中国政府消费与城乡居民消费状况比较研究:1978-2010

消费需求是国民经济运行管理中一个很重要的环节,也是当下宏观经济调控的重点所在;而政府消费与居民消费的关系及其对宏观经济的影响则是其中一个较重要的问题。采用对比分析和计量估计方法,以统计资料为依据,分别从消费倾向、消费支出、国际比较和模型计量四个方面,全面分析和研究了1978年改革开放以来我国政府消费与城乡居民消费状况,并得出了一些有意义的观点和结论。     

Mode of payment in household expenditures

Summary We have studied the choice of mode of payment from a 1987 Dutch household survey. The institutional arrangements of a transaction are a major determinant for the mode of payment, and so is the amount involved. A 10% increase in the sum paid usually leads to a reduction of about 1.3% to 2.3% in the incidence of currency use.Based on De keuze van een betaalmiddel (The Choice of Mode of Payment), (SEO, Amsterdam, 1989), which reports research commissioned by the Postbank, Amsterdam.     

Economic policy uncertainty and household consumption: Evidence from Chinese households

We find that households reduce their consumption in response to higher economic policy uncertainty (EPU). Compared with lower income households, high income group is more severely affected which can be explained by the portfolio choice of illiquid asset and liquid asset. In addition, the uncertainty effect is more pronounced among older, wealthier, well-educated and urban households. The impact of EPU on household consumption is also persistent. Holding more liquid asset and commercial insurance represent important channels in mitigating the negative effect of EPU on household consumption.     

移动支付与第三方支付市场业务多元化发展战略

银联和第三方支付平台围绕线上与线下的支付业务,纷纷开始涉足新的支付领域,相互渗透,展开竞争,他们都已经将多元化确定为自己未来的发展方向;而移动支付凭借其独有优势,取得了业务规模的爆发式增长,吸引银联和第三方支付平台将业务多元化发展战略推广到移动支付市场;本文对移动支付的基本情况进行了概述,并指出了移动支付自身独有的优势和移动支付市场目前存在的一些问题,提出了相应的解决对策。     

Migration and household investment in rural China

In this paper, we demonstrate how household investment is affected by participation in migration in rural China. We both describe investment patterns across different regions of China and by households with different experiences with migration. We then describe a set of hypotheses about the relationship between migration and investment, and test the hypotheses using household data that we collected in rural China in 2000. We find that in areas with median incomes that are more than twice the poverty line, migration is associated with investment in housing and other consumer durables that is 20% higher than the average. We find no evidence of a link between migration and productive investment.     

Income volatility,household leverage,and consumption in Korea

Using the micro household data in Korea, we examine the effects of income volatility changes on households’ leverage and consumption. We found that households who faced increased income volatility lowered their leverage ratio. A one standard deviation increase in income volatility was associated with 1.3 ∼ 1.5 percentage point decrease in the leverage ratio. The effects of income volatility changes on households’ leverage choices varied with households’ borrowing constraints and other socioeconomic backgrounds. We also found that when faced with enlarged income uncertainty, households’ income coefficients on consumption were lowered. The income coefficient of average households was estimated to be around 0.16, while households with increased income volatility were around 0.12. In particular, similar to the relations in leverage ratio changes, consumptions among potentially borrowing-constrained households and those with ‘net-short’ position in real estate assets were more affected by increases in income volatility. This can be understood that households smoothed their consumption during the periods of increased income volatility, and this was shown in the smaller consumption elasticity on income. This can be attributed to the fact that faced with increased income volatility, households lower the risk exposure of their financial net wealth by lowering their leverage ratio.     

A model of a rural household in KwaZulu

This paper reports an attempt to model household economic behaviour on a small farm in KwaZulu using mathematical programming techniques. To some extent the effects of risk, leisure and off‐farm employment opportunities on resource allocation and farm output are captured in the model Different decision rules including versions of the Wald maximin criterion (Maximin), the Savage regret criterion (Minmax), Motad and maximisation of a ‘sumex’ utility function were used in the optimisation process. Predicted and observed enterprise levels are compared and the paper concludes with comment on the model and problems involving specification of income, leisure and consumption relationships in the programming approach.     

The impact of retirement on household consumption in Japan

Using monthly data from the Japanese Family Income and Expenditure Survey, we examine the impact of retirement on household consumption. We find little evidence of an immediate change in consumption at retirement, on average, in Japan. However, we find a decrease in consumption at retirement for low income households that is concentrated in food and work-related consumption. The availability of substantial retirement bonuses to a large share of Japanese retirees may help smooth consumption at retirement. We find that those households that are more likely to receive such bonuses experience a short-run consumption increase at retirement. However, among households that are less likely to receive a retirement bonus, we find that consumption decreases at retirement.     

FinTech adoption and the effects of economic uncertainty on household consumption

This paper examines how the adoption of FinTech affects household consumption in the presence of economic uncertainty. We use regional-level FinTech adoption and economic uncertainty measurement, along with representative household-level consumption data, to investigate this issue. Our empirical analysis shows that while high levels of economic uncertainty lead to a shift in household consumption from services to non-durable goods, widespread adoption of FinTech overcomes this negative effect and prevents the reduction in service spending. We use the distance of a household from Hangzhou and the economic uncertainty in the United States as proxies for exogenous variation in FinTech adoption and economic uncertainty in China, respectively, and find similar results. Focusing on the transmission channel, we find that FinTech helps alleviate credit constraints, contributes to entrepreneurship and employment opportunities, and thus mitigates the negative impact of economic uncertainty on household consumption.     

Food poverty,hunger and household production in rural Eastern Cape households

More than two decades since the advent of democracy in South Africa, the place of small-scale agriculture in rural development, poverty alleviation and food security remains ambiguous and highly contested. However, there is now some new evidence that official income poverty estimates in South Africa may be underestimating the contribution of rural, land-based livelihoods when measuring household well-being. This paper aims to explore this possibility further by identifying how household production activities are associated with improved food security among rural Eastern Cape households in the former homelands. The analysis is based on data from Statistics South Africa’s 2008/9 Living Conditions Survey and its annual General Household Surveys. In adopting a food poverty lens, the findings suggest that hunger levels are lower among farming households in the Eastern Cape even though a higher percentage of these households (relative to non-farming households) live below the national food poverty line. The paper concludes by discussing some implications for policy.     

Price expectations and consumption under deflation: evidence from Japanese household survey data

The Japanese economy has experienced price deflation since the mid-1990s. Despite the importance of overcoming deflation, there has been little recent research on price expectations in Japan. This paper takes advantage of an original and rich quarterly household-level data set from the “Kokumin Seikatsu Monitors” to estimate average price expectations, examine the factors that affect price expectations, and examine how changes in price expectations have affected household consumption. Our estimates indicate that average price expectations ranged from minus 0.2 to 0% in 2001 and 2002. However, there was an increase to 1% in the first quarter of 2003, followed by a decline to 0.2% in the second quarter, and a steady increase toward 0.8% by the first quarter of 2004. Price expectations depend on current price movements and lagged expectations. A series of quantitative easing monetary policies were not very effective in changing the price expectations, since the policy announcements caused revision of price expectations only for a small portion, i.e., 5–10% of people surveyed. The jump observed in the first quarter of 2003 was a reaction to the outbreak of the Iraq war. Our study also confirms that deflationary expectations discourage household consumption, mainly durable consumption, by delaying the timing of purchases, suggesting that the deflationary expectations should be upwardly revised to restore a vital Japanese economy.     

Chinese household saving and dependent children: Theory and evidence

This paper examines the impact of family size on household saving. We first study a theoretical life-cycle model that includes finite lifetimes and saving for retirement and in which parents care about the consumption by their dependent children. The model implies a negative relationship between the number of dependent children in the family and the household saving rate. Then, we test the model's implications using new survey data on household finances in China. We use the differential enforcement of the one-child policy across counties to address the possible endogeneity between household saving and fertility decisions in a two-stage least squares Tobit regression. We find that Chinese families with fewer dependent children have significantly higher saving rates. The data yields several additional insights on household saving patterns. Households with college-age children have lower saving rates, and households residing in urban areas have higher saving rates and a lower ratio of education expenditures to income. However, having an additional child reduces saving rates more for households in urban areas than in rural areas. Our regressions also indicate that saving rates vary with age and tend to be higher for households with more workers, higher education, better health, and more assets.     

Mao and the Chinese rural economy

The essay argues that Mao's economic ideas, though often couched in misleadingly ideological terms, are based on practical experience and can be described and analysed in familiar economic terms. It argues that these ideas had their precedents in the Soviet industrialization debate of the 1920s among Stalin's opponents; their parallels can be found in theories and policies developed in India and elsewhere in the 1950s; and their practical precedents can be observed in the pre-1949 Communist Border Regions, where conditions put a premium on labour-intensive construction, intermediate technology, and community development. In particular, these ideas owe a great debt to the achievements of the non-Communist Chinese Industrial Cooperatives of the late 1930s and 1940s. They stress the human factors in economic development, and seek to provide a specific process of social change and economic growth which will spontaneously develop mass consciousness of new economic possibilities. The essay concludes that if the Chinese economy is analysed in terms of the expectations implied in Chinese theory, rather than in terms of the economic expectations of advanced industrial countries, quantitative analysis of the Chinese economy may be possible.     

Convergence in food consumption in Rural China: Evidence from household survey data

The aims of this paper are to propose an econometric model for studying consumption convergence, to apply the model to a set of panel data from China, and to discuss various implications of research results. Major findings of the paper include (a) conditional convergence is confirmed for total grain, fine grain, edible oil, poultry, aquatic product, and sugar; (b) animal fat and red meat exhibit consumption divergence; (c) rising income inequality and underdevelopment of market are identified to be obstacles to consumption convergence; and (d) for commodities that converge, the speed of convergence is slow.     

Estimating flexible consumption functions for urban and rural households in China

There are few comprehensive studies of household consumption in China that covers all commodities due to data restrictions. This prevents the calculation of inequality indices based on consumption. This lack of coverage also makes analysis of policies that affect consumption difficult; economy-wide models used for analysis often have to employ simple consumption forms with unit income elasticities. We estimate a translog demand system distinguished by demographic characteristics, giving price and income elasticities that should be useful for policy analysis. We estimate separate functions for urban and rural households using household expenditure data and detailed commodity prices (1995–2006). This allows future analysis of social welfare and inequality based on consumption to supplement existing studies based on income. To illustrate an application of the model, we project consumption composition based on projected prices, incomes and demographic changes – aging, education improvement and urbanization.     

Effects of school closure on household labor supply: Evidence from rural China

This paper studies the effects of school closure on household labor supply exploiting China's large-scale rural primary school closing during the early 2000s. Using CHNS 1991–2011 and CHIP 2007–2008 datasets and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that school closure significantly increases the total annual income of mothers of primary school-aged children, which comes virtually entirely from increases in wage income, due to more participation, more working hours, and higher wage rates. This significant positive effect can plausibly be attributed to their migration responses: mothers engage in temporary rural-urban migration to care for children following school closure. We find no effects on fathers' income and migration behavior. Our study provides the first causal estimation of the impacts of school closure on household labor supply and sheds light on the migration decision-making of rural females.     

The position of the old in the rural household in a traditional society

Abstract

During the last two decades research on the history of European household structure (based on yearly census records, fiscal documents etc) has revealed that average household size was only 4–5 persons and that the so-called extended family, i. e. households with more than two generations present, can only be found in 10–20 per cent of cases. The typical household contained only the head, his wife and unmarried children and perhaps some servants.     

Interrelationship between social and economic policies in the sphere of household income and consumption and macroeconomic dynamics

This article presents a conceptual scheme of the impact made on the economic development by the social and economic policies in the field of household income and consumption. A set of tools is presented for taking into account the multiplicative effects of social and economic policies. The interrelationships are studied between the dynamics in wages and prices and the parameters of the macroeconomic technology with an allowance for the principles of economic equilibrium.     

Hidden inequality in household electricity consumption: Measurement and determinants based on large-scale smart meter data

Existing studies provide the estimates of climate change's impact on energy consumption, yet little attention has been paid to inequality based on fine-grained data. This paper takes advantage of the large-scale smart meter data to investigate the electricity consumption inequality and adaptation vulnerability issues. We find that there is a serious inequality underestimation issue arising from annual aggregate data. An average of 8.39% of the inequality is hidden every quarter, while the monthly hidden value reached 13.41% due to the seasonal offset effects. This inequality is the robust nonlinear inverted-N shaped relationship with temperature, which implies that the cold temperatures have a more severe impact on social inequality issues than hot. For cold days, one additional day in the range < 30 °F would result in an increase of 3.05% electricity consumption inequality. We also find households in high inequality cities have worse response ability when facing extreme temperature, indicating poor will suffer more from extreme temperature exposure. Policies to address climate-induced inequality issues would be more efficient if more attention be paid to the poor in cold winter.