Losing the future: Household wealth from urban housing demolition and children's human capital in China

Some literature observes the negative but not very significant effect of household wealth growth on children's educational outcomes. This surprising finding is not easily reconciled with the traditional explanation that relaxed economic constraints caused by wealth growth can promote human capital accumulation. This paper proposes an alternative explanation for the causal relationship between wealth growth and human capital, which could be negative: individuals tend to reduce human capital investment following the decline in their labor supply induced by wealth growth, given that investing in human capital is mainly for employment competitiveness. This explanation is supported by evidence from the case of urban housing demolition in China, in which affected households could obtain substantial wealth growth by considerable demolition compensation thanks to the real estate boom in China. Specifically, using two nationally representative datasets, we find that Chinese households that have experienced demolition relatively have more wealth, less labor supply, lower propensity to accumulate children's human capital, and consequently, have children with lower educational achievement. These results suggest that China's economy may be losing its momentum because of the decline in labor supply and human capital accumulation brought about by the ongoing large-scale urban housing demolition.     

How does housing wealth affect household consumption? Evidence from macro-data with special implications for China

Thanks to four-decade spectacular economic growth, China's households have been accumulating a stockpile of wealth. In such a context, further concerns have been raised about the relationship between wealth accumulation and improvement of economic well-being, mainly through consumption. The issue becomes even more important when considering the challenges facing China in recent years, which can be characterized by a mix of increasingly leveraged households, escalating housing price, sluggish consumption, slowing economic expansion, trade frictions with the United States, and the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic difficulties. With that background in mind, this paper first provides international evidence on the relationship between household consumption and wealth, especially in the form of houses. Drawing on a panel of aggregate data for fourteen countries including China, we find that household consumption positively responds to changes in housing wealth, and this link is further affected by different levels of government spending and financial development. We next relate the international evidence to the case of China, with the focus on some recent policy issues over housing regulations and consumption promotion. Importantly, as the evidence and underlying theories suggest, housing wealth-consumption association does not follow a simplistic pattern, and thus, multiple policy measures could and should be undertaken rather than merely curbing speculative activities in real estate exchanges and associated financial business.     

Poverty and firewood consumption: A case study of rural households in northern China

This paper discusses the determinants of firewood consumption in a poor township in rural northern China, with a special focus on the relationship between households' economic wealth and firewood consumption. We find strong support for the poverty–environment hypothesis since household economic wealth is a significant and negative determinant of firewood consumption. Firewood can therefore be considered as an inferior good for the whole population in the rural area under study, although further evidence shows that at the top of the wealth distribution, there might be a floor effect in the decreasing firewood consumption. Besides economic wealth, our analysis also shows that the own-price effect is important in explaining firewood consumption behavior, the price effect gaining importance with rising incomes. Finally, increasing education is also found to be a key factor in energy consumption behavior, especially when dealing with energy source switching behavior.     

Consumption,financial wealth and labor income in Korea

By examining the relationship between consumption, financial wealth and labor income in Korea, this paper presents three key findings. First, we find evidence that Korean households hold a larger proportion of their wealth in human capital instead of financial wealth, compared to households in other countries. Potentially, this finding appears consistent with Koreans’ enthusiasm for human development through education despite low government funding. Another important finding is that only financial wealth fluctuations contain a large portion of temporary components. Hence, financial wealth is mainly responsible for adjustments to restore the long-run relationship between consumption, financial wealth and labor income during the examined period. Third, and perhaps most interestingly, this paper finds that before the 1997 Asian financial crisis, households in Korea had difficulty smoothing their consumption over time. This finding may be at least partly attributable to households’ limited access to bank loans and their low level of financial wealth accumulation prior to the crisis. In contrast, we find little evidence that households’ consumption behavior has changed during the recent global financial crisis.     

The consumption–wealth ratio,real estate wealth,and the Japanese stock market

The first contribution of this paper, in following the works of Lettau and Ludvigson, 2001a, Lettau and Ludvigson, 2001b, is to construct a Japanese consumption–wealth ratio data series and to examine whether it explains Japanese stock market data. We find that the consumption–wealth ratio does predict future stock returns, but the evidence is weaker than that from US data, and the source of predictability is limited to observations after the collapse of the asset bubble at the beginning of the 1990s. The consumption–wealth ratio also helps to explain cross-sectional Japanese stock returns. The second contribution of the paper is that we propose new consumption–wealth ratio that more explicitly deal with household real estate wealth utilizing Japanese aggregate-level data. Such “real estate augmented” consumption–wealth ratio perform better than the consumption–wealth ratio calculated with only financial wealth data. While the scaled factor model proposed by Lettau and Ludvigson performs relatively well with Japanese data, the book-to-market related anomaly pointed out by Chan et al. (1991) and Jagannathan et al. (1998) remains strong.     

考虑政府补贴的闭环供应链决策研究

考虑一个再制造商、一个电商回收平台和消费者构成的闭环供应链,对比分析不同的政府补贴方式与不同的平台回收模式下的4种回收情境。结果表明：回收模式的选择会影响平台的服务水平,并不会受到政府补贴的影响;回收量的多少不仅与政府补贴有关,还与再制造商的碳减排成本有关;碳减排补贴能实现更高的碳减排率,而产量补贴能实现供应链整体利润最大化。     

政府补助、金融化与制造业创新——基于上市公司的实证研究

选取2011—2020年制造业上市公司数据,以信号理论为视角研究政府补助、金融化与制造业创新之间的关系。研究发现：研发补助、非研发补助对创新产出的作用具有非对称性,金融化在信号传递的过程中发挥了调节效应;研发补助和创新产出存在倒“U”型关系,非研发补助和创新产出呈正相关;金融化可以正向调节研发补助、非研发补助和创新产出的关系,与其他制造企业相比,金融化的调节作用在民营制造企业表现得最为明显。     

Policy analysis with Melitz-type gravity model: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan

Several governments worldwide aim at fostering agricultural productivity growth by providing investment support. However, the policy’s effect on trade for middle- and low-income countries has not been analyzed so far. This paper analyzes the impact of agricultural policies (credit subsidies and tariffs) on agricultural trade flows by modifying a Melitz-type structural gravity model for a small and open economy. According to the theory, trade flows are expected to increase with credit subsidies and decrease with partners’ applied tariff rates. We analyze bilateral agricultural trade flows between Kyrgyzstan and its 69 trading partners from 2007 to 2018 to test our theoretical findings. Applying the Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimator, we find that credit subsidies effectively increase international trade flows while applied tariffs imposed on agricultural products reduce Kyrgyzstan’s export substantially. These results can be applied to similar economies with publicly available data where small budgetary efforts drive trade expansion.     

Wealth Privilege and the Racial Wealth Gap: A Case Study in Economic Stratification

The emerging subfield of stratification economics is a response to the orthodoxy’s resistance to recognizing the role of racial and ethnic disparities and its penchant for adopting cultural explanations for intergroup differences. With this view, the literature on the racial wealth gap and its particular embrace of the Life Cycle Hypothesis (LCH) offers a clear example of this critique at work. Not only is the LCH incapable of explaining why the racial wealth gap is so much larger than the income gap, but its limitations restrict the range of explanations explored. As an alternative, this paper introduces the Wealth Privilege (WP) model. Unlike the LCH, the WP model can incorporate the effects of contemporary racism as well as the systemic sources that are a legacy of several centuries of racialized policies. Using evidence from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), this article offers empirical corroboration as well. Since the SCF queries households on their attitudes toward saving and investment, this article investigates the extent that cultural differences explain the wealth gap. To limit the problem of skewness, which is inherent in wealth studies, the analysis uses an inverse hyperbolic-sine transformation of household net worth. The OLS regression results show scant support for key features of the LCH while demonstrating the importance of asset ownership and family support, both crucial facets of the WP model. Two different decomposition methods, Blinder - Oaxaca and DiNardo - Fortin - Lemieux, corroborate these conclusions. As wealth is easily transferable across generations, the evidence supports the contention that household wealth serves as a source of economic stratification as it functions to preserve and even widen the racial wealth gap.     

Does Oil Wealth Affect Democracy in Africa?

This paper uses recent data on historical oil wealth to provide new evidence on the effect of oil wealth on democracy in Africa from 1955 to 2008. We find that oil wealth is statistically associated with a lower likelihood of democratization when we estimate the relationship in a pooled cross‐sectional and time‐series setting. In addition, when estimated using fixed effects and IV‐2SLS methods, the strong negative statistical association continues to hold. Indeed, this result is robust to the source of oil wealth data, the choice and treatment of the variables set, and the sample selection. Our results also show other interesting and important results. The cross‐country evidence examined in the study confirms that the ‘Lipset/Aristotle/modernization hypothesis’ (that prosperity stimulates democracy) is a strong empirical regularity. Also, the propensity for democracy rises with population size, population density, ethnic fractionalization, having British legal origin or colonial heritage, and having a supportive institutional environment in the form of maintenance of the rule of law. However, apart from oil wealth, democracy tends to fall with linguistic fractionalization and rough (mountainous) terrain. Moreover, consistent with the data, North Africa consistently fails to favor democratic development.     

Increasing Block Tariff structures as a water subsidy mechanism in South Africa: An exploratory analysis

The primary goals of water pricing are to ensure that water is used sparingly and that sufficient revenues are earned. Pricing can, however, also be used to address equity concerns. One such policy often applied in developing countries is to charge a higher marginal price as consumption increases, to encourage a more efficient use of water, and to finance water subsidies by cross-subsidising water use. However, in reality water subsidies do not necessarily reach their intended beneficiaries. This paper explores the efficacy of such a pricing structure in subsidising water consumption for poor households in South Africa. The main finding is that this pricing structure does not ensure that water subsidies reach the intended targets; that is, the poorest. A further important result from these findings is that the magnitude of redistribution via the water tariff system is relatively small compared with other components of social spending.     

The distributional impacts of removing energy subsidies in China

The distributional impact on households is an important factor for the acceptance of energy subsidy reform. Based on energy consumption features of the Chinese households at different income levels, this paper adopts an input–output price model to analyze possible impacts of removing energy subsidies on income distribution under different scenarios. Results show that: (1) The distributional impacts of removing subsidies vary by fossil fuels. From the perspectives of combined effects, transport fuel subsidy removal and coal subsidy removal have the strongest and the weakest progressive effects respectively, while the removal of electricity subsidies has a regressive effect. Moreover, the removal of petroleum product subsidies has the greatest impact on households, followed by the removal of electricity and coal subsidies, respectively. (2) Indirect impacts of energy subsidy reform are greater than direct impacts on households. (3) Government price controls can reduce the negative impact of energy subsidy reform. Policy implications are thus summarized. Energy subsidy reform can start from the energy that has the strongest progressive effect and the minimum impact on households. The Chinese government can take certain compensatory measures to mitigate the impact of reform on poor households.     

Export subsidies and trade policy: The experience of Kenya

This paper finds that manufacturing firms in Kenya have responded poorly to the availability of export subsidies. It is argued that this has resulted from the delays and uncertainty surrounding disbursement procedures, and from the limited extent to which the subsidy lessened the anti-export bias of a policy structure which has emphasized import substitution. It is further argued that a budgetary constraint makes it impossible to offset the anti-export bias with export subsidies at existing levels of domestic market protection, and that what is required is the lowering and standardization of domestic market protection levels, which can be most appropriately achieved through a combination of devaluation and trade tax/subsidy changes.     

财政补贴对企业全要素生产率的影响研究——基于新结构经济学理论

基于新结构经济学理论，以2016—2021年沪深A股非金融类上市公司为样本，实证研究财政补贴对企业全要素生产率的影响。结果表明，适度的财政补贴能够激励企业提高全要素生产率，高强度的财政补贴反而会抑制企业全要素生产率的提升，两者之间呈现出一种“倒U形”关系；进一步研究发现，市场竞争强度的提高不仅能够加深财政补贴与企业全要素生产率之间的“倒U形”关系，还会推迟倒U型关系拐点的到来。     

雪中送炭还是过犹不及：政府补贴对企业研发的影响

基于2013—2018年沪深A股制造业民营企业上市公司的数据，实证探讨了政府补贴与企业研发的关系。研究发现政府补贴与研发强度之间并不是简单的线性关系，而是呈显著的倒U型关系。这意味着，适当的政府补贴能够激励企业进行研发投入，但过高的政府补贴反而对企业研发投入产生了挤出效应，是无效率的政府干预行为。研究结论有助于政府重新考虑对制造业民营企业的研发补贴支持力度，以期更有效地激发企业的创新积极性，加快建设创新型国家的步伐。     

Patents,R&D subsidies,and endogenous market structure in a schumpeterian economy

This study explores the different implications of patent breadth and R&D subsidies on economic growth and endogenous market structure in a Schumpeterian growth model. We find that when the number of firms is fixed in the short run, patent breadth and R&D subsidies serve to increase economic growth as in previous studies. However, when market structure adjusts endogenously in the long run, R&D subsidies increase economic growth but decrease the number of firms, whereas patent breadth expands the number of firms but reduces economic growth. Therefore, in accordance with empirical evidence, R&D subsidy is perhaps a more suitable policy instrument than patent breadth for the purpose of stimulating long‐run economic growth.     

产业政策扶持激励了企业创新吗?——基于“五年规划”变更的自然实验

产业升级是政府产业政策的核心目标,这一宏观过程顺利与否很大程度上取决于微观企业的创新活动。文章以2007-2014年中国上市公司为样本,利用2011年“五年规划”变更这一自然实验构造的双重差分模型（DID）探讨了宏观产业政策之于微观企业创新的经济后果及其作用机制。研究表明,产业政策能够增加被扶持企业的创新投入,且影响程度呈现出“先升后降”的动态变化趋势;上述作用主要是通过政府补贴、税收优惠等“资源效应”而非通过降低企业市场势力、行业集中程度等“竞争效应”实现的;进一步研究发现,资源依赖下的产业政策降低了被扶持企业的创新效率,这在“特惠型”的资源分配方式即政府补贴和税收优惠等集中于少数企业的情况下尤为严重。上述结论为我们理解产业政策对企业创新的作用及其内在机制提供了经验证据。     

政企关系、财政补贴与公司经营绩效——基于中国旅游上市公司的经验证据

基于政企纽带的视角,文章以2008-2012年中国旅游上市公司的统计数据为样本,对政企关系、财政补贴和企业绩效三者间的关系进行了实证分析。研究表明:一方面政企关系对旅游企业财政补贴具有显著的正作用,即随着政企关系的增强,旅游企业获得的财政补贴就越多;另一方面,尽管旅游上市公司平均每年获得500多万财政补贴,但是旅游企业的财政补贴与旅游企业经营绩效无显著相关性,这意味着政府的财政补贴对旅游企业的经营绩效起不到激励作用。因此,应规范政府对旅游企业的补贴制度,建立有效的激励和监督机制,提高财政补贴效果。     

The impacts of marketization and subsidies on the treatment quality performance of the Chinese hospitals sector

This paper investigates the treatment quality of the hospitals sector in China during 2009–2014. The treatment quality of a hospital is higher if relatively more medical services are provided with fewer deaths. Our research question is twofold: (i) Does the pressure of for-profit lower treatment quality by causing more deaths? (ii) Can government subsidy raise treatment quality by releasing the pressure from market competition? Our empirical results show that the treatment quality in China has been improving during the studied period. There are pieces of evidence that both marketization and government subsidies can boost the treatment quality of the hospitals sector. The co-existence of market force and government regulation is beneficial to the patients.