Cultural heterogeneity,social policy,and economic growth in China

By using World Values Survey (WVS) data and other datasets, this paper measures the heterogeneity of Chinese residents' values and explores the relationships among cultural diversity, economic growth, and social policy in China. The study finds that, from 1990 to 2013, there was an overall rise in the value heterogeneity of Chinese residents, and cultural heterogeneity is mainly driven by within-group rather than between-group heterogeneity. Groups of residents with higher levels of income and education seem to have a lower degree of value heterogeneity. Panel-data regressions show that cultural heterogeneity is negatively correlated with provincial economic growth, and positively correlated with social conflict. Although social policies cannot directly affect cultural diversity itself, they may impact the way that cultural heterogeneity influences economic and social outcomes. In provinces with relatively low fiscal expenditures on education, cultural diversity has a stronger negative effect on GDP growth and a larger positive effect on social conflict. A social policy that boosts social security expenditures could also weaken the positive effect of cultural diversity on social conflict.     

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.     

人口质量、政治制度与奥运绩效——来自四届奥运会的证据

基于2000-2012年四届夏季奥运会共72个国家的面板数据,论文对奥运绩效的国别差异进行了实证分析。我们发现引入以健康指数为代表的人口质量和以分权指数为代表的政治制度,可以很好地解释人口基数和经济规模无法解释的奥运绩效国别差异。首先,政治制度对奥运奖牌数量的影响呈现U型,即分权国家和集权国家获得的奖牌数都比较多,而中间国家获得的奖牌数相对较少;其次,健康指数、人口基数、经济份额、宗教分化以及东道主效应对奖牌数量均具有显著的正向作用,而种族分化具有负面作用。上述发现对于我国实施科学的奥运战略具有重要的指导意义。     

Religious diversity and regional development in China

This paper investigates possible impacts of religious diversity on regional development in China. We developed the religious fragmentation and polarization indices as measurements for the religious diversity by using the religious site data from the 2004 economic Census data in China. The results from the panel data regressions within national coverage suggest that the religious diversity has positive and significant impacts on regional development in general. The results from the panel data regressions within regional coverage also suggest that religious fragmentation has a positive and significant association with the economic development in the eastern region of China while religious polarization has a positive and significant association with the economic development in the central and western regions of China.     

Pain or Gain? Chinese Experience of Capital Account Liberalization

The neoclassical growth model predicts that capital account liberalization could potentially enhance economic performance; however, there is no consistent empirical evidence to support this positive association. Using a novel dataset of Chinese capital account openness, this paper demonstrates a positive relationship between capital account liberalization and aggregate economic performance. The difference‐indifferences method is used to capture the causal effect of capital account liberalization on economic performance by taking advantage of variations in both external financial dependence and the progress of capital account openness. We investigate three channels that could strengthen this positive relationship using a firm‐level dataset. We find that capital account liberalization could: (i) alleviate the degree of resource misallocation, and this effect is more significant in industries relying heavily on external finance and in regions with more favorable business environments; (ii) enhance firms’ total factor productivity; and (iii) promote innovation. Our findings suggest that a strategy of gradual openness will leave some leeway not only for improvement in domestic markets but also to mitigate exposure to unfavorable global shocks.     

文化产业集聚对绿色经济效率的空间溢出效应

采用2013-2021 年我国30 个省市的面板数据,运用非期望产出的Super-SBM 模型测算区域绿色经济效率,分别在经济地理嵌套矩阵和经济距离空间权重矩阵下,运用空间杜宾模型来检验文化产业集聚及空间溢出效应对绿色经济效率的影响。结果表明：文化产业集聚能够明显提升本区域绿色经济效率,对邻近地区存在正空间溢出但效果并不显著;在文化产业不同集聚模式下,专业化集聚对本地和邻地绿色经济效率均具有积极影响,而多样化集聚对本地和邻地绿色经济效率的影响均显著为负;异质性检验表明,文化产业集聚对绿色经济效率的综合效应在我国中西部地区和文化制造业、文化批发和零售业的表现更明显。基于研究结论,提出加强产业集群的建设、促进文化产业与其他产业深度融合、完善文化产业集群的制度环境和竞争机制以及加强区域间的产业联动的政策建议。     

通讯基础设施对经济增长的空间溢出效应研究

文章基于跨省面板数据构建动态空间面板杜宾模型,采用空间偏微分法深入估计了电话与互联网两类通讯基础设施对经济增长的直接效应与空间溢出效应,同时进行了区域异质性分析。实证发现:电话普及率与互联网普及率对经济增长均有不显著的正向直接效应,前者有不显著的正向空间溢出效应,后者则有显著的负向空间溢出效应,而二者的交互项在长期与短期均表现出显著的正向直接效应与空间溢出效应,且长期表现均优于短期,两个时期发挥的总效应均主要来自空间溢出效应。此外,东部地区二者的交互项有显著的负向空间溢出效应,而中西部地区二者的交互项则有正向空间溢出效应。为此,今后应建立电话与互联网两类通讯基础设施的动态耦合协同机制,提高区域联动性与整合度,充分发挥其对地区经济增长的促进效应。     

Roles of Income Polarization,Income Inequality and Ethnic Fractionalization in Social Conflicts: An Empirical Study of Indonesian Provinces, 2002–2012

Previous studies have cited inequality as a major factor relating to conflicts in Indonesia, while consideration of polarization and fractionalization as drivers of conflict is limited. The current paper examined the roles of three indices (polarization, inequality and fractionalization) in explaining the incidence of conflicts in Indonesian provinces over 2002–2012. This study used income (proxied by expenditure) differences to measure polarization and inequality, with subnational data as the unit of analysis. In addition, to complete the analysis, the present study used a variety of socioeconomic indicators as additional control variables. This paper verified that the high degrees of income polarization, ethnic fractionalization and income inequality are associated with the high probability of conflicts in Indonesian provinces. It also found that socioeconomic factors such as poverty, unemployment, population and natural resources, as well as some types of local government spending are significantly associated with conflicts.     

Technological progress and technical efficiency in Chinese industrial growth: A frontier production function approach

We estimate a frontier production function for Chinese industry for the period 1953–1985. Contrary to prior studies based on OLS estimates, we find that Chinese industry has been characterized by a rate of growth of technological progress between 1.8 and 3.6 percent per year. We also find that the capital-saving nature of technological progress has adversely affected Chinese productivity growth because of increases in the capital-labor ratio. The utilization of industrial resources has been quite suboptimal for much of the sample period, with industrial production well off the production frontier. These deviations from efficient resource use reflect well-known political and economic developments that disrupted economic activity. Finally, both technical efficiency and total factor productivity increased appreciably in the period 1978–1985, suggesting that the reforms have had some positive impact on industrial performance.     

研发国际化与企业创新绩效——吸收能力和地理多样性的调节作用

新兴经济体企业的国际化行为已经成为国际商务领域的研究热点之一,但如中国这样的新兴经济体的跨国企业是否能够通过研发国际化行为提升母公司的创新绩效,现有文献对该问题尚缺乏足够的研究。文章基于2011-2017年间沪深两市310家信息技术业上市跨国企业的年度观察数据,采用泊松面板固定效应模型考察了企业研发国际化与母公司创新绩效之间的关系,并首次从逆向知识转移的视角,探讨了吸收能力和地理多样性对研发国际化和创新绩效两者关系的调节作用。实证结果表明：中国企业的研发国际化显著促进母公司创新绩效的提升;以研发投入强度衡量的企业吸收能力显著正向调节研发国际化和创新绩效之间的关系,而以布劳异质性指数测量的地理多样性则显著负向调节研发国际化和创新绩效的关系。研究结果对中国企业国际化行为具有重要启示。该研究发现意味着中国企业在国际化过程中应该加大海外研发投资力度以提升母公司创新绩效,且为更好地实现外部知识的逆向转移,应同时提高企业总体研发投入强度。但作为新兴经济体企业,不宜在地理分布上实行快速扩张,否则较高的沟通和协调成本将弱化逆向知识转移的程度,而不利于母公司创新绩效的提升。     

Empirical study on location choice of Chinese OFDI

China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) flow has shown steady growth, from US$2.85 billion in 2003 to US$196.15 billion in 2016, increasing by 68.8 times. This study measures national distance from five dimensions—geographical distance, cultural distance, institutional distance, economic distance and informational distance—for Chinese OFDI. Taking 2006–2016 as the time window and national distance as the perspective, the study looks into the location choice of Chinese OFDI by using an OFDI size determination model. The results show that geographical distance, economic distance and informational distance will significantly promote Chinese OFDI, while institutional distance will restrain it, and cultural distance will not have a significant effect on Chinese OFDI. In addition, Chinese OFDI has strong natural resource-seeking motivation. In order to obtain natural resources, Chinese enterprises will overcome geographical distance and cultural difference to conduct OFDI in the countries far away from China.     

Will Entrepreneurship Promote Productivity Growth in China?

Based on data obtained from the Survey of Industrial Firms in China, the Chinese General Social Survey and prefecture‐level city data, this paper explores whether entrepreneurship will promote productivity growth in China. The research also examines whether entrepreneurship acts as a transmission mechanism affecting productivity through market competition, knowledge spillover and factor structure. Our empirical results reveal a relatively significant U‐shaped relationship between entrepreneurship and productivity and confirm the existence of a transmission mechanism of entrepreneurship. Among the three effects, the market competition effect is the most significant, followed by knowledge spillover and factor structure effects. An entrepreneurial heterogeneity test reveals that there is no significant difference between the effect of necessity entrepreneurship and overall entrepreneurship on productivity. However, a positive correlation is found between opportunistic entrepreneurship and productivity. Therefore, entrepreneurship plays a unique role in promoting economic growth in China.     

资源异质性投入对基础教育绩效的均衡作用分析——基于区域结构视角

教育公平对促进经济增长实现共同富裕具有至关重要的积极作用，而教育资源均等配置有利于实现教育公平，站在区域空间结构视角：（1）基于教育资源投入产出的教育绩效在省域间具有异质性，由北向南表现低值到高值，高值在中南部半环状分布；（2）各省市教育绩效中心性程度不同，呈现明显的空间聚类特征，经济文化枢纽省市有显著示范效应，东南部主要向中西部溢出，北部地区主要接收溢出；（3）影响因素关联性回归表明影响力度为财政资源>物质资源>人力资源，其中，个人教育事业费优于公用部分，信息化建设强于基础设施建设，高层次师资好于基础性师资，且教育资源分板块区域异质性回归显示存在显著性差异。     

Understanding openness and productivity growth in China: An empirical study of the Chinese provinces

This paper investigates the effects of openness on China's regional productivity growth. We build a model of technology diffusion in which follower economies achieve productivity growth by taking advantage of technology spillovers from the world technology frontier. We hypothesize that China's regional productivity growth is a positive function of regional openness and a negative function of the current level of regional productivity. Empirical analysis in this paper focuses on how openness affects productivity growth in the Chinese provinces. We examine two effects of openness on regional productivity growth in China: the direct growth effect and the convergence effect. By using a variety of panel data regression techniques, we show that the direct growth effect of openness is the main effect while the convergence effect is insignificant. The findings of this paper lend strong support to the claim that the opening-up of China promotes the country's economic growth.     

Environmental growth convergence among Chinese regions

Since the end of the 20th century, numerous studies have analyzed Chinese economic development to gauge whether China's rapid growth is sustainable. Most of these studies focused on assessing total factor productivity (TFP) in Chinese mainland provinces but suffered from methodological weaknesses by assuming constant returns to scale (CRS) for the production frontier and/or incorrectly modeling variables returns to scale (VRS) technology taking into account bad output such as carbon dioxide emissions. Our paper offers a right non-parametric programming framework based on weak disposability and VRS assumptions to estimate environmental growth convergence among Chinese regions characterized by size heterogeneity. We explicitly separate regional efficiency gaps into two components: The first studies the technical catching-up process on each one (technical effect), and the second reveals convergence or divergence in the combinations of input and output among regions (structural effect). Moreover, carbon shadow price levels for provinces can be derived through the dual version of our activity analysis framework. Our empirical work focuses on 30 Chinese regions from 1997 to 2010. The results emphasize that environmental growth convergence among regions has mainly relied on the structural effect. We find that the structural effect largely depends on the pollution cost convergence and not on the evolution of the relative prices of capital or labor. The carbon shadow price is increasing at an annual rate of 2.5% and was evaluated around 864 yuan per ton in 2010 in China while regional estimates show significant disparities at the beginning of the period.     

The pressure of economic growth and the issuance of Urban Investment Bonds: Based on panel data from 2005 to 2011 in China

This paper explores the motivations behind the issuance of Urban Investment Bonds (UIBs) to stimulate local economies in China after the 2008 global financial crisis. Based on panel data from 2005 to 2011, we find that pressure to achieve economic growth has a positive effect on the issuance of UIBs, while fiscal pressure has the opposite effect on UIB issuance. We also find that the tenure of municipal party secretary, the revenue of land-use right transfer and fiscal pressure will change the impact of economic growth pressure on UIB issuance. These results are consistent with a pattern in which China's local government officials are influenced by the central government's assessment of local economic growth performance and have promotion-related incentives to maintain and develop the local economy.     

Economic growth,local industrial development and inter-regional spillovers from foreign direct investment: Evidence from China

In many countries inward foreign direct investment (FDI) typically concentrates in a few regions. However, there is little empirical evidence on whether spatially concentrated FDI boosts economic growth in other regions within the same country. We use a dataset that covers 96% of Chinese cities from 1996 to 2004 and find that “inter-regional spillovers” from FDI concentrated in China's coastal cities have a positive and significant effect on the growth of inland cities. In addition, an inland city's industrial development affects its absorptive capacity to gain such inter-regional spillovers from coastal FDI.     

The Dynamics of Knowledge Diversity and Economic Growth

How is long run economic growth related to the endogenous diversity of knowledge? We formulate and study a microeconomic model of knowledge creation, through the interactions among a group of heterogeneous research and development (R&D) workers, embedded in a growth model to address this question. The composition of the research work force in terms of knowledge heterogeneity, in addition to its size, matters in determining the production of new knowledge. Moreover, the heterogeneity of the work force is endogenous. Income to these workers accrues as patent income, whereas transmission of newly created knowledge to all such workers occurs due to public transmission of patent information. Whether or not the system reaches the most productive state depends on the strength of the public knowledge transmission technology. Long run economic growth is positively related to both the effectiveness of pairwise R&D worker interaction and to the effectiveness of public knowledge transmission.     

贸易模式结构变化与我国经济增长

本文主要是分析贸易模式结构的变化,即中国产业内贸易变化趋势对中国经济增长的促进作用,通过分析产业内贸易促进经济增长的机制,以及相关的数据实证分析得出结论,并提出政策上的建议。     

论中美货币政策差异及其分配效应

本文通过对货币政策的分析,认为货币政策的增长效应是有限的,分配效应是具有破坏性的,其造成的社会财富的剥夺和转移恶化了收入分配。因此,货币主义的单一规则对总量管理仍然具有很强的指导意义。本文认为,货币供给的总量管理应该永远是稳健的,结构调整应更多地依靠利率和财政政策。美元的弱势和中国的强劲增长为人民币国际化打开了空间。中国应该抓住历史机遇,积极推进人民币自由化、国际化进程。