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.     

Secrecy of Bank of Japan’s Yen intervention: Evidence of efficacy from intra-daily data

This paper examines the intraday effectiveness of the Bank of Japan (BOJ)’s foreign exchange interventions over the period May 13, 1991–March 16, 2004. The existing literature has generally failed to provide a comprehensive study on the effects of the BOJ’s interventions, and particularly, the efficacy of public and secret operations. By dividing a 24-h trading day into three horizons, we show that the intraday evidence on the effects of official interventions documented in prior studies primarily came from publicly known interventions. In the case of secret interventions, although there were no clear impacts on the first moment of exchange rate returns, we found significant second moment responses. Specifically, covert operations were able to reduce the Yen/USD return volatility during both Tokyo and subsequent overnight market hours. Furthermore, our extended model on secret interventions reveals that when the BOJ completely concealed its transactions, undetected interventions were shown to be most effective in both reversing undesired trends and reducing excess return volatilities. On the other hand, those interventions that were rumoured were not as effective. Finally, the interventions conducted during the periods of ‘oral interventions’ were in general more effective in moving the exchange rate in the desired direction.     

The global faces of China’s incomplete reforms: a perspective from China’s new intellectual property regime

ABSTRACT

The paper probes into an antithetical aspect of China’s economic reforms in the global context by focusing on the recent developments of China’s intellectual property regime. By analyzing this cutting-edge legal system, it highlights China’s political divergence against its economic convergence in its decade-long reforms, in particular, its state-oriented innovation system as against the world’s neo-liberal economic order. The last decade witnessed China’s preeminent transformation from a passive follower to a proactive advocator of IP standards. However, certain entrenched limits characterizing China’s state-oriented economy and cultural systems such as information blockade and coercive technology transfer serve as catalysts that are apt to provoke acrimonious confrontation between China and major economies. In this sense, China’s incomplete reforms have taken on a new form: as China’s influence on the global economy grows, conflicts of diverse national priorities become more palpable than simple-minded economic cooperation.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Russia’s salt industry: Problems of development

The paper describes the current situation in the salt industry. It points to the inadmissibly high and expanding market share of imported salt products despite the country’s own colossal resource base and the domestic enterprises’ huge unused capacities. It has been shown that OAO Russian Railroads (OAO RZhD) will economically benefit due to its reasonable policy of selective reduction of the railroad shipment tariffs for salt for domestic producers due to the inevitable growth of the country’s own salt output.     

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.