Capital Flows to Latin America (2003–17): A Critical Survey from Prebisch’s Business Cycle Theory

ABSTRACT

The economic literature on capital flows to developing countries has shared two important commonalities since the 1990s. Published works (whether they focus on the external situation or stress the domestic determinants of capital flows) tend to assume a beneficial effect of capital inflows, which leads to an improvement of peripheral institutions, whose deficiencies are ostensibly the main cause of economic turmoil and/or failure in attracting capital flows, in continuity with New Institutional Economics. In doing so, mainstream economists deliberately overlook the asymmetric characteristics of the international monetary system and the persisting hegemony of dollar. Raul Prebisch’s pioneering work on business cycles in Latin America provide an alternative view, one capable of amending the existing mainstream literature. On the one hand, Prebisch stressed the destabilizing role of capital inflows on Latin American economies, particularly short-term speculative capital. On the other hand, Prebisch designed a set of counter cyclical monetary policies in order to contrast capital volatility, particularly during downturns. An analysis of stylized facts shows that, when correctly updated, Prebisch’s theory has remarkable explanatory potential when applied to Latin America’s current economic and financial situation.     

科技企业孵化器何以激活区域创新——风险投资与孵化基金的中介作用

完善创新生态系统、提升区域创新能力是我国科技企业孵化器建设的重要目标。基于2013-2018年中国（内地）30个省份面板数据，采用面板数据模型实证检验科技企业孵化器是否促进了区域创新能力提升，并基于中介效应模型探讨风险投资和孵化基金在其中的间接作用。结果发现：①科技企业孵化器建设显著提升了区域创新水平，但主要增加的是实用新型和外观设计专利申请授权数总量，对发明专利申请授权数并没有显著促进作用。上述结果在剔除直辖市样本、采用随机效应模型及空间计量模型的稳健性检验后依然成立；②通过中介效应模型检验发现，区域风险投资和孵化基金集聚效应是科技企业孵化器影响区域创新水平的主要机制；③科技企业孵化器对区域创新的影响在不同区域间差异较大，在东部地区的创新激励效应更加显著，而且政策工具强度对科技企业孵化器与区域创新水平的关系具有正向调节作用。     

社会网络视角下的创客资本研究

揭示创客资本的内涵与特征，有助于深层次挖掘创客与经济社会发展之间的关系。运用关键词共现、社会网络分析和扎根理论方法，对148篇文献、21位由创客与众创空间负责人等构成研究对象的访谈资料和网络文本资料展开分析。社会网络分析发现互联网、数字经济、分享经济等是创客发展的重要驱动力，创客可借助众创空间社会网络跳出时空局限，运用网络资源参与大众创新活动，并与社会网络形成价值共创关系，推动协同创新和平台生态系统构建；扎根理论分析结果表明，创意制造、开放协同、网络共生、边际非稀缺是创客资本的4个核心特征，并印证了社会网络分析结果。基于上述分析结果，进一步基于社会网络理论界定了创客资本的内涵，提出未来需要深度挖掘创客资本与网络场景之间的交互机制及其结果效应。     

The Benefit of Frequent Corporate Philanthropy

Applying behavioural economic theory, we argue that the frequency of philanthropic activity is important in determining corporate philanthropy's economic outcome. Using Chinese data from 2003 to 2016, we find that firms with more frequent philanthropic activities obtain more government subsidies than firms that only engage in one-off charitable donations. Firms with better corporate governance, such as higher management ownership and more independent directors, are more likely to adopt a strategy of frequent donation. Furthermore, firms are more likely to be frequent donors when management or local government officers have a long tenure. Our findings provide insight into the giving process and suggest that firms can maximize the benefit of corporate philanthropy if they strategically consider the donation frequency and donation amount simultaneously.     

Sentiment-scaled CAPM and market mispricing

This study explores the conditional version of the capital asset pricing model on sentiment to provide a behavioural intuition behind the value premium and market mispricing. We find betas (β) and the market risk premium to vary over time across different sentiment indices and portfolios. More importantly, the state β derived from this sentiment-scaled model provides a behavioural explanation of the value premium and a set of anomalies driven by mispricing. Different from the static β–return relation that gives a flat security market line, we document upward security market lines when plotting portfolio returns against their state βs and portfolios with higher state βs earn higher returns.     

Doing more and doing better are two different entities: Different patterns of family control and environmental performance

Family firms bear two types of agency costs, including type I and type II agency problems, in corporate environmental practices: (1) Outside executives at family firms hesitate to engage in environmental strategies, which can lead to drops in profits; (2) Controlling families employ opportunistically environmental management to achieve their interests. We argue that a primary cause for the agency problems lies on ineffective internal corporate governance at family firms, which can cause loss of managerial (or power) balance between outside executives and family executives. Our findings show that family firms with ownership and strategic control (FSC), which family executives and outside executives monitor and constrain each other, can achieve the highest environmental performance. Moreover, external controls, including product market competition and provincial environmental regulations, substitute effective internal control of FSC. The environmental performance premium of FSC is more prevalent when the production market competition is lower. Family firms with ownership, operational, and strategic control (FOSC) can achieve higher environmental performance within a province with more stringent environmental regulations.     

Environmental proactivity,competitive strategy,and market performance: The mediating role of environmental reputation

This article examines the impact of small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) proactive environmental strategy on market performance through the mediating mechanism of environmental reputation. In addition, we investigate the potential moderating role of competitive strategies on the environmental reputation-market performance nexus. Data were collected from 223 SMEs. Using the hierarchical multiple regression analysis, the results show that a proactive environmental strategy positively enhances environmental reputation. Also, the influence of proactively environmental strategy on market performance is mediated by environmental reputation. In addition, our findings show the relationship between environmental reputation and market performance is greater for firms that adopt the differentiation strategy but not significant for firms adopting the low-cost and integrated strategies. Our study offers several theoretical and practical implications.     

Does local government competition aggravate haze pollution? A new perspective of factor market distortion

Haze pollution has become a new threat to China's sustainable development, but it may be that local government behaviour can play an important role in the prevention and control of pollutants. A dynamic spatial autoregressive (SAR) model is used to study the relationship between local government competition and haze pollution. To further explore the indirect impact of factor market distortion on haze pollution and control potential endogeneity problems, a newly developed intermediary effect model that incorporates the characteristics of the generalized method of moments (GMM) is utilized to explore how factor market distortion indirectly affects haze pollution. The research results show that regional haze pollution in China is characterized by significant spatial correlation, and local government competition has a positive impact on haze pollution; that is, local government competition exacerbates haze pollution. In general, local government competition not only directly leads to an increase in haze pollution but also further intensifies it by distorting the local factor market, and the intermediary role of factor market distortion is approximately 7.04%. The results of the regional inspection found that competition among local governments in the eastern region did not lead to haze pollution, and distortion of the factor market did not exist as an intermediary effect. However, both direct and intermediary effects are significant in the central and western regions. Therefore, an official performance appraisal system that includes ecological constraints should be established to guide the benign transformation of local government competition, and an environmental management mechanism must be developed for joint prevention and control to reduce haze pollution. In addition, the free flow of factors and marketization are equally important.     

2019年土地科学研究重点进展评述及2020年展望——土地经济分报告

研究目的：梳理并比较2019年国内外土地经济领域研究进展和研究重点，展望未来研究方向。研究方法：文献分析法。研究结果：2019年，国内研究以实践探索为主，集中于土地供给对房价的影响、土地流转意愿、产权与农户投资、征地的福利效应和宅基地制度改革；国外研究则在理论和实践两个方面有所突破，关注影响城市地价的因素、发展中国家土地市场发展、产权与女性福利、土地改革的发展方向等。研究结论：2019年，土地经济在基础理论和实践探索方面取得了新进展，仍需加强对国内外相关研究和土地经济发展规律的总结；2020年将重点关注土地经济领域的基础理论研究、土地经营权流转及权益实现、承包地和宅基地“三权分置”、共享理念下的土地收益分配机制、城乡建设用地市场建设、低效用地再开发与利益协调机制、土地产权制度改革和确权登记等问题。