基于资源及经济安全视角的中国对外投资合作研究

在当前世界经济发展中,我国对外经济合作呈现越来越强劲的增长势头,并且大部分的合作项目都同时伴有较大规模的对外投资及自然资源的贸易往来。本文运用引力模型研究了我国的对外经济合作及与其相关的投资流,模型中额外加入了基于资源及经济安全角度考虑的其他因素。研究结果显示,经典引力模型中通常会影响对外投资的各要素同样会作用于我国的对外经济合作,同时合作国的自然资源禀赋亦表现出较强的吸引华资优势,此外,我国在选择合作伙伴国时倾向于较弱的政治自由度,较低的腐败程度及较稳定和持续的经济增长环境。     

DISCOUNT RATE DISTORTIONS AND THE RESOURCE CURSE

Empirical evidence has suggested a “resource curse” exists, in which countries with abundant resources may have higher initial consumption but then grow more slowly. The effect appears to be dependent on a country's political structure. Theoretical models not typically accounted for historical exceptions, or have not shown the effect exists in a dynamic growth setting. We derive the resource curse effect in an optimal growth model augmented with a political process. The economy has a finite nonrenewable resource, and the government planner can choose to over‐extract natural resources relative to the efficient path by distorting the discount rate, but in so doing incurs political costs that depend on the presence of democracy. Government planners in non‐democratic countries usually have more autonomy in policymaking than those in democratic countries; therefore, the political cost is lower for non‐democratic countries. We show that the incentive for the planner to distort the extraction path is larger, the higher is the initial resource endowment. Consistent with empirical evidence, the distortion raises short‐term consumption but lowers the long‐term growth rate, and institutional differences create corner solutions that explain why some resource‐abundant countries avoid the curse. These results are robust to the inclusion of autonomous technological change.     

AID AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: THE DEBATE, THE CHALLENGES AND THE WAY FORWARD

The article discusses the emerging literature and debates on aid, within the context of expected increases in aid flows to the continent. The trends in ODA flows indicate a reversal in aid flows to the continent since 2000, with subsequent increases in aid intensity and dependence. Although the more recent literature on aid is doubtful if aid only spurs growth in a in a good policy environment, the aid‐institutional debate indicates a clear aid‐institutional paradox, especially relating to the macroeconomic effects, the fiscal response, the absorptive capacity and the good governance aid debates. The literature further indicates that aid could serve as a barrier to vulnerable societies. From the donors' perspective, it is evident that quantity of aid does not imply quality and that the ultimate responsibility lies with recipient governments to ensure more efficient absorption of aid.     

What can we learn on Chinese aid allocation motivations from available data? A sectorial analysis of Chinese aid to African countries

Since the creation of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2000, Chinese official development assistance (ODA) to Africa has increased drastically. Only few analyses on the determinants of Chinese ODA allocation to African countries are available. Moreover, existing literature mainly focused on total aid flows while Chinese motivations for aid allocation might differ depending on the ODA sector considered. Our objective is to study the factors associated with Chinese aid allocation to African countries by sector between 2000 and 2014. We consider three ODA broad sectors as defined by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): the social infrastructure and services sector, the economic infrastructure and services sector and the production sector. Chinese ODA is measured using AidData's Global Chinese Official Finance Dataset, 2000–2014, Version 1.0. Over the 2000–2014 period, China allocated 971, 218 and 138 ODA projects to African countries in the social infrastructure and services sector, the economic infrastructure and services sector and the production sector respectively. Between 2000 and 2014, the economic infrastructure and services sector was the first sector in terms of ODA amount with a total of US$18.9 billion ahead from the social infrastructure and services sector with US$7 billion or the production sector with US$3.1 billion. Results of our analysis suggest that the motivations of Chinese aid allocation to African countries differ by sector. Chinese ODA in the social infrastructure and services sector appears more responsive to the economic needs of recipient countries but is also more driven by foreign policy considerations. Chinese economic interest, in particular for natural resources acquisition, is associated with China's ODA allocation in the economic infrastructure and services sector. Finally, while governance quality in recipient countries is not related to Chinese ODA in the social infrastructure and services sector, we find that China allocates more ODA in the economic infrastructure and services sector and the production sector to African countries with weaker institutions. One of the strong conclusions of this study is to show that considering only China's overall aid to Africa can be misleading as to its underlying determinants, and therefore to point out the need to disaggregate the analysis by ODA sectors.     

胜任素质、积极性、协作性的员工能力与企业人力资源体系重构

在转型经济下,企业内员工的工作绩效是其胜任素质、积极性和协作性的函数。高胜任素质、高积极性和高协作性的员工能力开发已成为企业获取持续竞争优势的源泉,这对传统人力资源管理实践提出了新的挑战。在这一背景下,企业开发和管理高胜任素质、高积极性和高协作性的人力资源,须变革原有的人力资源管理体系,创新并丰富管理实践。     

Natural Resources and Decentralization in Nicaragua: Are Local Governments Up to the Job?

Both decentralization and natural resource management literature suggest that natural resources could benefit from the redistribution of centralized management authority. Yet, neither has sufficiently examined the processes already underway in numerous developing countries to decentralize resource management from central to municipal government authorities. This study reviews the role of 21 local governments in forest management in Nicaragua. It finds that most interventions are economically motivated, and that three key factors are needed for local governments to be good resource managers: capacity, incentive and long-term commitment. These three factors are part of a process in which civil society can play a critical role.     

International economics of resource productivity – Relevance, measurement, empirical trends, innovation, resource policies

This paper undertakes a step to explaining the international economics of resource productivity. It argues that natural resources are back on the agenda for four reasons: the demand on world markets continues to increase, the environmental constraints to using resources are relevant throughout their whole life cycle, the access to critical metals could become a barrier to the low carbon economy, and uneven patterns of use will probably become a source of resource conflicts. Thus, the issue is also of relevance for the transition to a low carbon economy. ?Material Flow Analysis’ is introduced as a tool to measure the use of natural resources within economies and internationally; such measurement methodology now is being harmonized under OECD auspices. For these reasons, the paper argues that resource productivity—that is the efficiency of using natural resources to produce goods and services in the economy—will become one of the key determinants of economic success and human well-being. An empirical chapter gives evidence on time series of resource productivity increases across a number of economies. Introducing the notion of ‘material flow innovation’, the paper also discusses the innovation dynamics and issues of competitiveness. However, as the paper concludes, market barriers make a case for effective resource policies that should provide incentives for knowledge generation and get the prices right.     

Foreign aid as a promotional strategy

Developed countries are motivated by several forces when allocating aid to developing countries. The forces could be humanitarian in one country, and commercial self-interests in another. The principal objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of aid as a promotional strategy for trade, and to investigate whether major donor countries are optimally allocating their aid resources to increase their export and total trade. Models were developed to explore the effectiveness of aid as a promotional instrument for exports and total trade. Donor exports and total trade were expressed as functions of aid, per capita GNP of the recipient country, and aid from competing donors. The study showed that exports and total trade responded to total expected aid contributions and per capita GNP of the recipient countries. Also, all donors, but one, were maximizing the returns to aid, given the level of trade with recipient countries and will be reluctant to increase aid flows, given the current trade level.     

ETHNIC DIVERSITY,PROPERTY RIGHTS,AND NATURAL RESOURCES

Countries rich in natural resources constitute both development failures and successes depending on their underlying socioeconomic fundamentals. Recent empirical evidence and theoretical work provide support for a resource-curse hypothesis based on ethnic fractionalization. There is also increasing empirical evidence suggesting that ethnic heterogeneity based on polarization is a strong deterrent of economic growth. In this paper, we explore the interlinkages between natural resource abundance and both measures of ethnic heterogeneity. In a two–simultaneous equation system, we assess the effects of fractionalization and polarization on property-rights protection, and thereby on growth, both directly as well as in interaction with our resource-abundance proxy. We find that ethnic polarization is more likely to have a direct negative impact on the effectiveness of property rights in a resource-rich context, which as we explain may suggest that different ethnic groups treat the contestable resource base as a semi-public good.     

Publish or perish? A tale of academic publications in Chinese universities

This study examines academic resource (mis)allocation in China by focusing on the correlation between publication in leading economics journals in China and researchers' subsequent academic performance. Our findings demonstrate that researchers with a track record of publication in the most exclusive academic outlets publish more papers in high quality journals, with an average 12.4% increase, as they move up the career ladder, obtain more external grants, and acquire more executive powers. As the observable channels fail to explain most of the publication persistence, the increase in the research productivity along a researcher's career trajectory is attributed to other mechanisms that are suggestive of resource misallocation, including a reputation effect gained from initial visibility in leading academic outlets and non-academic channels facilitated by better access to social resources, among other mechanisms. Our findings depict some intriguing observations regarding the ecosystem of a prominent subject in Chinese academia and reveal tentative evidence on how structural changes, such as fostering a more open and international research environment, could benefit early career researchers.     

How Mobile Are Resources in Chinese Agriculture？ —— Implications for China＇s Agricultural Trade Policy

Agricultural trade policy in China has been the subject of heated discussion since China's accession to the WTO. Studies have been carried out and propositions put forth regarding comparative advantage, food security, development of the industry, and farmers’ income. In this paper, we attempt to provide an analysis from another important perspective: resource mobility, which is an essential assumption in free trade theory. By examining the mobility of different production resources in Chinese agriculture, namely natural resources, capital inputs, human resources and institutional arrangements, we found that for most production resources in Chinese agriculture, mobility is low. The results have significant policy implications in two respects: first, protective measures in the transitional period for certain crops in certain areas in China are legitimate and necessary to ensure social stability; and second, policy instruments to improve resource mobility in Chinese agricultural should be explored and implemented to realize more trade benefit in the future. (Edited by Xinyu Fan)     

Resource abundance and economic growth in China

This paper revisits the resource curse phenomenon in China and differs from the previous studies in four respects: (i) City-level data is used; (ii) A spatial variable is constructed to estimate the diffusion effect of natural resources among cities in the same province; (iii) The impact of resource abundance on economic development is investigated not only at the city level but also at the prefectural level in China; (iv) We use a functional coefficient regression model to deal with city-specific heterogeneity and, at the same time, analyze the transmission mechanism of the resource curse phenomenon. Our empirical results show that there is no significant evidence to support the existence of a resource curse phenomenon in China. On the other hand, we find that the degree of natural resource abundance in a city has a positive diffusion effect on the economic growth of neighboring cities within the same province at the city level, but not at prefectural levels. We attribute this to the urban bias policy.     

State advances and private retreats? — Evidence of aggregate productivity decomposition in China

This paper is motivated by the recent debate on the existence and scale of China's ‘Guo Jin Min Tui’ phenomenon, which is often translated as ‘the state sector advances and the private sector retreats’. We argue that the profound implication of an advancing state sector is not the size expansion of the state ownership in the economy per se, but the likely retardation of the development of the already financially constrained private sector and the issues around the sustainability of the already weakening Chinese economy growth. Drawing on recent methodological advances, we provide a critical analysis of the contributions of the state and non-state sectors in the aggregate Total Factor Productivity and its growth over the period of 1998–2007 to verify the existence of GJMT and its possible impacts on Chinese economic growth. Overall, we find strong and consistent evidence of a systematic and worsening resource misallocation within the state sector and/or between the state sectors and private sectors over time. This suggests that non-market forces allow resources to be driven away from their competitive market allocation and towards the inefficient state sector.     

资源禀赋、制度分岔与组织变迁——一个关于包买制的比较制度分析

在近代中国,新兴的包买制度是传统经济向现代经济演进的重要标志之一。文章考察了存在于定县、高阳两地织布业中不同的商业组织模式,前者始终停留在传统的市场交易,后者则以包买制度为主体。利用不完全契约理论和比较制度分析框架,本文发现由人地比例这一内生要素禀赋所决定的织户谈判能力差异,是导致两地衍生出不同制度路径的关键因素。另外,基于微观案例的讨论还为理解制度变迁提供了新的启示:定县高阳的对比意味着,即使在没有外部干预的情况下,更多的资源禀赋也可能通过强化外部选择权的方式阻碍更有效率的商业组织的建立,进而影响到整体的经济绩效。     

The Spillover Effect of SEC Comment Letters on Qualitative Corporate Disclosure: Evidence from the Risk Factor Disclosure

In this study we use the recently mandated risk factor disclosure to examine the spillover effect of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) review of qualitative corporate disclosure. We find that firms not receiving any comment letter (“No‐letter Firms”) modify their subsequent year's disclosures to a larger extent if the SEC has commented on the risk factor disclosure of (i) the industry leader, (ii) a close rival, or (iii) numerous industry peers. We refer to this effect as “spillover.” Further, we find that after SEC comments on the industry leader's disclosure, No‐letter Firms also provide more firm‐specific disclosures in the subsequent year. The increased disclosure specificity reduces these firms’ likelihood of receiving SEC risk disclosure comments on their new filings. Our evidence suggests an indirect effect of the SEC review of qualitative disclosure.     

城市文化软实力构建中的政府行为研究

文化是城市的灵魂,是一个城市“软实力”的集中体现,在城市发展历史进程中发挥着凝聚和辐射作用。通常,城市政府都十分重视硬实力的打造,而对以文化为主的软实力缺乏足够的重视,致使城市文化资源严重浪费,文化遗产保护乏力,文化软实力构建缺乏整体性、规划性。当前,我国正面临产业化、信息化、城镇化、市场化和国际化的新挑战,城市作为文明的象征和财富的聚集地,在中国和平崛起中有着极其重要的作用,充分研究城市政府在构建文化软实力中的行为和职能作用具有很强的现实意义。本文运用文献调查法,比较全面地分析了城市文化软实力的内涵和构成因素,阐释了城市文化软实力与政府行为的关系,探讨了城市政府在文化软实力构建中存在的问题和原因,提出了相应的措施。这将有助于强化政府在构建文化软实力中的执政理念、执政行为,用文化软实力来提升城市的综合实力,促使城市的可持续发展,赢得未来城市竞争的主动权。     

The Efficiency of the Chinese Commodity Futures Markets： Development and Empirical Evidence

I. Introduction In the early 1980s China set about transforming its moribund economy by adopting, in stages, various elements of the market-based systems. Among the reforms were thederegulation of prices and the introduction of financial markets for assets. The first stock market was set up in Shanghai in 1991 and in the same year the first commodities market opened in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. Since then, both the stock market and the commodities futures markets have expanded substantiall…     

基于国家利益视角的印度海洋自然资源实力评估

印度是南亚和印度洋地区的海陆大国，其海洋实力对中国海上丝绸之路和能源运输安全影响较大。海洋自然资源实力是海洋总体实力的基础和基本的构成。从国家利益角度重新定义海洋自然资源的内涵，构建了海洋生物资源、海洋矿产资源、海洋动力资源、海洋化学资源、海洋空间资源、海洋可持续性发展水平6个一级指标、24个二级指标的理想海洋自然资源实力评价指标体系。在此基础上，利用层次分析法和加权和法构建了印度海洋自然资源实力测评模型，对印度的海洋自然资源实力作出分析，横向对比印度、中国、美国、日本、英国5个国家的海洋自然资源实力，对其海洋自然资源实力作出全面评估。     

Understanding China's move into Africa: an empirical analysis

An important new issue on the international scene is the upsurge in market and non-market South–South relations. The aim of this paper is to understand the dynamics that lie behind the recent Chinese move into Africa by empirically exploring the determinants of Sino-African relationships. In order to have a comprehensive picture, the analysis takes into consideration the main channels of commercial and political interactions: outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), trade and aid (international economic cooperation). The empirical analysis utilises a panel data set, from 1998 to 2005, for 43 African countries. The econometric estimates for three simultaneous equations are based on an instrumental variables method. Results show that the Chinese move into Africa is driven by strategic interaction among the three channels (FDI, trade and economic cooperation) as well as by pull factors, i.e. the characteristics of the receiving countries in terms of natural resource endowments and their market potential.     

Aid Modalities and Budgetary Response: Panel Data Evidence

We investigate the budgetary effects of project and program financing on the behavior of recipient governments. For this purpose, we developed a simple fiscal response model. The solution of the model is then tested using panel data techniques for a relatively large sample of 106 aid-recipient countries spanning the period 1970–2001. With respect to public expenditure, our results suggest that the impacts of project aid and financial program aid on total expenditure are positive and statistically significant. In terms of the composition of total expenditure, we find that project aid flows are associated with increases in capital expenditure while financial program aid is associated with an increase in government consumption. Turning to the revenue side we found no evidence that aid flows, project or financial program aid, are associated with a reduction in taxation effort. The evidence also shows that project aid flows are associated with an increase in trade tax. JEL no. F35, H2, H5