The effect of economic policy uncertainty on China’s housing market

This study examines the relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and housing price at the macro-level in China as a developing country. The empirical evidence indicates that EPU has a leading effect on China’s housing market. In general, the housing market is prosperous when economic policy is stable and there is a positive relationship between housing price variation and EPU, which means housing market risk grows under unstable economic policies in this developing economy. Moreover, economic policy variation affects low-amplitude changes in housing prices. A variation of policy uncertainty enhances the risk premium of the housing market. By contrast, the level of EPU influences high-amplitude changes in housing prices, which reflects the trend of EPU dominating China's housing market.     

The caring hand that cripples? The effects of the European regional policy on local labour market participation in Southern Italy

The European Regional Policy supports the most disadvantaged regions of the EU, aiming to foster a long-run convergence process. Between 2007 and 2013, the EU devoted substantial resources to low-income convergence regions, covering about one quarter of the EU population. Like other disadvantaged areas, Southern Italy received conspicuous funding. This work attempts to evaluate the effect of the intensive funding on local labour market participation across the convergence regions of Southern Italy, using a Diff-in-Diff identification strategy in a Dynamic Spatial Framework. An element of strength in this study is represented by the NUTS-3 dataset employed, drawn from official records. Controlling for socio-economic covariates, autoregressive components and spatial spillovers, the results obtained show a negative impact of the intensive EU funding on labour market participation. Many reasons may account for this phenomenon, ranging from poor targeting and monitoring, to the distortionary effects of the funds, to the strategic behaviour of the national government.     

Should everybody be in services? The effect of servitization on manufacturing firm performance

The servitization of the manufacturing sector refers to the evolution of manufacturers' capabilities to offer services as complements to or substitutes for the goods that they produce. A vast literature has described these strategies and has shown that this phenomenon is widespread and growing in most developed economies. However, very little systematic evidence of the extent or consequences of servitization based on a comprehensive data set of firms exists. In this paper, we provide such evidence using exhaustive data for French manufacturing firms between 1997 and 2007. We find that the vast majority of French manufacturers sell services in addition to producing goods. The shift toward services is growing steadily but at a slow pace. We also estimate the impact of servitization on firm performance. Controlling for various sources of endogeneity bias, our most conservative results show that firms that start selling services increase their profitability by 0.4%, their employment by 2.1%, and their total sales by 0.6%. For small businesses, we also find a positive impact on the production of goods. We also uncover strong heterogeneity across manufacturing industries.     

Why are the unemployed in worse health? The causal effect of unemployment on health

We analyse the effect of unemployment on health using information from the German Socio-Economic Panel of the years 1991-2008. To establish a causal effect we rely on fixed-effects methods and plant closures as exogenous entries into unemployment. Although unemployment is negatively correlated with health, we do not find a negative effect of unemployment due to plant closure on health across several health measures (health satisfaction, mental health, and hospital visits). For this subgroup of the unemployed, unemployment does not seem to be harmful and selection effects of ill individuals into unemployment are likely to contribute to the observed overall correlation between poor health and unemployment.     

Should the government directly intervene in stock market during a crisis?

Unlike foreign exchange markets where central banks frequently intervene, the governments strive not to intervene in the stock markets since intervention transmit negative signals and carry market-related side effects. The main reasons often cited in support of intervention are to bring price stability and to restore investors’ confidence. During the recent economic turmoil, opportunities for the governments to intervene in the stock markets were mainly exploited in emerging and developing countries. We study the outcome of the Russian government's intervention in its major stock market between September and October 2008. This intervention was intended to reverse the sudden and swift declining trend in traded security prices by altering the market's expectations. By using a combination of event study and a multivariate GARCH model, our findings does not support direct government intervention in the stock market during a crisis.     

Is evil rewarded with evil? The market penalty effect of corporate environmentally irresponsible events

The negative response of the capital market to environmentally irresponsible events is an important governance mechanism that motivates enterprises to assume environmental responsibility. Based on the theory of effective markets and organizational legitimacy, this paper takes corporate environmentally irresponsible events in Chinese environmentally sensitive industries during the period of 2014–2018 as a research sample, and our work uses the event study methodology to explore the penalty effect of the capital market from a mathematical empirical and case empirical dimension. Furthermore, this research discusses the spillover effect of corporate environmentally irresponsible events in the capital markets. The empirical results show that once an irresponsible event is exposed, it causes a significant negative cumulative abnormal return (CAR) in the short term, and the difference between the industry and the ownership type leads to a significant difference in the duration and impact of the penalty effect. More interestingly, the capital market's penalty for corporate environmentally irresponsible events may have a notable industry spillover effect, but there are differences between the penalty effect and the spillover effect in different markets. This paper confirms that the penalty mechanism of the capital market related to an environmentally irresponsible event can effectively restrain the behaviour of the company involved and the industry to which it belongs, and it may also provide a new way for the government to build an eco‐environmental protection system of multisubject “co‐governance” and bring the punitive “forced” mechanism of the capital market to bear on corporate environmentally responsible behaviour.     

The effect of investors’ confidence on monetary policy transmission mechanism: A Multivariate GARCH approach

This paper investigates the financial stability’s effect on the monetary policy transmission mechanisms. The correlations between investors’ confidence in the markets, money growth and economic growth are analyzed along with the correlations within their volatilities. Specifically, the heteroskedasticity of the errors is exploited in a Multivariate GARCH framework to obtain endogenously estimated measures of uncertainty. By a two-step estimator, the indirect interplay of money growth and financial markets is highlighted at different time horizons. The results contrast previous literature supportive of the “Great Moderation” as causing the recent financial crisis. Effectively, by accounting for the breaks in volatility series due to structural shifts in monetary policy, a low period of macroeconomic volatility is found not to drive directly low financial stability.     

Should I stay or should I go? The effect of gender,education and unemployment on labour market transitions

This paper re-examines the turnover behaviour of men and women using panel data from six European countries. It makes a distinction between job-to-job (JJ) and job-to-non-employment (JNE) transitions, and explores the role that education and unemployment play in gender differences regarding these mobility patterns. Low educated women have lower JJ transition probabilities but are more likely to exit to non-employment compared to the other groups, high-educated women and men of all educational levels. Furthermore, unemployment reduces the JJ turnover of male and female workers of all educational levels. There is a pro-cyclical response in the JNE transitions of the less-educated males and a counter-cyclical response in the JNE transitions of the less-educated females. Finally, there are remarkable similarities in labour market mobility across countries, although there are various institutional and other labour market differences.     

The rebound effect on energy efficiency improvements in China’s transportation sector: A CGE analysis

Energy use is becoming more efficient due to technological innovations. We focused on the transportation sector in China to develop a national multisector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for analyzing the rebound effect from an improvement of 10% in the energy efficiency. We compared the size of the energy rebound effect at both the macroeconomic and sectoral levels in different transportation modal subsectors, namely rail, road, water, and air travel. The findings showed that the magnitude of the rebound effect varies across the transportation modes. This is particularly true for the air transportation sector, which has an economy-wide rebound effect of 30.1% and an own-sector rebound effect of 74.6% because of a sharp increase in the export demand for air transport services. We also quantitatively evaluated the contribution of energy efficiency improvement in the transportation sector to China’s economic growth and carbon reductions and found a positive dividend effect on the economy as well as the environment. The modeling results suggest that improving overall transportation energy efficiency by 10% generates an economy-wide welfare gain of approximately 29 billion yuan, while 19 billion yuan are attributable to a more efficient road transportation subsector. Furthermore, to offset the effects of these mode-specific rebound effects, we simulated the effectiveness of different policies and solutions. These included economic instruments in the form of energy, environmental, and carbon taxes, household transport consumption structure adjustments, and energy structure adjustments. This study revealed that combining these sustainable development policies offers opportunities for economy-wide multisectoral improvements in energy savings, emissions reduction, and economic benefits.     

The impact of intellectual property rights protection on trade: The role of a “third country” in market power and market expansion effects

This study analyzes the impact of increased protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in importing countries on the inventing countries’ exports in the presence of “third countries.” In this study, “third countries” include all countries that compete with the inventing countries in exporting similar products to the importing countries. The most significant contribution of this study is to develop an alternative empirical approach for analyzing the impact of IPRs on trade flows. This approach considers three players (the inventing/exporting country, the importing country, and “third countries”) and thus is tentatively called the “three-country model.” The findings confirm that our “three-country model” provides important insights into the impact of IPR protection on international trade, especially in the context of increasingly fierce competition in international trade. We found that the emergence of a third country restrains the market power effects and stimulates market expansion effects. Specifically, when a third country appears, the increased protection of IPRs in the importing countries encourages the inventing countries to increase their exports. However, the export elasticity of IPR protection is highest for primary products and lowest for technology-intensive and human capital–intensive products.     

Can the government create a vibrant cluster? Understanding the impact of cluster policy on the development of a cluster

Research has debated to what extent policy measures can facilitate or contribute to the development of clusters. This article contributes to this debate by questioning how the government can create a cluster that is self-organizing and vibrant but also maintain sufficient influence to continue using the cluster as a policy instrument. Taking the perspective of cluster members, the article investigates how members perceive the ambiguous role of the government in a government-supported cluster. It analyses to what extent cluster members value a government-supported cluster and whether they perceive the government as one that facilitates or hinders them in self-organizing the cluster. Empirical evidence is derived from a case study of a French cluster established as a result of a cluster policy initiative and which has recently been required to fulfil a new set of objectives by the same government. The findings suggest that government-supported clusters can self-organize if members are given the opportunity, but with the consequence that it becomes difficult for the government to fully control such clusters. To continue steering the cluster’s development, the government would have to leverage the technology gatekeepers’ power by designing policies that allow gatekeepers to translate government objectives into meaningful objectives for themselves.     

The causal effects of organizational internal labor market on firm-specific learning – the mediating effect of willingness to internal transfer

While most of the research work addressed the internal labor market (ILM) issues from the aspect of internal and social equity point of view, our current research is, however, aimed to present the ILM model from the angle of learning the employees' firm-specific and job-specific skills. We took one step further to explore the determinants of firm-specific learning within the organizational ILM using three main criterion comprised of (1) job-related training, (2) advancement via sequence of jobs, and (3) long-term attachment to the organization. With a survey tackling the willingness to transfer internally among employees as our mediator, questionnaires were disseminated among the five traditional manufacturing industries selected in Taiwan. Our statistical results not only demonstrate the positive direct effects of all the dimensions of ILM on firm-specific learning, but also testify the indirect positive effects of ILM through willingness for internal transfer on firm-specific learning.     

The impact of the shutdown policy on the asymmetric interdependence structure and risk transmission of cryptocurrency and China’s financial market

By taking Bitcoin, Litecoin, and China’s gold and RMB/US dollar exchange rate market as research objects, this paper apply the MF-ADCCA and time-delayed DCCA methods to study the impact of China’s mainland shutdown of cryptocurrencies trading on the non-linear interdependent structure and risk transmission of cryptocurrencies and its financial market. Empirical results show that the cross-correlation between cryptocurrencies and China’s financial market has a long memory and asymmetric multifractal characteristics. After the shutdown, the long memory between cryptocurrencies and Chinese gold has weakened, and the long memory between cryptocurrencies and the RMB/US dollar exchange rate market was strengthened. China’s shutdown policy has a certain risk prevention effect. Specifically, after the implementation of the policy, the risk transmission of cryptocurrencies to China’s financial market has weakened, but the influence of China’s financial market has gradually strengthened.     

The effect of ethical leadership on purchasers’ unethical behavior in China: The moderating role of ethical ideology

This paper examines the role of ethical leadership in managing purchasing agents’ unethical practices. By focusing on the manager-purchasing agent relationship within a firm's purchasing function, we investigate the effect of the manager's ethical leadership on purchasing agents’ unethical behaviors, and explore the moderating role of purchasing agents’ ethical ideology in this relationship. Our scenario-based experiment and survey-based empirical study show that a manager's ethical leadership in a purchasing team plays a critical role in reducing purchasing agents’ unethical behaviors. More importantly, the results reveal that the negative impact of ethical leadership on unethical behaviors is strengthened when the level of purchasing agents’ idealism or relativism is high. In addition, we found that ethical leadership has the strongest negative effect on the unethical behavior of purchasing agents when the agents have high levels of both idealism and relativism.     

Dressed for success? The effect of school uniforms on student achievement and behavior

Uniform use in public schools is rising, but we know little about how they affect students. Using a unique dataset from a large urban school district in the southwest United States, we assess how uniforms affect behavior, achievement and other outcomes. Each school in the district determines adoption independently, providing variation over schools and time. By including student and school fixed-effects we find evidence that uniform adoption improves attendance in secondary grades, while in elementary schools they generate large increases in teacher retention.     

How accurate are government forecasts of economic fundamentals? The case of Taiwan

A government’s ability to forecast key economic fundamentals accurately can affect business confidence, consumer sentiment, and foreign direct investment, among others. A government forecast based on an econometric model is replicable, whereas one that is not fully based on an econometric model is non-replicable. Governments typically provide non-replicable forecasts (or expert forecasts) of economic fundamentals, such as the inflation rate and real GDP growth rate.In this paper, we develop a methodology for evaluating non-replicable forecasts. We argue that in order to do so, one needs to retrieve from the non-replicable forecast its replicable component, and that it is the difference in accuracy between these two that matters. An empirical example to forecast economic fundamentals for Taiwan shows the relevance of the proposed methodological approach. Our main finding is that the undocumented knowledge of the Taiwanese government reduces forecast errors substantially.     

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.     

Too many cooks in the kitchen? The contingent curvilinear effect of shared leadership on multidisciplinary healthcare team innovation

Shared leadership and multidisciplinary teams are advocated for their capacity to develop innovative solutions to important organisational challenges. However, research suggests that the impact of shared leadership is somewhat ambiguous, leading us to propose a curvilinear inverted U‐shaped effect on multidisciplinary team innovation. Furthermore, we posit that this curvilinearity is contingent on awareness of member profession, specifically the salience of professional identity. Using a sample of 60 multidisciplinary healthcare teams, we investigated a model in which shared leadership has a curvilinear effect on innovation contingent on professional salience. Support for our hypotheses attempts to account for ambiguities in the impact of shared leadership and provides guidance for human resource management strategies to enhance multidisciplinary team innovation.