher in audit firms having: (1) operating losses; and (2) high revenue growth. Our results are consistent with the idea that audit firms' financial condition and organizational structure affect their independence/ expertise, and, in turn, their litigation risk. Our results are broadly supportive of the PCAOB's (2015) and US Department of Treasury's (2008) views that investors, audit committees, management, and other regulators could benefit from having access to financial and organizational information about audit firms.     

The Effectiveness of Brand- and Customer-Centric Content Strategies at Generating Shares, ‘Likes’, and Comments

Brands are constantly competing for user attention on Facebook and are trying to encourage fans to share, click ‘like’, and comment their posts. Yet, it remains unclear what content strategies are successful at encouraging those behaviors. Noting that the effectiveness of brand content strategies still remains an uncharted research area, this study adopts a discovery-oriented approach and employs workshops, quantitative content analysis, and episodic interviews, to link desired user responses (namely clicks share, ‘like’, and comment) to brand content strategies. This study reveals that customer-centric content strategies are the most effective at encouraging user responses. Managers can use provided recommendations to engage their customers by adopting content strategies that result in desired behavioral reactions.     

Can professional skepticism be learned? Evidence from China

The purpose of the present study was to explore whether professional skepticism can be learned in a classroom setting, an issue that has received scant attention in the prior literature. A questionnaire was administered to students enrolled either in the accounting program or in the business administration program of a large college in China. The author finds that participation in ethics education is positively related to students’ professional skepticism, whereas participation in auditing education is not related to accounting students’ professional skepticism. The author also finds that accounting and nonaccounting business students exhibit no significant difference in their scores of professional skepticism.     

意义、困境与向路:我国地方人大立法协商研究

立法协商是地方人大实现科学立法、民主立法和依法立法的有效途径和重要举措。随着我国立法实践的发展,虽地方立法协商工作取得了卓著成效,但也存在着诸多待解难题,如立法协商主体角色定位不清、实现过程有待明确、意见收集渠道缺失等。鉴于此,地方人大立法应充分体现地方人大主导地位、实现立法协商制度化规范化、紧紧依靠人民群众开展立法协商,进而以协商民主的方式为地方立法工作凝聚共识、汇集民智。     

Sustainable efficiency drivers in Eurasian airports: Fuzzy NDEA approach based on Shannon's entropy

This research explores the physical infrastructure and flight consolidation efficiency drivers of Eurasian airports regarding their infrastructure and movement productivity levels. A novel Fuzzy Double-Frontier Network DEA (FDFNDEA) model is proposed to investigate the relationship between desirable (freight and passenger turnovers) and undesirable (pollutant emission levels due to aircraft movements) outputs against the respective infrastructure usage, fuel consumed, and movements performed at each of the 23 Eurasian airports from 2000 to 2018. This balance between desirable and undesirable outputs emerges spatially and temporally due to the evolution of the airport system's productive resources at each one of the Eurasian countries over the period observed. Shannon's entropy is used as the cornerstone to quantify the input and output vagueness of this evolution in Triangular Fuzzy Numbers (TFN), thus allowing the accurate building of alternative optimistic and pessimistic double-frontier efficiency. Differently from previous research, Shannon's entropy is the key for measuring input and output vagueness levels in light of the maximal entropy principle. This principle states that the distribution that best represents the current state of knowledge is the one with largest entropy. Maximal entropy yields bias-free decision-making in the sense that the input/output distributional profiles for Eurasian airports contain the maximal possible heterogeneity, working as a robust or best/worst-case scenario against eventual unconsidered assumptions. Hence, optimistic and pessimistic Malmquist Productivity Indexes (MPI) for overall and each stage productivity results are subsequently regressed against contextual variables related to airport characteristics and regional socio-demographic and economic indicators of each Eurasian country using bootstrapped Cauchy regressions. The findings revealed the spatial heterogeneity of productivity factors and airport performance across Eurasia. Results also demonstrated the negative impact of income inequality and the positive impact of private participation on technological progression in the Eurasian airport industry.     

Power and publications in Chinese academia

In power-oriented societies, academia may not be immune to the influence of power. This paper studies the power-publication link by applying an event-study strategy to a panel dataset of the publication and biographical information of deans of economics schools in Chinese universities. We find that (i) deanship increases an individual's publication by 0.7 articles per year; (ii) the increased publications stem from work coauthored with other researchers within the same university; (iii) the topics of the increased publications are more likely to deviate from the deans’ research area prior to becoming deans; and (iv) the power effect is smaller for top universities and leading journals, and for scholars with more pre-dean publications. These patterns appear consistent with the role of power in resource allocation rather than the impact of ability or reputation of the deans and thus have implications on distortions in knowledge production.     

Economic Impacts of the Possible China–US Trade War

This article uses a multi-country global general equilibrium (GE) model to numerically simulate the effects of possible China–US trade wars. We introduce an endogenous trade imbalance structure with trade cost into the model which helps to explore both tariff and non-tariff trade war effects. Our simulation results show that China will be significantly hurt by the China–US trade war, but negative impacts are affordable. The US can gain under unilateral sanction measures to China, but will lose if China takes retaliation measures. Comparing the effects under mutual trade war, China will lose more than the US. Introducing non-tariff barrier trade wars will intensify the negative effects, and comparatively negative effects to China are larger than to the US. Mexico’s involvement in trade war with the US will strengthen the negative effects and comparatively hurt the US more. Under non-cooperative and cooperative Nash bargaining equilibrium, the US can gain more than China in trade war negotiation, which means the US has stronger bargaining power than China. Additionally, trade wars between China and the US will hurt most countries and the world especially in GDP and manufacturing employment, but benefit their welfare and trade.