Compensating Wage Differentials with Unemployment: Evidence from China

We estimate the economic value of mortality risk in China using the compensating-wage-differential method. We find a positive and statistically significant correlation between wages and occupational fatality risk. The estimated effect is largest for unskilled workers. Unemployment reduces compensation for risk, which suggests that some of the assumptions under which compensating wage differentials can be interpreted as measures of workers’ preferences for risk and income are invalid when unemployment is high. Workers may be unwilling to quit high-risk jobs when alternative employment is difficult to obtain, violating the assumption of perfect mobility, or some workers (e.g., new migrants) may be poorly informed about between-job differences in risk, violating the assumption of perfect information. These factors suggest our estimates of the value per statistical life (VSL) in China, which range from approximately US$30,000 to US$100,000, may be biased downward. Alternative estimates adjust for heterogeneity of risk within industry by assuming that risk is concentrated among low-skill workers. These estimates, which are likely to be biased downward, range from US$7,000 to US$20,000.      

中小企业商业信用融资区域差异研究

商业信用融资的发展为解决我国中小企业融资问题提供了新的方向。为了更好地利用商业信用融资方式,文章运用面板数据方法对关中—天水经济区和珠江三角洲经济区的中小企业商业信用融资使用情况做了比较分析,发现中小企业商业信用融资使用水平具有区域差异性,并进一步分析了造成差异的原因及其影响程度。文章认为中小企业商业信用融资受到环境、组织和个人三个层面因素的影响,在不同的地区,这些影响因素具有不同的表现。     

略论生态消费品价格

生态消费品价格是生态消费发展研究的重要理论命题之一。在生态消费品与普通消费品并存的中国经济转型期,如何科学而合理地制定生态消费品与普通消费品之间的比价关系和差价关系显得尤为重要。本文重点探讨：生态消费品价格的理论基础;生态消费品价格在国际运行中的决定因素;中国推行生态消费品价格的对策措施。     

Consumer Inventory and Demand for Storable Goods: New Evidence from a Consumer Survey

In this study, I provide new evidence on consumer inventory from a unique survey on the purchase and inventory of a storable product. I confirm that the predictions regarding the correlations between the key variables of purchase probability, purchase quantity and inventory derived from the standard dynamic models of consumer inventory are consistent with the data. Furthermore, I find that the amount of daily consumption varies within a household across time and depends on inventory holding. The evidence does not conform to a constant consumption rate, which studies often assume for tractability.     

Decomposing Gender Wage Differentials Using Quantile Regression: Evidence from the Lebanese Banking Sector

This paper investigates gender pay inequality in the labor market of a developing country. Our empirical investigation uses data derived from a sample of employees in the Lebanese banking sector for the years 2008 and 2014. Using Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, the results reveal that the unexplained component of the gender wage gap, attributed to discrimination, represents a substantial share of the total gap. A surprising result is that the contribution of human capital to the gender wage gap is negative, suggesting that wage discrimination is the main explanation for the gap. Utilizing the Machado-Mata methodology to decompose the wage gap across the entire wage distribution, our findings indicate that the unexplained component of the raw gender wage gap is more pronounced at the low and middle ranges of the distribution. However, the explained component dominates at the top of the distribution, suggesting that earnings gaps are fully explained by observed characteristics.     

Calculating the Candy Price Index: A Classroom Inflation Experiment

In this classroom experiment, students develop a price index based on candy-purchasing decisions made by members of their class. They use their index to practice calculating inflation rates and to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the consumer price index (CPI). Instructors can use the experiment as an introduction to the topic of inflation and how it is measured. The exercise also provides a concrete example of the sources of bias in the CPI, promoting discussion of the measures the Bureau of Labor Statistics has taken to reduce bias. The experiment, including follow-up discussion, fits into a 50-minute class period. The authors and other professors have used the exercise in introductory and intermediate macroeconomics courses, in classes of 10 to 135 students.     

区域后发优势理论:来自中国的证据

后发优势理论在忽略本国各地区差异的前提下经常被运用于先起国与后起国之间的讨论,但后起国区域间差距的不断扩大却是不可回避的事实.本文在引入区域型后发优势和劣势概念的基础上,通过两个理论化模型把后发优势理论运用于区域经济领域来分析区域间发展的不平衡问题.在封闭的条件下,通过区域后发优势的发挥可以促进后起国落后地区的长期发展.但在开放的条件下,区域型后发优势的发挥会受到制度和市场的双重抑制,因此只有在后起国的发达区域彻底追赶上先发国之后,不发达区域才能获得长时间的快速发展,并通过对中国区域发展进程的实证考察印证该理论.     

Exchange Rate Regimes and Inflation: Evidence from India

Abstract

Exchange rate stability is crucial for inflation management as a stable rate is expected to reduce domestic inflation pressures through a ‘policy discipline effect’ – restricting money supply growth, and a ‘credibility effect’ – inducing higher money demand and reduced velocity of money. Alternatively, the ‘impossibility trillema’ of Mundell (1961a Mundell, R. A. (1961a). Capital mobility and stabilization policy under fixed and flexible exchange rates. Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 29, 475–485. doi: 10.2307/139336[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 1961b Mundell, R. A. (1961b). Flexible exchange rates and employment policy. Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 27, 509–517. doi: 10.2307/139437[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) predicts that in the presence of an open capital account, a stable exchange rate may lead to lack of control on monetary policy and, hence, higher inflation. Using a monetary model of Inflation, this paper investigates the impact of the ‘empirically-claimed’ de facto stable exchange rate regime on inflation in India during different sub-periods of exchange rate stability. The results show that the impact of exchange rate regime on inflation is not visible in the Indian case, which could be because of the offsetting sterilization policy undertaken by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) during expansionary money supply growth resulting from its large-scale intervention to even out exchange rate volatility.     

Market efficiency and international diversification: Evidence from India

This study evaluates one of the most important emerging markets, India (Bombay Stock Exchange and Indian National Exchange), for its efficiency and for its potential to offer diversification benefits to international investors. Market-wide tests include; 1) contemporaneous relationship, 2) Granger type causality and 3) day-of-the-week effect. Tests on individual Indian stocks include: 1) panel estimation of Granger causality, 2) stock-by-stock estimation of Granger causality and 3) runs test. In sum, Indian markets are well integrated with the international equity markets, a characteristic that lowers the international diversification benefits. While day-of-the-week effect is an international spillover, it may be possible to predict individual Indian stocks' returns through causality with international equity markets and through momentum trading techniques.     

Child gender and parental borrowing: Evidence from India

Discrimination against girls is well-documented, especially in Asia. We show that women try to level the playing field for their daughters by taking on debt. But wealth asymmetry between mothers and fathers perpetuates gender inequality across generations.     

Electricity provision and industrial development: Evidence from India

I investigate the effect of electricity provision on industrialization using a panel of Indian states for 1965-1984. To address the endogeneity of investment in electrification, I use the introduction of a new agricultural technology intensive in irrigation (the Green Revolution) as a natural experiment. As electric pumpsets are used to provide farmers with cheap irrigation water, I use the uneven availability of groundwater at the start of the Green Revolution to predict divergence in the expansion of the electricity network and, ultimately, to quantify the effect of electrification on industrial outcomes. I present a series of tests to show that the electrification channel remains the most important one among alternative explanations that could link groundwater availability to industrialization directly or indirectly. Results show that an increase in one standard deviation in the measure of electrification is associated with an increase of around 14% in manufacturing output for a state at the mean of the distribution.     

An Unequal Spatial Structure of Location and Price with Consumer Density*

This paper incorporates the interdependent relationship of firms and the increasing consumer density into a framework of spatial equilibrium analysis, and studies the location of firms and the price system on a plane market. As consumer density increases, symmetric equilibrium is established initially for the first- and the second-round entry of firms, but this equilibrium becomes unequal later for the third and the fourth rounds. This fact means that in spatial equilibrium, even if all firms sell identical goods on a plane market, mill prices and market area sizes will differ.     

居民消费价格指数的关联维数实证研究

关联维数是相对简单的一种提取分维的方法,可以从实验数据中计算分维,具有一定的可操作性。根据分形理论对北京市居民消费价格指数在"九五"及"十五"期间的变化情况进行了研究,观察其分形特征,计算其关联维数,为以后预测居民消费价格指数及判断经济形势奠定基础。     

Child labor and the minimum wage: Evidence from India

This study examines how changes in the minimum wage affect child labor in India. The analysis uses repeated cross sections of India's NSSO employment data from 1983 to 2008 merged with data on state-level minimum wage rates. Theoretically, the impact of the minimum wage on child work could go either way, so empirical evidence from a country with high rates of child labor and a myriad of minimum wage laws across states and industries helps to lessen the ambiguity. Results indicate that regardless of gender, in urban areas, a higher minimum wage reduces child labor in household work. In rural areas a similar result applies for girls while household labor does rise for boys. The minimum wage has virtually no impact on child work outside of the home across urban and rural areas.     

An Empirical Investigation of Twin Deficits Hypothesis: Evidence from India

Journal of Quantitative Economics - The paper empirically examines the relationship between fiscal deficit and current account deficit in India for the period from 1970–1971 to...     

Price Competition and Consumer Externalities in a Vertically Differentiated Duopoly with Information Disparities

In this paper, we extend the model of vertical product differentiation to consider information disparities about quality differences and their effects on price competition. If uninformed consumers overestimate vertical differentiation, asymmetric information is a source of market power and informed consumers exert positive externalities on high quality product purchasers and negative externalities on low quality product purchasers. Such a result is consistent with the fact that information undermines brand. If uninformed consumers are skeptical, adverse selection issues arise and market demands may be perfectly inelastic to prices. With elastic demands equilibrium prices may be either distorted downwards or reflect real quality if the share of informed consumers is suffciently high. Therefore, with skeptical consumers firms may want either to signal quality or subsidize information provision.     

从消费者价格指数看我国宏观经济走势

随着美国次贷危机的爆发,预计2009年我国经济受全球经济危机影响加重、经济增长缓慢。文章通过价格指数研究来分析我国宏观经济走势,从价格指数的定义和指数上涨原因,到建立回归方程辅助分析,再次分析我国政府面对危机所做出的措施,进而分析我国经济情况,并对2009年我国的宏观经济形势做出预测。     

不同期限类型劳动合同的工资决定机制及差异——基于中国家庭住户收入调查数据的经验研究

文章利用2002年住户收入调查(CHIP)数据对我国不同期限类型劳动合同的工资决定机制及工资差异进行了经验研究。结果发现,长期劳动合同与短期劳动合同的工资差异符合补偿性工资差别理论,企业对没有签订劳动合同的员工存在工资歧视。排除特征因素和选择性因素,长期劳动合同工的工资比短期劳动合同工低42.84%,比无劳动合同员工高29.6%。文章研究表明:短期劳动合同没有对生产率表现出显著的负面影响,提升劳动合同签订率是比限制短期劳动合同使用更为合适的劳动政策。     

The effects of economic reforms on manufacturing dualism: Evidence from India

Dualism is a pervasive feature of the manufacturing sectors of less-developed countries, with large differences in productivity between the informal and the formal sectors. Policy distortions are viewed as an important factor behind the prevalence of manufacturing dualism. We examine whether tariff reforms, industrial de-licensing and the withdrawal of reservation of products for small firms implemented since the mid-1980s have had any effects on efficiency differentials between informal and formal firms in Indian manufacturing. We find strong evidence that economic reforms have exacerbated dualism by increasing the productivity differentials between the more efficient formal firms and the less efficient informal firms.     

The redistributive effects of political reservation for minorities: Evidence from India

We examine the impact of political reservation for disadvantaged minority groups on poverty. To address the concern that political reservation is endogenous, we take advantage of the state-time variation in reservation in state legislative assemblies in India generated by national policies that cause reservations to be revised and the time lags with which revised reservations are implemented. Using data on sixteen major Indian states for the period 1960-2000, we find that increasing the share of seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes significantly reduces poverty while increasing the share of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes has no impact on poverty. Political reservation for Scheduled Tribes has a greater effect on rural poverty than urban poverty, and appears to benefit people near the poverty line as well as those far below it.