Ideological taboos,entry barriers,and FDI attraction: Evidence from China

Developing and transitional countries often impose a wide variety of entry barriers on foreign direct investments (FDIs). One important reason behind these entry barriers is ideological taboos. However, do these taboos actually affect the inflow of FDIs? With the help of China’s “cultural system reform,” this study uses a panel data of 283 prefecture-level cities in China for 1994–2017 and the difference-in-differences method to evaluate the effect of the cultural system reform on regional FDI. We found that the cultural system reform remarkably promoted the inflow of FDIs by deregulating institutions and removing entry barriers, and the attraction of FDI has slowly increased along with the deepening of the reform. Our conclusions still hold after performing several robustness tests, thereby highlighting ideologies as important barriers to the inflow of FDIs into less developed countries.     

中国农业农村发展七十年:成就、经验与展望——中国农业经济学会第十次会员代表大会暨2019年学术研讨会综述

2019 is the 70 th anniversary of the founding of the people’s Republic of China and the key year for implementing the rural vitalization strategy.Summarizing the great achievements made by agriculture and rural areas in the past 70 years will have an important theoretical value for promoting the modernization of agriculture and rural areas and the strategy of rural revitalization.Under such circumstances,the 10 th member congress and 2019 academic seminar of CAAE was successfully held in Beijing.The key to promote rural revitalization lies in deepening rural reform,focus on the property right system and market-oriented allocation of factors,and establish a system and mechanism of free circulation and equal exchange between urban and rural areas.In order to promote the organic connection between small-scale peasant and the modern agriculture,it is necessary to speed up the development of agriculture social service industry.Finally,it is suggested to adhere to the two-wheel drive of rural revitalizationand new urbanization,promote the effective coverage of rural public services,and improve the rural governance mode of combining autonomy,rules of law and virtue.     

改造我们的教学

进入"双高时代",我们距离新时代高等职业教育"舞龙头"的教学还有问题和"短板",应该改造教学方法和学习与研究制度。在剖析改造教学原因的基础上,厘清看待教学中存在问题的两种互相对立的态度,提出改造教学的革故鼎新路径,如强化"课堂教学为王"的意识,强化学习与专业研究,强化教学的职业素养,强化教师的课堂教学治理。     

Personal Income Tax Reform in China in 2018 and Its Impact on Income Distribution

In the context of personal income tax (PIT) reform in China in 2018, this paper examines some of the major issues of concern regarding the reform and income distribution. Using the China Personal Income Tax Micro‐simulation model, the paper compares the differences between the 2011 and 2018 PIT systems, and finds that residents relying on different income sources may face a large degree of real tax rate change. Once the tax system is altered to PIT 2018, the coverage of PIT for wage earners will decrease from 46.9 to 23.4 percent, the income redistributive effect will drop from 1.95 to 1.22 percent and the PIT's role in fiscal revenue will also be negatively affected. Nevertheless, if individual income continues to grow, the share of PIT in fiscal revenue is expected to return to the 2018 level in 2022, but its income redistribution function is difficult to recover in the short term. The paper finds that the effect of PIT on income distribution depends on the tax structure. Gradual transition to an “entirely comprehensive” tax system when conditions are appropriate will achieve better income redistribution results at a lower average tax rate.     

Class formation and commodity chains in the making of regional monocultures: Agrarian reform from above and below in Mexico's henequen and cotton zones

This paper analyses the rise and fall of two regional monocultures in Mexico: the henequen zone in the southern state of Yucatán and the cotton‐growing area of La Laguna. Both regions experienced a dramatic expansion of commodity production between 1870 and 1910, but their key crops came to be cultivated under different labour regimes: debt peonage in the case of henequen and wage labour in the case of cotton. The process of class formation that unfolded in each region culminated in the 1930s in different kinds of crises. In Yucatán, a political struggle between hacienda owners and the federal government resulted in an agrarian reform “from above.” In La Laguna, class conflict between rural wageworkers and the landed bourgeoisie forced an agrarian reform “from below.” These previously distinct labour regimes converged in subsequent decades, however, as rural producers became de facto wageworkers on state‐organized and state‐administered production units known as collective ejidos. Ultimately, changes in the global markets for cotton and henequen, combined with the inability of the Mexican state to reconcile the political logic of agrarian clientelism with shifting commodity chain dynamics, resulted in the collapse of these regional monocultures in the late 20th century.     

New development: China renews reform of central–local fiscal relations and provides for basic national public services

China’s reform on central–local fiscal reform has slowed down in recent years. The appointment of a new finance minister experienced in local government affairs is expected to renew the reform affirmed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress in late 2017. China has unprecedentedly identified a comprehensive list of 81 national basic public services as entitlements. Eighteen of them are subject to national and local standards, and co-financed by central and local governments. A new cost-sharing method for 10 of these services classifies sub-national jurisdictions into five tiers, in which the central government’s share declines from 80% to 10%. These measures, effective in 2019, aim at creating a ‘harmonious and moderately prosperous society’.     

A classroom experiment in monetary policy

The authors propose a classroom experiment implementing a simple version of a New Keynesian model suitable for courses in intermediate macroeconomics and money and banking. Students play as either the central bank or members of the private sector. The central banker sets interest rates to meet twin objectives for inflation and the output gap or to meet only an inflation target. In both settings, private sector agents are concerned with correctly forecasting the inflation rate. The authors show that an experiment implementing this setup is feasible and yields results that enhance understanding of the New Keynesian model of monetary policy. They propose alternative versions where the central bank is replaced by a policy rule and provide suggestions for discussing the experimental results with students.     

The end of the flat tax experiment in Slovakia: An evaluation using behavioural microsimulation in a dynamic macroeconomic framework

The paper introduces a new way of linking microsimulation models with dynamic general equilibrium frameworks to obtain an evaluation of the impact of detailed tax and benefit measures on the aggregate economy. In the approach presented in this paper, income heterogeneity interacts with the macro-economy via aggregated individual labour supply decisions which influence, and are influenced by, the dynamic evolution of the real wage rate. The method involves a reduced-form representation of the information flow between the macroeconomic and microeconomic blocks. The practical usefulness of the approach is demonstrated by evaluating actual and hypothetical tax reforms that involve abandoning the flat tax system in Slovakia. A hypothetical move to a highly progressive tax structure is shown to generate some employment gains but is associated with a drop in aggregate income and tax revenue.     

Extraordinary politics and durable reform: lessons from trade liberalisation in Estonia and Poland

This article analyses the significance of the period of extraordinary politics after the fall of communism for policy reform. It examines under what circumstances policy reforms enacted during such periods are durable by comparing trade liberalisation in Poland and Estonia in the early 1990s. The article relates this question to the historical institutionalist debate surrounding critical junctures, gradual change and the politics of stability and change. It argues that trade policy reform enacted during periods of extraordinary politics is most likely to be durable if it is associated with deeper changes in structural conditions, such as dominant ideas, interests and institutions.     

Golf Versus Nongolf Club Operations: Benchmarks for 2014

With the club industry comprising of different types of clubs, a more in-depth analysis separating clubs with and without golf operations would be beneficial. Financial performance can be summarized via financial ratios. This study surveyed 115 clubs regarding their financial performance and calculated 24 financial ratios for 2014. The median profit margin of all clubs was at 1.65%. Clubs with golf operations reported a median profit margin at 1.73%, doubling that of the nongolf operations at 0.83%. T-tests using means of financial ratios showed a statistically significantly difference in only the food inventory turnover by days.