Urban Land Policies in Ghana: A Case of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

The paper examines evidence on the reasons for inefficient land management in Ghana. It argues that the perceived custodians of land have consistently acted in their individual interest while successfully using a discourse of ‘communal’ to secure the backing of the colonial and post colonial state. Overall, the state has substantially promoted the interest of private capital. In turn, the ‘public good’ outcomes the current land policies ostensibly seek to achieve have only been modestly achieved. Instead, land policies have had perverse implications for weaker groups such as women and impacted cities negatively.     

Impact of liberalization of financial resources in China’s economic growth: evidence from provinces

By using the sources of investment and based on provincial data, this paper examines the efficiency performance of the four sources of total investment in fixed assets in China for the period 1985–1998: state budget appropriation, national bank loans, self-raised funds, and foreign investment. The result of the panel data study shows that the growth of provincial output is positively related to the growth of national bank loans and self-raised funds. State appropriation is still a significant source of investment in the interior provinces, though this suggests a lack of alternative of nonstate sources. The paper concludes that nonstate sources of funding are generally more efficient in promoting output growth.     

Different Roles of Land in Rural-Urban Migration： Evidence from China＇s Household Survey

This paper explores the influence of land holding on rural–urban migration using China's 2008 household survey data. It shows that the contradictory findings of existing published literature can be explained by introducing a migration distance variable. The empirical studies show that land holding plays a different role in short‐distance and long‐distance migration. Land holding has a U‐shaped curve association with the probability of short‐distance migration and has an inverted‐U‐shaped association with the probability of long‐distance migration. Therefore, the government needs to provide more job information and migration subsidies to farmers who have little land to overcome difficulties in the process of migration so as to reduce rural–urban inequality.     

China’s new lost generation: the casualty of China’s economic transformation

China’s surge into global middle-income status over the space of three decades has been spectacular. However, a potentially large and burdensome cost has been imposed on a generation of adolescents and young adults who abandoned the countryside, and with it access to basic education, in order to seek the anticipated advantages of jobs in the country’s burgeoning urban-industrial sector. This large swath of off-farm migrants transformed China. It propelled China to the status of the ‘world’s factory’ and created the scale and accumulated learning-by-doing enabling China’s transition to a ‘knowledge economy’ that no longer depends on the labor of China’s new ‘Lost Generation.’ As the Lost Generation and its left-behind children, who suffer from a chronic lack of schooling, thicken the lower tail of China’s income distribution, it may be the rising, prosperous urban middle class that ultimately incurs the social, economic, and political challenges associated with China’s generation of off-farm migrant households once essential for launching China’s economic ascent.     

The effect of value-added tax on leverage: Evidence from China’s value-added tax reform

In this paper, we use China’s value-added tax (VAT) reform in 2007, which was aimed to encourage fixed investment purchasing, as a natural experiment to explore the effect on firm financial leverage. Results show an expansion in firm balance sheet after the reform, manifested by greater liabilities (long-term, short-term and total liability) and asset. Moreover, in terms of the ratio to asset, it’s found that long-term liability rose while the short-term liability dropped, and as a net effect, the total asset-liability ratio declined as the latter effect dominated. To theoretically explain the observed patterns, three mechanisms are highlighted, “income effect”, “maturity-match effect” and “market disciplining effect”, where income effect corresponds to a proportional expansion of balance sheet while the latter two effects alter the composition of firm leverage.     

Cameron’s information disaster in the referendum of 2016: an exit from Brexit?

The BREXIT referendum of June 23, 2016, represents a rather surprising decision by the UK electorate and it is a historical result with implications for the UK, Europe and the world economy. It can be shown that a major information blunder by the Cameron government forms part of the explanation of the referendum result: The 16 page info brochure that government sent out to households did not contain a single key finding of the Treasury study on the economic effects of EU membership on the UK and the cost of BREXIT, respectively. While prior to the Scottish referendum of 2014 the Cameron government conveyed key economic insights to households, before the BREXIT vote the government did not give the Treasury’s finding that a 10 % output loss was to be expected as a long run BREXIT effect – had households obtained this information, the referendum would have been 52 % in favor of Remain. Thus there is a new, very convincing argument for a second referendum. Also, US perspectives are emphasized.     

Trade credit and productivity: evidence from China’s ethnic areas

Using 2004–2009 firm-level microdata for enterprises in China’s ethnic areas, we investigate whether trade credit really works as an alternative external financing source. We find statistical evidence that trade credit is positively correlated with enterprise productivity; the result continues to hold when taking into account the intermediate role of the working capital turnover ratio. Moreover, our results confirm the positive impact of bank financing on enterprise productivity. All these findings are particularly tenable for Han enterprises.     

Regional division of labor from agglomeration economies’ perspective: some evidence

This study aims at elaborating the evolving degree of completeness of outward investment of manufacturing and its consequence from the view of regional development since the People’s Republic of China opened her door to foreign direct investment. After two decades of Hong Kong’s progressive manufacturing cross-border processing of labor-intensive operations performed in the proximate Guangdong province, a regional division of labor has developed by taking advantages of the agglomeration economies of the Hong Kong-Pearl River Delta region.The analysis is conducted based on such a perspective using the 1998 data of a population of 2,441 electronics joint ventures in Guangdong. Findings suggested that firms’ location (density) distribution, via exploiting the agglomeration economies, followed a pattern well explained by a simple gravity model with Hong Kong as the main core. The existing Pearl River Delta cities and the associated cluster economies have also demonstrated attraction for foreign direct investment. Firm size and age effects were also investigated. The findings confirmed the economic contributions of electronics joint ventures, the small ones in particular, to the development of Guangdong and the Hong Kong-Pearl River Delta region. Some suggestions on regional policy coordination were initiated.     

Economy of Russia’s Northern regions: Investment in fixed assets

This article discusses the features of the dynamics of investment in fixed assets in northern regions and the main factors of its rapid growth before the crisis and sharp decline in the crisis period. The contribution of individual regions to the growth rate of investment in the entire economy of the North is determined, and the territorial structure of investment by sectors and types of economic activity and the main sources of financing and changes in the structure of investment are investigated. An evaluation of the tendency towards investment and the investment attractiveness of northern regions are given.     

Production efficiency and its spatial disparity across China’s TVEs: A stochastic production frontier approach

The development of China’s township and village enterprises (TVEs) in recent years is beyond doubt encouraging. However, it is uncertain whether or not this rapid development is exacerbating China’s spatial disparity by encouraging inequality of production efficiency across these enterprises. By using the stochastic production frontier model with a simple exponential specification of time-varying firm effects, which incorporates panel data, this paper aims to answer this question by examining the changes in production efficiency of the TVEs located in different provinces between 1988 and 1993, with particular reference to the spatial disparities of these changes. The findings of this paper indicate that the production efficiencies of the TVEs, on average, improved between 1988 and 1993. Furthermore, the results also show that regional inequality, in terms of production efficiency across the TVEs located in different provinces, had narrowed in the six years under study. JEL classification: C33; D24; 011; 047     

Long-term forecasting of the development of Russia’s pension system: Factors and conditions

The problems associated with the reformation of the pension system have gained extreme urgency in the process of forming the long-term strategy for Russia??s socioeconomic development (until 2030), which is determined by the growth in its influence on the macroeconomic strategy. This paper gives an actuarial substantiation of the actual factors and conditions, on which the development of the pension system in the Russian Federation depends, and prospects for the stability of the pension budget based on insurance principles.