MODELLING THE TRANSITION TOWARDS THE RENMINBI'S FULL CONVERTIBILITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR CHINA'S GROWTH

There is a widespread consensus that China needs to rebalance its export‐driven growth paradigm towards a more consumption‐based one and that such process is to be accompanied by the transition towards the renminbi's full convertibility. However, the Chinese authorities have so far acted with great caution because this transition cannot but accelerate the slowdown of China's growth which will likely occur because of other structural factors. We address these issues by means of a two‐country two‐stage (before and after the renminbi's full convertibility) model, which reproduces some qualitative features of China's growth pattern and its relationship with the United States. We analyse the extent to which altering the Chinese exchange rate regime, as well as other policies affecting sensitive social and economic issues, may impact on the short‐, medium‐ and long‐term evolution of the Chinese economy. The paper shows that by lifting the controls on the capital account and letting the currency float, the Chinese authorities will renounce those policy instruments for controlling the allocation of the national resources and the dynamics of China's economy.     

COMMUNITY PROPERTY AUCTION,NASH BIDDING RULE AND CHINA'S RURAL ECONOMIC REFORM

In this paper we present a model based on the auction theory for community properties and its possible application to China's economic reforms. We derive the Nash bidding rule for the first price sealed‐bid auction of a community‐owned object, and compare it with the bidding rule for auctions of a privately‐owned object. Moreover, we argue that in the process of China's economic reforms, auctioning off the community‐owned properties to private owners is the optimal way to achieve economic efficiency together with social equity. This paper has obvious implications for China's reforms relating to commercializing its rural land and other community property.     

The unfolding of Deng's drama

Based upon the author's personal observation and research experience, the article summarizes and interprets Deng Xiaoping's great contributions to China's economic reform from four perspectives: delineation of property rights in Deng's style, bringing entrepreneurship back into China, facilitating the ‘invisible hand’ again, the challenges of corruption.     

FAMILY PLANNING AND WOMEN'S EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT: EVIDENCE FROM THE ONE‐CHILD POLICY

This paper exploits China's one‐child policy (OCP) to study the relationship between fertility and educational attainment of the mothers of China's “sibling‐less generation.” I take two difference‐in‐differences approaches to estimate the OCP's effect on women's education: one compares gender difference among the ethnic majority group and the other compares ethnicity differences between ethnic majority women and ethnic minority women. I also explore the heterogeneity of the policy's effects by parent's status at the Communist Party. I find that the OCP has a positive and significant effect on women's education and explains about half of the increase in educational attainment for women born between 1960 and 1980. Their increased educational attainment associates with delayed entry into first marriage, delayed entry to parenthood and increased labor supply. (JEL I20, J13, J16, J18)     

CORRUPTION AND THE SHADOW ECONOMY*

This article develops a simple framework for analyzing the links between corruption and the unofficial economy and their implications for the official economy. In a model of self‐selection with heterogeneous entrepreneurs, we show that the entrepreneurs' option to flee to the underground economy constrains a corrupt official's ability to introduce distortions to the economy for private gains. The unofficial economy thus mitigates government‐induced distortions and, as a result, leads to enhanced economic activities in the official sector. In this sense, the presence of the unofficial sector acts as a complement to the official economy instead of as a substitute.     

High corruption income in Ming and Qing China

We develop an economic model that explains historical data on government corruption in Ming and Qing China. In our model, officials' extensive powers result in corrupt income matching land's share in output. We estimate corrupt income to be between 14 and 22 times official income resulting in about 22% of agricultural output accruing to 0.4% of the population. The results suggest that eliminating corruption through salary reform was possible in early Ming but impossible by mid-Qing rule. Land reform may also be ineffective because officials could extract the same rents regardless of ownership. High officials' incomes and the resulting inequality may have also created distortions and barriers to change that could have contributed to China's stagnation over the five centuries 1400–1900s.     

A great wall of patents: What is behind China's recent patent explosion?

China's patent surge, documented in this paper, is seemingly paradoxical given the country's weak record of protecting intellectual property rights. Using a firm-level data set that spans the population of China's large and medium-size industrial enterprises, this paper explores the factors that account for China's rising patent activity. While the intensification of research and development in the Chinese economy tracks with patenting activity, it explains only a fraction of the patent explosion. The growth of foreign direct investment in China is prompting Chinese firms to file for more patent applications. Amendments to the patent law that favor patent holders and ownership reform that has clarified the assignment of property rights also emerge as significant sources of China's patent boom. These results are robust to alternative estimation strategies that account for over-dispersion in the patent counts data and firm heterogeneity.     

腐败、经济增长与环境污染的 库兹涅茨效应:以二氧化硫排放数据为例

目前，国内文献关于腐败、经济增长与环境污染相互关系的研究还不充分，将三者置于同一整体框架下的研究能为理解和验证腐败与环境之间的关系提供直接的证据。本文在传统的EKC模型中考虑腐败因素，利用1995-2011年的中国省级面板数据研究腐败、经济增长与环境污染三者之间的关系，验证了腐败对经济增长以及腐败和经济增长对环境的影响。结果表明：(1)腐败阻碍了经济增长；(2)经济增长与环境污染之间呈倒“U”型关系，我国仍处于经济增长越快，环境污染越严重阶段；(3) 腐败能够在一定程度上通过弱化经济增长从而对环境污染有负向作用，但这并不意味着腐败是解决环境污染的手段，政府不能通过阻碍经济增长来解决环境污染问题。     

ECONOMIES OF SCALE AND SCOPE AND THE ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY OF CHINA'S AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SYSTEM*

This article investigates economies of scale and scope and other potential sources of improvements in the economic efficiency of China's crop breeding, an industry at the heart of the nation's food economy. Using data covering 46 wheat‐ and maize‐breeding institutes from 1981 to 2000, we estimate cost functions for the production of new varieties at China's wheat‐ and maize‐breeding institutes. Our results indicate strong economies of scale, along with small to moderate economies of scope related to the joint production of new wheat and maize varieties. Cost efficiency increases significantly with increases in the breeders' educational status and with increases in access to genetic materials from outside the institute.     

High corruption income in Ming and Qing China

We develop an economic model that explains historical data on government corruption in Ming and Qing China. In our model, officials' extensive powers result in corrupt income matching land's share in output. We estimate corrupt income to be between 14 and 22 times official income resulting in about 22% of agricultural output accruing to 0.4% of the population. The results suggest that eliminating corruption through salary reform was possible in early Ming but impossible by mid-Qing rule. Land reform may also be ineffective because officials could extract the same rents regardless of ownership. High officials' incomes and the resulting inequality may have also created distortions and barriers to change that could have contributed to China's stagnation over the five centuries 1400–1900s.     

出口国技术水平与进口国知识产权保护的互动效应对出口国出口贸易的影响——基于中国出口贸易的实证

利用2007—2014年中国对112个国家出口贸易的面板数据,实证研究了中国技术水平、进口国知识产权保护及两者的交互效应对中国出口贸易的影响。结果显示:中国技术水平与高收入进口国知识产权保护的交互效应对中国出口贸易的影响显著为负,而与低收入进口国知识产权保护的交互效应的影响并不显著。这说明,中国出口产品技术水平的提升,对高收入进口国企业的威胁加大,迫使其建立更严苛的贸易壁垒,抑制中国企业出口。     

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN CHINA: HOW BIG ARE THE ROLES OF CULTURE AND GEOGRAPHY?

Abstract. I assess the importance of geography and cultural ties in foreign direct investment in China. Using an estimated gravity model to construct predicted FDI stocks in China for 1997 from major source countries, I find that the total FDI stock would be lowered by about 45% if China's economic center were located in New Delhi, India, and would be lowered by about 70% if it were located in New Delhi and there were no cultural ties. These estimates suggest that much of China's ability to attract FDI is due to its natural advantages.     

A monetary model of China–US trade relations

This paper develops a general equilibrium monetary model to study China–US trade relations. The model captures two main features of China–US trade: China's fixed exchange rate regime and the use of the US dollar as the international medium of exchange. The main conclusions of this paper are threefold. First, an improvement in the productivity of China's tradable sector would benefit both China and the US. Second, a RMB appreciation would reduce consumption in the US and increase consumption in China, and would likely reduce China's trade surplus. It would also lead to a contraction in China's tradable sector and an expansion in US's tradable sector. Third, a monetary expansion in the US would hurt China because it would lead to a transfer of wealth from China to the US, a fall in China's relative wage rate and terms of trade, and an artificial expansion in China's tradable sector. A US monetary expansion would also increase China's trade surplus.     

扩大进口背景下中国进口对世界经济的影响——制造业就业的视角

伴随着中国经济的快速增长，中国在成为世界第一大出口国的同时也成为世界第二大进口国。以往对中国贸易的研究多是从供给端出发，然而从需求端来看，中国进口对世界经济的影响又有几何？本文在扩大进口战略背景下从全球制造业就业的视角对中国进口与世界经济的关系进行了实证分析，研究发现，通过对中国出口，相关国家的制造业就业实现正增长，但是两者关系会在不同贸易商品、经济发展程度和时间样本之间存在差异。在此基础上，本文进一步从就业创造和就业破坏等方面展开了机制分析。本文的研究表明，中国通过“世界市场”的角色在一定程度上降低了全球失业率，但同时也需警惕“进口竞争”对我国经济的影响。     

中国海洋产业增长极选择研究

21 世纪是海洋的世纪,海洋经济在国民经济中起着举足轻重的作用,合理的发展模式对推动海洋产业经济发展尤为重要。本文以增长极理论为指导,采用不平衡发展模式、主成分分析法及聚类分析法对中国海洋产业经济增长极选择进行实证分析,结果表明：中国应以海洋渔业、滨海旅游业及海洋交通运输业作为主导产业进行发展,并确定其海洋产业增长极的地位。以此为契机,本文还进一步分析评价了海洋产业增长极的发展状况,以确定海洋产业发展战略,为中国海洋产业经济增长极的培育及国家海洋产业经济发展提供参考支撑。     

China's Foreign Aid at a Transitional Stage

By estimating China's foreign aid as a proxy for China's bilateral Official Development Assistance and by analyzing its implementation structure and policy, this paper sheds some light on China's foreign aid activities, which have been at a transitional stage. Based on our estimates, the level of foreign aid in terms of net disbursement has increased sharply since 2004, reaching around US$7.1 billion in 2013. Some measures to strengthen the implementation structure to deal with this expansion have been introduced by the central government; however, this transition process needs more time. To facilitate this process, China is attempting to absorb knowhow on development assistance from multilateral institutions and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Development Assistance Committee countries that are eager to share their knowledge, with the expectation that China will eventually play a major role in international development.     

Efficiency amongst China's banks: a DEA analysis five years after WTO entry

WTO entry in 2001 heralded a new stage in the reform of China's banking sector. With the reality that foreign banks would be extended national treatment by the end of 2006, China's banks faced the imperative to reform in earnest. They began reforms from a variety of different starting points and have pursued a variety of different reform approaches. Five years on, this paper assesses efficiency levels in 11 of China's most prominent banks. The results, obtained using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), suggest that differences in efficiency levels are actually quite small. On the one hand, this finding is encouraging because it suggests that few of China's major banks lag behind the pack. On the other hand, it also implies that efficiency levels almost certainly do lag in China's less prominent banks, which together still account for more than 40% of total banking system assets.     

Impact of China on trade in electronic products

Using 6-digit product-level data of exports in electronics, this paper finds robust evidence that China's exports adversely affect both the intensive export margin and the extensive export margin of its competitors for the 1992–2018 period. The displacement effects of China's exports on the intensive margin apply especially for the group of intermediate and capital electronic goods and are much more robust and significantly larger in magnitude than the displacement effects found in other studies using aggregated trade data. Finally, we find that China's displacement effect is increasing in China's advantage relative to its competitors in terms of human capital index and internet access of its population.     

中国软件产业效率的测度及时空动态演进

本文基于Global超效率DEA模型全面测度2009—2018年我国软件产业效率,并采用条件Kernel密度从静态和动态双重视角揭示中国软件产业效率的时空动态演进特征.研究发现,我国软件产业效率整体较低,东部、中部、西部地区间存在较大差距,并且该差距逐步扩大;东部、中部、西部三大地区内部省份间软件产业效率差距呈现不同程度的缩小;整体上我国省份间软件产业效率不存在空间集聚;东部地区内部省份间存在负向空间溢出效应,而中部、西部地区内部省份间不存在明显的空间溢出效应.为实现我国软件产业的高质量发展,本文建议进一步增强软件企业技术创新能力,各地区继续挖掘优势并着力补齐短板,构建软件产业协同发展格局.     

The institutional foundation of China's economic growth

China's economic growth is (undoubtedly, undeniably, unquestionably) regarded as a miracle due to the changes it has brought to the lives of the Chinese as well as to the global economic structure. This paper analyzes China's economic growth from the perspective of institutional reforms. The main argument is that, through the redefinition of property rights, the operation costs of China's planned economy under full public ownership have been reduced dramatically. Human resources have greatly improved in terms of productivity and creativity, thus providing China with competitive advantages in the global market.