工资对个人劳动供给的非线性影响：部门市场化程度差异视角

从市场经济体制的建立到经济社会高质量发展，我国不同部门市场化程度有所差异，劳动供给的部门异质性随之体现。基于中国劳动力动态调查数据，结合汉森门槛回归模型和劳动供给模型，依托部门市场化程度的差异性，文章探讨了工资对劳动力个人供给的非线性影响及其部门异质性。主要得出以下研究结论：第一，我国市场部门与公共部门劳动力的个人劳动供给有所差异。第二，工资与个人劳动供给呈现非线性关系并且存在部门异质性。实证分析结果显示，工资对个人劳动供给的影响存在三个"突变点"，工资门槛均使得工资"激励效应"加强并呈现逐步增加的趋势。第三，劳动供给的工资门槛存在性别、城乡和行业异质性。第四，随着年龄增长、人力资本积累，个人劳动时间供给趋于降低，签署书面劳工合同使得市场部门劳动力工作时间显著增加，而政治面貌显著影响公共部门劳动供给。总体来看，无论是市场部门还是公共部门，我国劳动力个人供给曲线均未"向后弯曲"，国民经济高质量发展、改善收入分配格局、提升居民幸福感等议题需持续关注。     

Direct intervention or indirect support? The effects of cooperative control measures on farmers’ implementation of quality and safety standards

In recent years, labor-intensive agricultural products from developing countries have exhibited inferior performance in international trade due to quality and safety incidents, among which pesticide residue is a major issue. Aiming to improve food quality and safety in the context of cooperatives, we introduced three categories of control measures: outcome control, process control and social control. Based on the Pre-Harvest Interval Standard (PHIS), we selected three indices, farmers’ implementation rate of PHIS, absolute distance to PHIS and relative distance to PHIS, to evaluate appropriateness of pesticides use, reduction of pesticide residue and safety improvements of agricultural products. By using random sampling survey data, we empirically analyzed the marginal effects of control measures and their combinations on food quality and safety standards. The empirical results show that implementing process control, namely, unified production standards or supply of unified agricultural inputs, can comprehensively improve farmers’ implementation rate of PHIS, absolute distance and relative distance to PHIS respectively by 34.9%, 3.2 days and 46.0% on average. While the effects of outcome control (safety inspection) and social control (bonus-penalty incentive or training) are restricted to other measures. Therefore, we suggest cooperatives should take farmers’ features, implementation conditions and the effects of control measures into consideration in order to make a sustainable management plan for improving food quality and safety and enhancing competitiveness in international markets.     

Effects of state-sponsored human capital investment on the selection of training type

Since the 1990s, firms in Japan have reduced their human capital investment in the workplace to minimize costs. Moreover, in response to the increase in the number of non-regular employees and turnover rates, workers need to have greater incentive to make the self-motivated investment in themselves for their self-protection. In this study, we first estimate the effects of workers’ self-motivated investment in themselves on wage rates. Next, we explore who is likely to participate in which training type and accordingly estimate the effects of the self-motivated investment on wage rates by training type. Our estimates controlling for individual-level fixed-effects indicate that the return is significantly positive and particularly high for practical training related to workers’ current jobs, and regular workers tend to self-select these higher-returns programs, while non-regular workers are more likely to enroll in lower-returns programs, such as schooling. This trend in investment in oneself could potentially increase the wage inequality between regular and non-regular workers through the self-selection of training types. Our estimates reveal that receiving the training and education benefit raises the likelihood for workers to participate in a high-return training program regardless of whether they are non-regular or regular workers. This suggests that government benefits on self-investment change workers’ self-selection of training type and serve to promote practical trainings that lead to high returns.     

产品差异与技术差距影响研发溢出的理论探讨

在传统研发溢出效应假设基础上，通过技术差距将溢出效应与产品差异有机联系起来，并通过构建双寡头企业两阶段博弈模型对研发卡特尔、生产卡特尔、完全合作等不同形式合作联盟的均衡水平和福利变化进行分析比较。研究证实：当企业间技术差距较小时，完全合作或研发卡特尔能有效提高企业利润和社会福利；而当技术差距较大时，研发阶段的合作不仅无法激励企业进行研发投入，还会抑制企业创新的积极性。此外，与完全合作相比，局部合作具有更强的稳定性和可持续性，尤其是在产品差异程度较大的情况下，研发卡特尔最为稳定。     

农机社会化服务采纳、禀赋差异与农村经济相对贫困缓解

进入以缓解相对贫困为重点的后扶贫时代，农村经济相对贫困问题仍不容忽视。农机社会化服务作为小农户与现代农业有机衔接的桥梁，对于推进乡村振兴战略和脱贫攻坚有序衔接具有重要作用。文章讨论的核心议题是农机社会化服务采纳如何缓解农村经济相对贫困，并尝试建立了“农机社会化服务采纳——禀赋差异缩小——农村经济相对贫困缓解”的理论分析框架。为此，文章首先对农机社会化服务采纳影响农村经济相对贫困的作用机制进行了理论分析，然后利用2750份河南省农户问卷调查数据，运用Logit模型，实证检验农机社会化服务采纳对农村经济相对贫困的影响，并通过替代核心自变量和变更样本的方法进行稳健性检验，运用PSM模型和IVProbit模型以及ERM模型进行内生性讨论，最后通过中介效应模型对其作用机制进行验证。结果表明，农机社会化服务采纳对农村经济相对贫困具有显著负向影响，缓解了农村经济相对贫困。考虑内生性后，结论仍具有稳健性。进一步的机制验证发现，农机社会化服务采纳通过缩小劳动力禀赋差异和技术禀赋差异，缓解农村经济相对贫困，劳动力禀赋差异缩小和技术禀赋差异缩小的中介效应占比分别为21.22%和7.36%。可见，应将完善农机社会化服务供需体系纳入农户相对贫困治理机制考虑范畴，引导农户从传统家庭化生产转向现代社会化生产，扩大农机社会化服务采纳范围；同时完善就业服务等相关配套体系以吸纳释放的弱劳动力，促进农户收入增长，缓解农村经济相对贫困。     

Deal characteristics and M&A performance: How do hospitality firms fare?

The global hospitality industry has experienced significant consolidation in the past several decades. While evidence in the general business literature suggests that the target firm shareholders gain instead of the acquiring firm shareholders, some studies in the hospitality industry have suggested that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are also beneficial to acquiring firms. Using a comparative study design and a comprehensive sample over 41 years, we empirically examine whether M&As create more value in the hospitality industry than in other industries and whether certain deal characteristics may explain the potential performance differential. Overall, we find that M&As in the hospitality industry outperform M&As in non-hospitality sectors. When examining deal attributes, we find that relative size of target, cash method of payment, and an unlisted target are characteristics positively related to merger performance and help explain some of the performance differential. We contribute theoretically and empirically to the literature by demonstrating that industry and deal effects play an important role in M&A performance.     

Relative age effects in political selection

We exploit a regression discontinuity design to provide causal evidence of the relative age effect (RAE) on a long-run adult age outcome: Political selection. We find strong evidence of the RAE in politics in Finland. However, the effect is heterogeneous: We find that male candidates born early in the calendar year have a significantly higher probability of getting elected to the parliament but no similar RAE applies to female candidates nor to municipal elections. Moreover, this effect only takes place in the most competitive parliamentary districts and is present only for some parties. We also find that in all the groups where the RAE does not exist, early-born candidates are under-represented suggesting attrition of talent in the candidate placement. Overall, our results show that seemingly artificial cutoffs imposed by the government have persistent consequences even on the selection to the highest positions of power within a society.     

中国省际区域经济差距演进及协调发展

实现区域协调发展是新时代中国区域高质量发展的必然要求。改革开放以来,中国省际区域经济差距经历了差距拉大—逐渐缩小—缓慢增大—逐渐缩小—维持不变的过程,逐步趋于收敛,其深层原因在于经济发展基础、资本投入、区域要素配置、区域要素使用和制度因素的地区异质性。推进区域经济协调发展,要不断加强对中西部地区的资本投入,优化资源配置,提高全要素生产率,提升开放水平,推进贸易高质量发展,完善与区域协调发展总体战略要求相适应的宏观区域政策和区域管理体制。     

Wage and price differences,technology gap and labor flow dynamics

The relationship between wage difference and relative employment is a very important issue in the field of economic structural change. An M-sector economic growth model is constructed in this paper to investigate the relationship between wage difference, price difference, technology gap, relative employment and sectoral dynamic change from the perspective of technologies. Labor flow is regarded as a decision-making behavior to maximize the benefits of economic agents. The benefits of labor flow mainly come from sectoral wage difference, and the costs of labor flow mainly come from the social resource expenditure during labor flow process. Our model illustrates that: (i) the relative employment is positively correlated with the real wage difference and technology gap; (ii) the sectoral dynamic changes coexist with the aggregate economic growth; (iii) increases in technology gap, and price and wage differences will stimulate labor migration, exacerbate the unbalanced growth of sectoral economies, and lead to faster and more effective aggregate economic growth.     

Trade tariff,wage gap and public spending

This paper studies the interplay between wage gap and government spending in a small open economy facing a shock in trade policy. We consider a specific factor model with an export sector, which uses skilled labour, and an import-competing sector, which uses unskilled labour. We find the conditions under which there exists an inverse (direct) relation between trade liberalization (protection), which increases (decreases) the skilled-unskilled wage gap, and the level of government expenditure. We also show how either an unbalanced distribution of political bargaining power, or tariff revenue co-financing public spending may break this inverse relation. Moreover, the direct relation between tariff protection and public goods provision can be strenghtened by progressive taxation and weakened by regressive taxation.