Corporate key labs: Breakthrough or white elephant?

Based on manually collected data from Chinese listed firms' key laboratories at the state and provincial levels, this study shows that key laboratories improve firms' innovation output. Corporations with key laboratories at the state or provincial level produce more patents and citations than their counterparts. A series of endogenous treatment effects, including the Heckman two-step sample selection model, instrumental variable estimation, policy shock analysis, and propensity score matching, indicate that this study's main conclusion is robust and consistent. We also observe that key laboratories' beneficial impact on innovation output becomes more prominent for firms belonging to high-tech industries, those led by an inventor or scientist CEO, and those located in cities that enforce the protection of intellectual property. Further, key laboratories foster innovation mainly by developing scientific research capacity, increasing human capital, and improving R&D subsidies. Our findings demonstrate that key laboratories can benefit firms, their stakeholders, and the public in an emerging market such as China.     

A reflective diary on a ’TTT’ lesson

A TTT lesson which is based on student-centered can help students complete their study more efficiently and ensure their target.     

Unemployment information and wives’ labor supply responses to husbands’ job loss in Taiwan

Motivated by declining labor market opportunities in Taiwan, this study examines adjustments to wives' work patterns based on husbands' job loss for both unskilled and skilled labor families. Explicitly taking information acquired before job losses into account, married couples' dynamic labor supply equations are estimated by using a short pseudo-panel data set of Manpower Utilization Survey (MUS) in Taiwan during the period of 1993–2006. Our results indicate that the AWE in skilled families exhibits almost twice as big as those in unskilled families. When husbands' job loss is compounded with district- or industry-specific unemployment information, wives have slightly higher probabilities of labor force entry than those in the traditional model, and the probabilities increase with the length of observation. A comparison of the asymmetric response of the unskilled and the skilled wives suggests that facing husbands' job loss, unskilled wives respond to both economic downturns and upturns, but skilled wives only respond to economic downturns.     

The Impact of Regulation on Utilities’ Investments: A Survey and New Evidence from the Energy Industry

Over the last 30 years, regulated sectors have undergone deep reforms in their institutional configuration, tools and goals. This paper reviews the impact of this evolution on energy firms’ investments. First, we survey the existing evidence on the effects of the presence of independent regulatory agencies on utilities’ investment rates in Europe in the MENA countries, and in Latin America, focussing on the role of de facto independence and the institutional framework. Second, we discuss the impact of incentive- versus rate-of-return regulation on firms’ incentives to invest and the interaction with firm private/public ownership. In this regard, we provide new econometric evidence of the recent developments of regulation, using a sample of European energy utilities tracked from 1997 to 2013. Our results confirm previous findings that investment is higher under incentive regulation than under rate of return regulation. However, differently from the earlier results, we find that investments seem to be driven more by the weighted average cost of capital than by the X-factor. The paper concludes reviewing recent evidence on service quality regulation on firm investment specifically on the impact of reward/penalty schemes on capital and operational expenditures.     

Offshoring and firm performance: self-selection,effects on performance,or both?

This paper uses unique new data for German manufacturing enterprises from matched regular surveys and a special purpose survey to investigate the causal effect of relocation of activities to a foreign country on firm performance. Compared to non-offshoring firms, firms that relocated activities were larger and more productive, and had a higher share of exports in total sales. These differences existed the year before some firms started to relocate, and this points to self-selection of “better” firms into offshoring. To investigate the causal effects of offshoring, six different variants of a matching approach are used. Contrary to what is often argued we find no evidence for a large negative causal effect of offshoring on employment in Germany.     

Asset or burden? Impact of children on parents’ retirement

If parents receive financial support in retirement from their children, having more children with higher earning power may expedite their retirement. On the other hand, retirement may be delayed if parents are burdened with educational expenses for children. We empirically investigate how the quantity and the education of children influence their parents’ retirement decisions. Due to the endogeneity of childrearing in the retirement decision, we employ the instrumental variable method with twin births and child deaths as instruments. We find that parents retire earlier when they have more children and better educated children and they receive a significant amount of transfers from children.     

A Note on Allen’s Arc Elasticity with Arithmetic, Geometric and Harmonic Means

Discussion and debate on the application of Allen??s arc elasticity has continued into the 21st century. This note demonstrates three points. First, perceived differences between Allen??s geometric mean elasticity and a constant demand elasticity based on an assumed isoelastic demand curve are negligible for small changes in price and quantity, which comprise the vast majority of such changes. Second, in some cases of rapid security or commodity price movements, the harmonic mean may provide the most accurate elasticity estimates across measures of central tendency. Third, because the arithmetic and harmonic means serve as bounds for the geometric mean, an elasticity based on the geometric mean may be considered a prudent choice among these three on this basis alone.     

A lawyer’s manual on community-based economic development

The Review of Black Political Economy -     

Inflation or Deflation： A Test Based on the McCallum Rule

Some economists think that the economy of China will deflate, whereas some economists do not think so. This paper wants to verify the dispute based on the McCalhim rule, and give a simple analysis about the economy of China, which has kept a great growth speed in the last twenty years.     

Cooperation between China and Tanzania on ICT: fish,fishing tackle or fishing skills?

Tanzania has ambitions of moving from a mere consumer of information and communication technologies to a designing and manufacturing base. This paper aims to assess the role of public–private partnerships with Chinese institutions in the achievement of this goal. Through an in-depth case study, this paper examines the contributions of three Chinese multinationals in terms of technology transfer and technological capacity building in local firms in Tanzania. The analysis contrasts the organisation of improvements on the manner of technology transfer and capacity building in these partnerships with prior Sino-Tanzanian partnership efforts in technology and industry. The Chinese multinationals had a labour localisation rate of 60% on average, with some training services provided to Tanzanian nationals and supply of services and equipment to Tanzanian firms. However, the overall level of technology transfer continues to be weak. Observed barriers to technology transfer include weak incentives for collaboration between Chinese and Tanzanian firms and low-level technology embedded in activities offshored by the Chinese multinationals to Tanzania.     

The management of South Africa’s landfills and waste pickers on them: Impacting lives and livelihoods

Effective management of waste and the promotion and management of recycling activities are necessary for sustainable and liveable cities. A key but unrecognised element in promoting recycling is the efforts of waste pickers who make a living from recycling mainline recyclables. This article aims to describe the approaches used on 10 landfills in South Africa to manage waste pickers’ access to recyclables and their daily activities on the landfills. A multiple case study design and cross-case analysis were used in this study. The sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF) was used to analyse and explain the data. The results showed that waste management policies and practices directly influence the waste pickers’ access to recyclable waste and their livelihoods. Finally, some inclusionary and exclusionary practices are highlighted that could guide inclusive, participatory and co-productive practices for waste pickers in South Africa towards increased recognition, access, dignity and income.     

Workers’ self-management and social property: A participatory approach to black economic development

Conclusion and Implications Self-management provides a context and a process for economic growth, political development, and institution building. Since its use as a developmental model does not presuppose unalterable fealty to any dogmatical theory, it can be easily modulated and revised to fit the particular needs and circumstances of the black community. For example, the concept of workers’ management and social property is a derivation of Marxian theory of social and economic organization. Moreover, Yugoslavia, the only sociopolitical system in which the theory of labor-managed market socialism has been reduced to action through system-wide implementation, is, unlike the U.S. economy or the black community’s subeconomy, a decentralized socialist state. 29 But the conceptual lineage or previous use of the idea does not preclude its revision for use by groups with different socio-historical experiences and contemporary conditions.     

Dynamics of Environmental Regulation and Voters’ Biased Beliefs: A Political Economy Approach

This paper develops a political economy model which determines the conditions of cycles in environmental regulation. It analyzes the impact of both interest groups and voters who have biased political beliefs. Such biased beliefs are the result of the influence of activist interest groups that strategically use the beliefs formation process among ignorant voters (cascade effect). The cascade effect biases the perception of the efficiency of regulatory instruments and affects the behavior of the politician. Our model seems particularly relevant to explain the evolution of environmental policies, which are characterized by scientific controversies, such as climate change policies. The high media coverage of climate issues, as well as persistent debates among experts, is a favorable context for the influence of activist interest groups that use the public’s cognitive biases.     

Gender peer effects on students’ educational and occupational expectations

To date, little is known about how gender peers affect students’ educational and occupational expectations. This study investigates the gender peer effects on students’ educational and occupational expectations, using the 2014 China Education Panel Survey. To address students’ self-selection into classes, we choose a sample of schools that randomly assign students to classes. We find that exposure to more female peers increases students’ probability of expecting to attend university and reduces their probability of expecting to complete only middle school. Besides, exposure to more female peers increases boys’ and girls’ probabilities of expecting to pursue a career as a manager, and reduces their probabilities of expecting to become a teacher, doctor, or lawyer. Moreover, exposure to more female peers has significant positive effects on both girls’ and boys’ probability of expecting to pursue prevalently male occupations. In addition, we discuss the mechanisms and check the robustness of the results. This study helps to understand the gender peer effects in education and the variations in individuals’ educational and occupational choices.     

Dependence structures and risk spillover in China’s credit bond market: A copula and CoVaR approach

This study uses a dynamic copula model of dependence to investigate risk spillovers in China’s credit bond market between the bank and corporate sectors for a range of maturities from one week to 30 years. Using daily data on credit spreads for the period December 28, 2009 to June 2, 2017, the empirical results show that credit risk spillover is low and relatively stable for medium-term bonds, but higher and more variable for short- and long-term bonds. The results also show that credit risk spillover increased after 2014 with financial market reforms that involved interest rate liberalization and a loosening of government guarantees on corporate debt.