Exploring the factors that drive consumers to use contactless delivery services in the context of the continued COVID-19 pandemic

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the launch of contactless delivery services. This research integrates resource matching, service quality evaluation, and perceived value theories to explore the factors that promote the use contactless delivery services. The data was obtained through questionnaire surveys, and research hypotheses were verified through the structural equation modelling approach. With the exception of convenience, the results show that privacy, reliability, security, and flexibility have a significantly positive effect on consumers' intention to use “contactless” delivery services through consumers' perceived value. This study contributes to the literature by introducing theoretical frameworks from various paradigms and enriches the academic research on existing theoretical structure models. It also helps optimize resource allocation and realize the social environment related to coexisting with the COVID-19 pandemic.     

The impact of destination tariffs on China’s exports: Country,firm, and product perspectives

Based on multi-product heterogeneous firm trade theory, we combine China's customs data with the World Integrated Trade Solution’s (WITS) tariff data from 2002 to 2013 and analyze the impact of destination tariffs on China's exports at the country, firm, and product levels. The results reveal that tariffs had a negative effect on country-level exports and their extensive margins. After controlling for the inter-firm composition effect, tariffs had negative effects on firm-level exports and their intensive margins, but positive effects on their extensive margins. After also controlling for the within-firm export composition effect, tariffs had a negative impact on the exports of core products; however, the negative impact diminished as the core grade and technological content of the products increased. Using these elasticities to analyze Sino-U.S. trade frictions, we determine that the additional U.S. tariffs reduced China's exports of high-tech products more than its medium- and low-tech products.     

Farm size and productivity growth in the United States Corn Belt

In recent decades, agricultural production in the U.S. has continued to shift to large-scale operations, raising concerns about the economic viability of small and midsized farms. To understand whether economies of size provided an incentive for the consolidation of production, the study estimates the total factor productivity (TFP) of five size classes of grain-producing farms in the U.S. Heartland (Corn Belt) region. Using quinquennial Agricultural Census data from 1982 to 2012 the study also compares TFP growth rates across farm sizes to gain insight into whether observed productivity differences are likely to persist. The finding of a strong positive relationship between farm size and TFP suggests that consolidation of production has contributed to recent aggregate productivity growth in the crop sector. The study estimates the extent to which sectoral productivity growth can be attributed to structural change versus other factors including technological change. The study also explores some tradeoffs associated with policies that raise the productivity of small versus large farms.     

Droughts,conflict, and the African slave trade

Historians have frequently suggested that droughts helped facilitate the African slave trade. By introducing a previously unused dataset on 19th century rainfall levels in Africa, I provide the first empirical examination of this hypothesis. I find a strong negative relationship between rainfall shocks and the number of slaves exported from a given region. I also find that extreme temperature shocks in either direction increase slave exports. Building on the detailed qualitative work of Dias (1981), Miller (1982), and others, I provide quantitative evidence for interethnic group conflict and more localized forms of violence being likely mechanisms through which these additional slaves were acquired. These results contribute to our understanding of the underlying economic conditions of the African slave trade.     

Pitfalls in systemic-risk scoring

In this paper, we identify several shortcomings in the systemic-risk scoring methodology currently used to identify and regulate Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs). Using newly-disclosed regulatory data for 119 US and international banks, we show that the current scoring methodology severely distorts the allocation of regulatory capital among banks. We then propose and implement a methodology that corrects for these shortcomings and increases incentives for banks to reduce their risk contributions.     

Celebrity endorsement in tourism: Attention,emotional arousal and familiarity

Celebrity endorsement in tourism is utilised by global marketing practitioners to attract tourists to visit destinations. Despite this, studies are yet to assess the efficacy of two specific types of celebrity endorsement, a celebrity from the host country (host celebrity) vs. a celebrity from the country-of-origin (origin celebrity). Utilising the match-up hypothesis, this research applied a quasi-experimental design, consisting of a mixed method approach, which combined eye-tracking and self-report data. Convergent results across three studies demonstrate that an origin celebrity elicits a higher intention to visit, mediated by the emotional arousal evoked from the endorsement. Eye-tracking analysis demonstrated that an origin celebrity elicits a higher degree of visual attention and emotional arousal when the advertised scenery is familiar. However, this promotion effect disappears in unfamiliar scenery. This research contributes to an evolving debate on celebrity endorsement in tourism, revealing the psychological and physiological mechanisms underpinning the effectiveness of destination marketing campaigns.     

Can international coproduction promote the performance of cultural products in the global markets? Evidence from the Chinese movie industry

This study investigates the effect of international coproduction on the performance of cultural products in the global markets. As a result of institutional barriers and cultural distances, coproduction, which allows a foreign producer to partner with the local firms, has emerged as a way of increasing cultural product performance in the global markets. Using the data on the Chinese movie market from 2012 to 2018, the authors find that international coproduction can promote movie performance and that the coproduction effect is mainly explained by the institutional variables. They further examine the heterogeneous effects and find that coproduction effect is stronger for culturally sensitive movies, and that the magnitude of the coproduction effect increases with the level of cooperation. They also confirm that the results are robust to different measurements of performance.

     

Impacts of increased Chinese imports on Japan’s labor market

Using the Japanese firm/establishment-level census data, we investigate the impact of the Chinese import penetration on employment in Japan. We found negative impacts of the Chinese import penetration on total employment, especially in industries producing competing products to Chinese imports, and a positive impact of the import penetration in the industries from which firms purchase their inputs (upstream import penetration). The negative impacts are mainly driven by firms’ exit from the market while positive impacts are enjoyed by surviving firms. We did not find any significant impacts of the penetration in the industries to which firms sell their products (downstream penetration).     

Assessing the effects of policies on China’s outward foreign direct investment

This paper discusses the determinants of China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) with a special focus on the role of government policy. In particular, we investigate the types of policies that are most influential in promoting OFDI. Our main contribution is to analyse, for the first time, China’s OFDI policies by means of quantitative indicators. We refine policies definitions and distinguish between Regulation Policies, Service Policies, Promotion Policies and Supervision Policies, and we develop a methodology for collecting, screening and coding policies; then we create new indices to capture different types of policies. We find that Regulation Policies, Service Policies and the general attitude of the government have significant effects on China’s OFDI at the national level.     

Do environmental regulations hamper small enterprises' market entry? Evidence from China

Due to the serious increase of environmental pollution in China, environmental regulations have become significantly stringent. Such regulations are playing an increasingly important role in the development of small enterprises (SEs) in China, especially in SEs' market entry. However, existing studies pay little attention to this issue. This paper investigates for the first time the effect of environmental regulations on SEs' market entry and the mechanism of environmental regulation effects in China. We consider two sets of panel data for the periods 2003–2010 and 2012–2015 in China. We also use the fixed effect model and the instrumental variable method to explore the role of environmental regulations in SEs' market entry. The results show that, overall, environmental regulations play a significantly positive and robust role in SEs' market entry. However, the mechanisms associated with the effect of environmental regulations on different innovative types of SEs differ. Environmental regulations promote the market entry of SEs with product innovation, but this impact is not significant for SEs with research and development (R&D) activities and R&D institutions. Our findings indicate that China's SEs prefer product innovation, which is a lower level innovative type, over R&D innovation, as a means to avoid the negative impact of stringent environmental regulations.