劳动地理集中、产业空间与地区收入差距

本文基于新经济地理学模型,采用中国1990年、2000年和2007年的普查数据计算了31个省市的劳动集中度,并以此解释产业空间和地区收入差距的发展变化.文章发现:(1)人力资本集中是产业集聚形成的重要因素,人力资本集中度上升会提高地区的收入水平;(2)各省市的人力资本分布不均衡并有可能导致地区收入差距的进一步扩大.本文认为,人力资本存量差异是地区收入差距拉大的重要原因,促进劳动力充分流动、加快推进城市化建设是有效的应对之策.     

国际金融危机对各类人群收入分配影响

国际金融危机对中国经济增长产生了巨大影响,也必将对各类人群的收入分配产生不同程度的影响。与其他群体相比,尽管中国低收入群体收入受到国际金融危机的冲击较小,但是由于低收入群体收入水平低,抵御经济风险的能力差,金融危机对其影响仍然巨大。因此,文章提出要以罕见的金融危机为契机将我国的收入差距缩小到合理的范围,建议在当前形势下通过采取以下措施来调节收入分配:一是通过改变当前不合理的收入分配结构来扩大内需,促进经济增长;二是增加低收入阶层的收入,保障居民特别是低收入群体收入稳定;三是创造更多的就业岗位,通过就业实现收入保障;四是加大税收制度改革力度,调节收入分配差距;五是加大财政对民生领域的投入。     

基于区域差异的收入不平等影响因素分解：1999-2010年

地区经济发展不平衡导致经济增长和收入水平出现巨大差异。根据中国健康与营养调查（CHNS）数据,利用夏普里值分解法分析各种微观因素对居民收入差距的影响,并进一步定量分析各因素对不同区域收入差距的贡献程度。研究发现：1999—2010年,区域因素对居民收入差距的贡献显著并呈下降趋势;职业因素是导致居民收入差距最为主要且日益重要的因素,并且对不同区域居民收入差距均有重要影响;受教育程度、年龄对居民收入差距的贡献明显,对于不同区域内居民收入差距各因素贡献程度各不相同。     

山西省城乡居民收入差距分析

文章首先将山西省城镇居民收入水平与全国和湖南、湖北等中部省份相比较,再利用1989—2013年的山西省城乡居民收入数据,详细分析城乡收入比的变化情况,总结出导致山西省城乡收入差距较大的原因主要有:城乡"二元"经济体制依然存在、农村社会保障体系不完善和收入分配不合理。在此基础上,提出加快城镇化建设步伐、加大对农村农民转移支付力度和提高居民整体收入水平这三个方面建议来解决山西省城乡居民收入差距依然较大的问题。     

中国收入差距的走势和影响因素分析

中国收入差距在过去20年中持续扩大,对经济的持续增长、社会公正与稳定都提出了挑战。本文通过计量模型检验库兹涅茨曲线在中国是否存在,证明收入差距还有继续上升的明显趋势,但其下降阶段不能确证。同时模型分析发现有一系列因素对收入差距的扩大或缩小有重要影响。这包括经济增长方面的因素、收入再分配和社会保障、公共产品和基础设施,以及制度方面的因素。这说明有可能通过合理的政策调整来控制收入差距的继续扩大。文章讨论了这些发现的政策含义。     

教育、技术进步与农村收入差距——基于中国农村统计数据的分析

改革开放以来,在农村居民收入水平不断提高的同时,居民之间的收入差距也在不断拉大。农村居民受教育程度和农村机械化水平是影响农村居民收入差距的重要因素。因此,加大对农民的教育培训和农业技术普及力度是进一步提高农民收入,缩小居民收入差距的重要途径。     

司法制度、工资激励与反腐败:中国案例

现有研究表明,自20世纪90年代以来,中国的腐败没有得到有效遏制,其根本原因是什么?中国目前实施的反腐败策略效果如何?这些都是反腐败研究中必须关注的重要问题。本文利用中国1989—2006年省级面板数据,从立法、执法和工资激励等视角实证分析了中国反腐败策略的效果。文章发现,司法制度建设(增加立法数量和加大执法力度)能够显著减少腐败发生率;高薪养廉(增加公务员工资)对反腐败发挥了积极影响;预算外收入增加是导致腐败蔓延的原因之一。另外,司法制度(立法)在反腐败中的作用受到预算外收入的影响。     

城乡居民收入差距影响因素及其作用的再分析——基于“一连串事件”逻辑阐述的实证分析

文章基于"一连串事件"逻辑阐述的视角,通过构建多变量回归模型,对我国城乡居民收入差距影响因素及其作用进行了系统性的再分析。实证分析结果表明,影响我国城乡居民收入差距因素的作用大小依次序排序为:二元经济结构、城市化水平、经济增长水平、对外开放中资本流动性、金融发展规模、金融发展效率、农村物质存量水平、财政支出力度。这些因素可解释我国城乡居民收入差距的93.1%。二元经济结构对我国城乡居民收入差距的影响远大于其他因素的影响。     

我国城乡收入差距分析

城乡收入差距是城乡差距的一个重要表现,城乡收入差距越小,说明城乡一体化进程越快,反之,越慢。我国城乡收入差距过大是一个比较严重的问题。根据国际劳工组织的数据统计显示,绝大多数国家的城乡收入比值都小于1.6,只有三个国家的城乡收入比超过了2,其中就包括我国。因此缩小城乡收入差距刻不容缓,文章分析了我国城乡收入差距的现状和特征,利用1996-2011年我国29个省市自治区的面板数据,对影响我国城乡收入差距的因素进行了研究,认为影响我国城乡收入差距的因素主要有经济发展水平、国有经济占比、地方政府对经济的干预程度、地方政府财政支出中农业支出的比例以及城镇化水平等。文章结合实证结果对缩小城乡收入差距提供了相关建议。     

交通基础设施对农村居民地区间收入差距的影响

交通基础设施是助力我国全面建成小康社会的重要保障,尤其在推动我国农村经济均衡发展方面具有重要作用。为分析交通基础设施对农村居民地区间收入不平等的影响,选取我国23个省份作为研究区域,利用2010—2019年的社会经济数据,以农村居民地区间收入差距为被解释变量,公路网密度和铁路网密度为解释变量,建立固定效应模型。研究发现：公路发展会扩大地区间收入差距,铁路发展会缩小地区间收入差距;地理区位因素会对结果产生异质性影响,东部地区的铁路发展对农村居民地区间收入差距的影响并不显著。     

Inequality,Redistribution, and the Financial Crisis: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts for Austria

In this paper, we provide novel findings regarding the distributional effects of the global financial and economic crisis and how redistribution operated during this time, using detailed data for Austria. We construct distributional national accounts for the period 2004–2016 by combining survey data, tabulated tax data, and detailed national accounts data. The comprehensive data set allows us to analyze the distribution of macroeconomic income growth across the income distribution and to explore the evolution of income inequality over time. Our results suggest that as the distribution of growth changed over time, this had considerable repercussions for inequality, which started to decline at the very beginning of the economic and financial crisis, but increased again after 2012. We find that capital income largely determined both the level and the dynamics of income inequality. Government spending was found to play a key role for redistributive effects across the income distribution. In particular, in-kind transfers redistributed pre-tax income to a large extent. Our results show further that individuals with lower educational levels and younger individuals faced negative growth in pre-tax income over the years and also benefited considerably from redistribution.     

Corruption in space: A closer look at the world's subnations

Corruption levels differ not only between but also within countries. In this paper we analyze spatial interdependencies in corruption levels for a large sample of 1232 subnational regions from 81 countries. Based on a spatial autoregressive model, which controls for country-fixed effects and corrects for spatial autocorrelation in the error term, we find that a subnational region's corruption level is positively correlated with neighboring subnational regions' corruption levels. Extending the core model and allowing for heterogeneous spatial effects, we find that most spillovers among subnational regions occur within national borders. Moreover, in particular high income subnational regions and subnational regions with relative low corruption levels tend to spill in space. This is due to their high degree of connectivity in terms of economic, sociocultural and political exchange with other subnational regions. Our estimation results underline the importance to consider not only a subnational region's own characteristics, but also spatial interdependencies when implementing efficient anti-corruption policies at the local level.     

The role of human capital and innovation in economic development: evidence from post-Malthusian Prussia

The effect of human capital on growth involves multiple channels. On the one hand, an increase in human capital directly affects economic growth by enhancing labor productivity in production. On the other hand, human capital is an important input into R&D and therefore increases labor productivity indirectly by accelerating technological change. In addition, different types of human capital such as basic and higher education or training-on-the-job might play different roles in both production and innovation activities. We merge individual data on valuable patents granted in Prussia in the late nineteenth-century with county-level data on literacy, craftsmanship, secondary schooling, and income tax revenues to explore the complex relationship between various types of human capital, innovation, and income. We find that the Second Industrial Revolution can be seen as a transition period when it comes to the role of human capital. As in the preceding First Industrial Revolution, “useful knowledge” embodied in master craftsmen was related to innovation, especially of independent inventors. As in the subsequent twentieth century, the quality of basic education was associated with both workers’ productivity and firms’ R&D processes. In a final step, we show that literacy had also a negative effect on fertility which increased with innovation. In general, our findings support the notion that the accumulation of basic human capital was crucial for the transition to modern economic growth.     

Low-wage import competition and populist backlash: The case of Italy

This paper studies empirically the role of trade globalization in shifting the electoral base towards populism. We proxy the trade shock with swiftly rising import competition from China and compare voting patterns at the national parliamentary elections from 1992 to 2013 in about 8000 Italian municipalities differently exposed to the trade shock. We instrument import competition from China with Chinese export flows to other high-income countries and estimate the model in first differences. Our results indicate that trade globalization increases support for populist parties, as well as invalid votes and abstentionism. To rationalize these findings, we offer evidence that import competition worsens local labor market conditions – higher unemployment, lower income and durable consumption – and increases inequality. Finally, we point out that local public expenditure may play a role in mitigating the political consequences of the trade shock, arguably because it alleviates economic distress.     

Anti-corruption campaign in China: good news or bad news for firm value?

This article investigates the effects of an anti-corruption campaign on firm value by testing market reactions to the investigation of top local officials during the recent anti-corruption campaign in China. We find that the anti-corruption events are more likely to be bad news for the market values of local state-owned enterprises (SOEs) but good news for the market values of non-SOEs less dependent on political connections. Besides, anti-corruption events are also more likely to be bad news for firms in regulated industries or low-marketization regions but good news for firms in nonregulated industries or high-marketization regions.     

The effects of vertical and horizontal incentives on local tax efforts: evidence from China

Tax effort is a measure of a government’s effort to collect taxes. This study explores what impacts both vertical and horizontal incentives have on local governments’ tax efforts in China. For consistency with the literature, we first include typical economic and institutional factors in our analysis. We find that the effects of economic factors on local tax efforts are significant, but the effects of institutional factors tend to be weak. Fiscal decentralization, as a vertical incentive, has a significantly positive effect on tax efforts at the provincial level. Meanwhile, fiscal interaction, as a horizontal incentive, is also taken into account in a spatial specification to explain tax competition among local governments. The results show that local tax effort in China also depends on the horizontal incentive. Hence, to improve local tax effort, the central government should let the locals have more autonomy in collecting taxes and evaluate local tax effort by referring to tax collection in adjacent provinces simultaneously.     

税收努力、征税机构与税收增长之谜

本文运用省级面板数据研究了中国税收收入高速增长的影响因素,主要考察了经济基本面和征税努力水平对于税收收入的影响。我们利用成对样本(paired sampling)的数据结构,使用工具变量处理了税收努力度量误差带来的内生性问题,估计了国税和地税机构的征税努力对于税收增长的不同影响。这种模型设定的好处是既考虑到一个地区的国税和地税面对着同样的经济基本面,同时又可以识别两个机构征税努力的增收效应所存在的差异。我们发现,GDP增长对于税收的增长有接近45%的解释力,征管努力对税收收入也有重要的贡献,地税局税收努力水平的边际效应要高于国税局的边际效应。     

GROWTH, POVERTY, AND INEQUALITY IN LATIN AMERICA: A CAUSAL ANALYSIS, 1970–94

Taking advantage of consistent poverty and income inequality data for 12 Latin American countries between 1970 and 1994, we analyze the determinants of changes in the incidence of urban and rural poverty and in Gini coefficients over spells of years, stressing in particular the role of aggregate income growth. We find that income growth reduces urban and rural poverty but not inequality. We also find that income growth is more effective in reducing urban poverty if the levels of inequality and poverty are lower, and the levels of secondary education higher. We show that there is an asymmetry in the impact of growth on poverty and inequality, with recession having strong negative effects on both poverty and inequality. Since growth does not reduce inequality, economic cycles create ratchet effects on the level of inequality. However, post-structural adjustment growth is quite effective at reducing poverty, particularly if inequality is low.     

How does anti-corruption affect corporate innovation? Evidence from recent anti-corruption efforts in China

This paper investigates the effect of anti-corruption on the financing of and investing in innovation by using a detailed data set of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2015. We find that stronger anti-corruption efforts make firms more likely to acquire external funds, mainly the long-term debt. Moreover, we show that firms located in provinces with stronger anti-corruption efforts invest significantly more of their newly acquired funds in R&D and generate more patents. Further empirical tests suggest this positive and statistically significant effect almost comes entirely from the current massive anti-corruption campaign launched by President Xi Jinping since 2013. We further test two mechanisms regarding the corruption-innovation nexus: the expropriation hypothesis and the rent-seeking hypothesis. The results show that only firms without political connections, non-state owned enterprises (non-SOEs), firms operating in non-regulated industries and younger firms benefit from the stronger anti-corruption efforts, all supportive of the former mechanism.     

Religious adherence and county economic growth in the US

We estimate a Barro-type conditional convergence model using religious adherence data from the American Religious Data Archive to analyze independent effects of church adherence rates on economic growth in the United States at the county-level. Per capita income growth is modeled as a function of initial per capita income, initial human capital stock, and a set of control and related variables including religious adherence, religious diversity, and regional indicator variables. We also investigate the independent effects of three main denominations, namely Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Mainline Christians, on county economic growth. Our results indicate that the religious adherence in general is significantly greater than zero and not beneficial for US county income growth. We find mixed results for effects of various denominations.