Population Ageing and Saving Rates in China,Japan and Korea: A Panel Granger Causality Analysis

Abstract

The world is ageing fast and East Asia is not an exception. Among the three major East Asian countries, Japan features the eldest society in the world, while China and Korea also witness a dramatic demographic transformation. One important impact of population ageing is on saving rates. In this paper we seek to investigate the causal relationship between demographics and savings in those three countries by employing a panel of data-set and innovative econometric technique – panel Granger causality test. On balance there is evidence supporting the argument that a growing younger population causes an increase in national saving, albeit not necessarily in household saving. The results are robust against different estimation procedures and parameters.     

教育扩张能否改善收入差距？——基于2014年云南省流动人口动态监测调查数据的分析

教育作为人力资本形成的主要因素直接影响个体收入,但对欠发达地区流动人口收入差距的影响鲜有研究。基于2014年云南省流动人口动态监测调查数据,采用工具变量法纠正内生性估计偏误后,分位数回归结果显示,教育收益率显著为正,但随着收入水平条件分位点的提高,教育收益率呈现“U型”变化。即尽管教育扩张能够提升收入整体水平,并不能有效改善收入差距,最终将导致“均值高、方差大”的“二元分配格局”。这意味着仅仅依靠增加教育经费实现的教育扩张并不能有效改善流动人口的收入差距,而应谋求由注重速度和规模的外延式扩张向注重质量和差别对待的内涵式扩张转变。     

高校教师按生产要素分配的理论依据及现实意义

本文对按生产要素分配的内涵和特点作出定义 ,对按生产要素分配和按劳分配的关系进行深入的探讨 ,对高校教师按生产要素分配的理论依据进行详尽的阐述 ,对当前高校教师实施按生产要素分配提出建议     

程序化交易系统的检测与优化体系

随着国内金融市场的不断发展与完善,程序化交易变得越来越受关注。目前国内大多数程序化交易者并没有建立起一个完备的检测与优化体系,采取的测试方式大多为简单的历史数据回溯测试,这容易导致对历史数据曲线的过度拟合。论文构造出一个较完整的程序化交易系统的检测与优化体系,依次分为六个步骤:设计交易策略,交易策略程式化,验证性检测,交易系统最优化,推进的样本外测试,实战交易。通过此体系可以分析交易模型的风险与收益水平及策略的稳定性,并得出健全的交易策略需具备的特点:获利相对均匀分布、具有相对稳定的盈亏次数比率、具有连续且平滑的最优化参数集、适应不同类型的市场且风险可控。     

基于GIS空间分析的泉州市居民点分布特征研究

从泉州市居民地图斑提取居民点分布图,构建居民点空间分布的泰森多边形,统计泉州市8个县市居民点分布的泰森多边形面积的变异系数（CV值）,结合人口密度图分析泉州市居民点的空间分布特征,进一步研究高程、坡度、道路3个因素对泉州市居民点空间分布的影响。研究结果显示,石狮市居民点呈随机分布模式,其它7个县市居民点均呈集群分布模式,总体上属于集群分布;居民点趋于分布在高程低,坡度平缓,距离道路较近,交通运输便利的地带。     

基于IMU惯性传感器的防波堤护面块体位姿变化测量研究

防波堤护面块体是防波堤上抵御波浪冲击的重要构件,受波浪冲击时会发生摇摆甚至造成破坏。采用IMU惯性传感器测量护面块体受波浪作用规律。根据惯性导航系统中坐标系转换原理,将IMU惯性传感器安放在护面块体上并放置在3种不同水线位置上进行试验,对IMU惯性传感器获取的角速度信号进行处理得到冲击速度、碰撞数。试验结果表明,在水线z/D_n=-2处的碰撞数要比在水线z/D_n=0和z/D_n=2要大,最大冲击速度发生在水线z/D_n=0处。通过以上测量参数可为块体防护提供定量评价。     

陕西省商业银行网点分布的时空演化及影响因素研究

基于中国银保监会公开披露的陕西省商业银行网点数据,通过空间自相关、多元线性回归等方法,从市级、县级层面分析2000、2010、2020年末商业银行网点分布在陕西省的时空演化特征及影响因素。结果表明：自2000年开始,陕西省商业银行网点分布呈现出显著的全局空间自相关;经过近20年的发展,逐渐呈现出以西安市为地区绝对核心,各地级市辖区为区域次中心的空间分布格局;地区人口规模、规模以上企业数量以及城区面积是影响商业银行网点布局的最显著因素。据此提出相关建议：商业银行应保持在地区中心设置网点;适当减少在人口规模较小、规模以上企业数量较少、城区面积较小的区域设置网点;商业银行应在服务实体经济的同时,找到不同时期内影响自身布局的关键因素,以应对市场化挑战。     

海上双方位非重复性时移地震响应研究及应用

时移地震是剩余油挖潜最直接有效的技术手段,中国大多数老油田包括南海东部惠州A油田并没有实施时移地震采集。为了弄清已经进入特高含水期、高采出程度开发后期惠州A油田油水分布及运动规律,在已经正交采集一次三维老资料和二次三维新资料的条件下,以数学运算方法对一次三维和二次三维资料实施双方位非重复性时移地震处理,达到了减少时移地震采集成本投入和预测剩余油分布的目的。经过钻井证实,剩余油预测结果与钻探结果吻合,该方法可供海上油田推广借鉴。     

The government revenue and government expenditure nexus: empirical evidence from nine Asian countries

The nexus between government revenue and government expenditure has been an important topic in public economics. In this paper, we investigate evidence for cointegration and causality between government revenue and government expenditure for nine Asian countries. We use the recently developed bounds testing approach to cointegration and the conventional F-test to examine Granger causality. Our empirical results suggest that for three out of the nine countries government revenue and government expenditure are cointegrated. Our results on the direction of causation are mixed: (a) for Indonesia, Singapore, Sri Lanka in the short-run and for Nepal in both the short- and long-run we find support for the tax-and-spend hypothesis; (b) Indonesia and Sri Lanka are in conformity with the spend-and-tax hypothesis in the long-run; and (c) for other countries there is evidence of neutrality.     

包容性发展与老龄者宜居城市建设

包容性发展的内涵强调以人为本,其核心价值契合了宜居城市建设理念。宜居,是城市建设的重要理念和基础条件,包容性是宜居城市的重要指标之一。人口老龄化对宜居城市建设提出新要求,要实现老有所居、老有所乐、老有所求、老有所养等价值,有必要探讨城市老龄者公共服务的跟进、老年人居住政策以及环境的协调发展。宏观层面加强老龄者宜居的城市大环境建设,实现老年人生活便利化、公共安全保障、居住保障;中观层面重视社区建设,完善社区养老服务功能;微观层面进行老龄者居室无障碍化建设。同时,需要政府转变城市管理观念,在城市系统建设及微观领域应对老龄问题加强政策指导和调控,加强城市为老服务信息化建设,不断充实城市养老助老服务人才保障,并调动家庭和社会力量承担共同责任。     

Testing a Model of the UK by the Method of Indirect Inference

We use the method of indirect inference to test a full open economy model of the UK that has been in forecasting use for three decades. The test establishes, using a Wald statistic, whether the parameters of a time-series representation estimated on the actual data lie within some confidence interval of the model-implied distribution. Various forms of time-series representation that could deal with the UK’s various changes of monetary regime are tried; two are retained as adequate. The model is rejected under one but marginally accepted under the other, suggesting that with some modifications it could achieve general acceptability and that the testing method is worth investigating further.

FDI, exports, and GDP in East and Southeast Asia—Panel data versus time-series causality analyses

Using time-series and panel data from 1986 to 2004, this paper examines the Granger causality relations between GDP, exports, and FDI among China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand, the eight rapidly developing East and Southeast Asian economies. After reviewing the current literature and testing the properties of individual time-series data, we estimate the VAR of the three variables to find various Granger causal relations for each of the eight economies. We found each country has different causality relations and does not yield general rules. We then construct the panel data of the three variables for the eight economies as a group and then use the fixed effects and random effects approaches to estimate the panel data VAR equations for Granger causality tests. The panel data causality results reveal that FDI has unidirectional effects on GDP directly and also indirectly through exports, and there also exists bidirectional causality between exports and GDP for the group. Our results indicate that the panel data causality analysis has superior results over the time-series causality analysis. Economic and policy implications of our analyses are then explored in the conclusions.     

私人资本主导生产和分配及其财产权问题研究

人的生存和发展被设定为资本收益最大化的条件,是私人资本主导社会生产和社会分配以及二者结合的最大特点,这样必然出现:(1)获得生存和发展保障的只是一个特定的群体;(2)获得的保障有限;(3)要以牺牲部分人生存和发展保障为代价;(4)要以牺牲当代人和未来人生存和发展条件为代价。私人资本占有社会生产成果需要设计特别的财产权。资产阶级经济学的产权理论把剥削和占有的行为掩藏起来,让资本可以通吃其他生产要素的分配权。以私人财产面目掩盖着的私人资本,由于其占有其他生产要素收益权的产权关系不合理地扩展了私人财产本身应有的产权关系,其收益权的保护需要根据实际情况来确定。长期以来,在不合理的经济学理论引导下,社会生产和社会分配以及二者的结合以资本收益最大化为原则,人类社会生产发展以保障人生存和发展为目的被以资本收益最大化为目的取代,社会生产发展的目的和手段出现了不应该出现的倒置。资本家阶级原本只应该为社会生产的发展服务,为保障人的生存和发展服务,而不是要社会生产的发展或人的生存和发展为他们获取资本收益最大化服务。事实上,如果我们始终把资本家阶级看成是与社会生产的发展不可分割的部分,他们就是与社会生产发展过程有机组合起来的一个优秀群体,就如同是在社会生产发展过程中不可或缺的劳动者一样,参与社会生产的目的都是为了保障人的生存和发展。这样的优秀群体中的每一个人,必然、也应该会是真正自由而全面发展的人。     

Introduction to income inequalities and redistribution in china

This special section presents the main findings about long-run trends in inequality in China and its driving factors as they emerge from a country case study carried out under a UNU-WIDER supported project.¹ Special focus in the umbrella project were on three issues: (i) the role of earnings inequality and its determinants; (ii) the role of top incomes when administrative records or other sources can be combined with household surveys; and (iii) the redistributive impact of public policies. Main findings of the project including those for China results were presented in a special panel during the UNU-WIDER Think Development – Think WIDER development conference held in Helsinki in September 2018.²

1. Motivation

Inequality has once again emerged as a major issue in economic development across the developed and developing world, and addressing this challenge is key in the UN Sustainable Development Agenda. The UNU-WIDER conference on Mapping the Future of Development Economics held in Helsinki in September 2016³ led to the formulation of a project to study inequality in five major developing countries accounting for more than 40 per cent of the world’s population. UNU-WIDER implemented these studies under its Inequality in the Giants project,⁴ designed as part of a broader international effort to shed light on a set of new questions on between-country and within-country inequalities, by generating integrated datasets and applying a consistent methodology to investigate the determinants of inequality dynamics in some of the world’s largest economies. China was included among the five case countries, and the effort included both a series of papers on China, produced under the coordination of Professor Shi Li and various workshops and meetings. Coming to grips with inequality in China is an obvious priority for anyone interested in trends in global inequality; and the present special section contains five key papers produced in the context of the UNU-WIDER project and subsequently accepted for publication by the China Economic Review.

2. Content of the special section

The five papers on inequality in China presented in this special section cover different topics and jointly illustrate a key set of important themes in the recent evolution of China’s income distribution.The opening study by Luo, Li, and Sicular (LLS) provides an overview and analysis of the long-term evolution of inequality in China, while the next three papers — on urban wage inequality, public transfers, and top incomes — each illustrates and delves more deeply into important aspects of the broader trends in inequality.What are the main findings of these papers? The core finding is that inequality in China rose markedly from the 1980s through the early 2000s; only since 2008 has the upward trend stopped or reversed. LLS report and examine the underpinnings of this core finding, using the five waves of the China Household Income Project surveys conducted during 1988-2013. This paper also finds a considerable, ongoing reduction in rural poverty, and a poverty decomposition analysis indicates that this poverty reduction was mostly due to income growth rather than redistribution in rural areas.The second paper by Gustafsson and Wan (GW) is on urban wage inequality from 1988 to 2013 and it sheds further light on the changes in the distribution of wage earnings. The authors highlight that average wages have grown rapidly and that wage inequality increased until 2007. Moreover, age has become weaker and education stronger related with wage. Importantly, the gender wage gap once small widened rapidly between 1995 and 2007, and workers in foreign owned firm and the state sector enjoy a wage premium.While wages are the most important component of income, it is only part of the inequality story. One important additional question is the role of government taxes and transfers. Since the early 2000s, China has embarked on a major effort to put in place a universal social safety net. The study by Cai and Yue (CY), which is the third paper, assess the consequences of these efforts. Their key conclusions include that the same public policy may produce different redistributive implications. Moreover, if the government keeps increasing the social security transfer scale without changing its distribution, then inequality will increase in China. In addition, formal-sector pension takes up the biggest share and is the most un-equalizing sub-item of all social security transfers; and related to the first paper in the special section they argue that the government should spend more on Dibao and rural residents pension to reduce inequality.Arguably, income inequality measured using household survey data understates actual inequality because surveys have difficulty in capturing top incomes. In the Chinese case, concerns about such bias have increased in the past ten years due to the expansion of private wealth and growing numbers of super-rich. The fourth paper by Li, Li, and Wan (LLW) is on top incomes in China and it attempts to correct for this bias using income information for the Chinese super-rich from various sources. They conclude that the Gini coefficient of income inequality increases substantially when samples of top incomes are incorporated.Finally, Gradín and Wu (GW) analyse in the fifth and final study the distribution of income and expenditure in China in a telling comparative perspective with India. Both countries represent two extreme cases in the relationship of inequality using both wellbeing indicators. It emerges that the joint distribution of income and expenditure differs between China and India because there is a higher prevalence of people with a large mismatch between their ranks in income and consumption in India, especially in rural areas, and particularly amongst those reporting low income and high expenditure. The main compositional effects identified are the different demographic and geographical composition of the countries’ populations, mostly the smaller households (especially in rural areas) and the higher level of urbanization in China than in India. The lack of consistency of cross-country comparisons based on income or expenditure calls for the use of hybrid inequality measures combining data on both provided they are available in the same survey.

3. Concluding remarks

The studies brought together in this special section provide telling insights about the trends in inequality in China from which scholars and policy makers can learn a great deal. In a global perspective, further increases in China’s mean income and wealth, both now above the global means, will begin to raise global between-country inequality. This is important in and of itself. Moreover, while we cannot expect that all the world’s poorest countries will follow the same path as China considering that the initial conditions and the international context they face will be very different, the experiences from China do reinforce the observation that much can be done by policy to influence inequality outcomes. In particular, and as argued by Gradin, Leibbrandt, & Tarp, 2020 (forthcoming):“well-functioning labour markets that promote job-creation, decent pay and social inclusion, removing any legal or de facto discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity or place of origin, providing equal access to human and physical capital, and empowering the most disadvantaged population groups, are a key driver of increased equality”.These insights also emerge clearly from the five China studies in this special section.     

Capital markets and legal development: The China case

Recent research establishes a significant positive correlation between law and finance (and hence economic growth), restarting a debate on the “law matters” thesis. However, which way the causality goes is still not clear. The purpose of this paper is to use the ongoing reform experience of China, especially its capital market experience, to examine the direction of causality. First, we show that China's recent experience is largely consistent with Coffee's [Yale Law Journal 111 (2001, October)] “crash-then-law” interpretation of this correlation. Indeed, it is the large and clearly defined constituency of investors that has been a key driving force behind much of the recent legal progress. The rights and economic interests of this constituency have fundamentally challenged the traditional emphasis of the Chinese legal culture on administrative and criminal sanctions, but not on civil litigation law. Second, we compare the different contributions to legal change made by the stock market and the consumer product markets. We argue that capital markets are perhaps the most conducive to the formation of a politically powerful constituency and hence more aggressive legal change, because of (1) the higher degree of commonality among interested parties and (2) immediately measurable and tangible damages. These two characteristics not only allow investors to identify with each other more easily, but also create an ideal basis for more debate in the media, which in turn promotes the development of a legal culture.     

Some Reflections on the Interactions between the Bank of England's Forecasts and the MPC's Policy Decisions

This paper makes three main points. First, whereas the Monetary Policy Committee's forecasts of inflation and output growth in the UK are comparatively accurate, they cannot forecast deviations around trend, except at short horizons. Second, this is primarily because they adjust policy, the short-term interest rate, to drive inflation/output back to trend at their forecast horizon. This is not apparent when using a Taylor-rule using ex post forecasts, since these are published after taking account of policy changes. I use a rule of thumb to re-engineer estimates of the ex ante forecasts, upon which the policy decision was based. Also, because of the lengthy lags in the transmission mechanism, Central Bank decision-makers relate their interest decisions, not to current variables, but to forecast values for future inflation and output, with a forward-looking interest rate reaction function of the form:

“凿空之旅”泽万民:“一带一路”对外直接投资如何提高劳动收入份额

文章基于2003-2016年中国上市公司数据,采用倾向得分匹配和双重差分法（PSM-DID）探讨"一带一路"沿线对外直接投资与母国劳动收入份额之间的因果关系。实证发现,企业对外直接投资长期内整体上提高了职工的工资份额。考虑企业所处地区、行业和劳动者的异质性后,结论仍然稳健。具体而言,企业通过对外直接投资的逆向技术溢出提高了创新能力、研发投入和全要素生产率,从而提高了母国职工工资份额。此外,企业的技术进步具有高技能劳动力的偏向性,母国高技能劳动者的工资份额在企业对外直接投资中得以显著提升,但对于母国低技能劳动者的工资份额影响不显著。文章研究发现"一带一路"沿线对外直接投资对母国劳动收入份额的影响机制和具体效应提供了微观证据。     

杠杆率的持续性与溢出效应:基于四部门的实证研究

文章采用TVP-VAR模型系统考察了我国非金融企业部门、金融部门、居民部门、政府部门四部门杠杆分别对总产出和资产价格波动的时变影响，从产出效应和潜在风险两方面实证检验了各部门杠杆率的可持续性。研究发现：杠杆率过快增长会加重资产价格波动，使金融不稳定性上升，削弱杠杆率对产出增长的促进作用。当前，非金融企业部门、政府部门、居民部门杠杆对产出仍有较显著的正向影响，而金融部门杠杆上升对产出的正向影响最小，对资产价格波动的正向影响最大。进一步，文章实证研究了杠杆率变动在部门间的信息溢出，发现政府部门加杠杆将显著推升全社会杠杆率，金融部门杠杆率上升对非金融企业部门杠杆有挤出作用，居民部门杠杆则可以分担部分非金融企业和政府部门的过剩杠杆。因此，当前应优先调控金融部门杠杆，减少资金在金融体系内空转套利，其他三个部门则应保持杠杆率总量的平稳。研究结论对于宏观金融稳定和结构性去杠杆政策的实施有重要的实践意义。