ARV Treatment and Time Allocation to Household Tasks: Evidence from Kenya

Using longitudinal survey data collected over a period of two years, this paper examines the impact of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment on the time allocated to various household tasks by treated HIV-positive patients and their household members. We study outcomes such as time devoted to housework, firewood and water collection, as well as care-giving and care-seeking. As treatment improves the health and productivity of patients, we find that female patients in particular are able to increase the amount of time they devote to water and firewood collection. This increased productivity of patients coupled with large decreases in the amount of time they spend seeking medical care leads to a reduced burden on children and other household members. We find evidence that boys and girls in treated patients' households devote less time to housework and other chores. These results suggest that the provision of ARV treatment generates a wide variety of benefits to households in resource-poor settings.     

Household Financial Savings Mobilisation: Empirical Evidence from Uganda

Panel data are used to examine household savings behaviour inUganda and the part that is played by formal financial institutionsin mobilising those savings. We show that the probability ahousehold will acquire a deposit instrument from a financialinstitution increases significantly for both rural and urbanhouseholds with improvements in several factors. Those factorsinclude the level of information that is made available to thehousehold, the degree of household access to the financial institution,the level of education of the head of household and the densityof financial institutions in the area where the household islocated. Among those households that report holding bank savingsdeposits, the level of net deposits is positively influencedby increases in the availability of credit facilities, lowertransaction costs (as reflected by the quality of financialservices provided by the institution) and higher permanent income.Relatively higher real rates of return on physical assets andhigher transaction costs (due to reduced accessibility) bothhave significant negative effects on the level of net depositsheld by households.     

教育对地区内收入差距的贡献:来自上海微观数据的考察

作为人力资本的一个度量,教育对于收入差距的贡献一直受到广泛的关注,但却研究不够.本文借助上海市1431户家庭的微观数据,估计了一个包含教育变量的收入决定函数,然后在基于回归分析的收入差距分解框架内,运用最新发展起来的夏普里值过程(Shapley Value Approach),分解出了教育对于收入差距的贡献大小.通过比较发现,与地区间差距的情形不同,教育对于地区内收入差距而言是最重要的影响因素.     

社会网络与城镇居民的正规和非正规借贷:来自国家统计局城调队样本的证据

基于来自国家统计局的16个省市2006-2014年的城镇住户面板数据,本文研究社会网络对城镇家庭的正规借款和非正规借款是否都具有因果效应。在利用工具变量解决了社会网络的内生性问题后,本文的研究结果显示:社会网络对家庭借款之和、正规借款和非正规借款均具有显著的正向影响;此外,与正规借款相比,社会网络对非正规借款的影响更大。本文的实证结果表明,社会网络能够发挥社会担保作用并增加家庭的借款金额,这一结果有助于我们理解社会网络作为一种非正规制度在发展中国家城市信贷市场中的积极作用,同时还意味着中国城镇金融市场有继续完善的空间。     

Determinants of Government Aid to Katrina Survivors: Evidence from Survey Data

We analyze survey data from Mississippi coastal communities where Katrina made its final landfall. Logistic regressions indicate that government aid is helpful in dealing with one- to two-month economic disruption and long-term rebuilding but is less helpful with regard to short-term rebuilding and mitigating longer-term disruption. Our analysis (including a basic risk assessment) finds evidence that individuals receiving government aid and/or having a disability predisaster are likely to incur severe economic hardship postdisaster and that individuals with greater predisaster economic and/or social network capital seem to be less at risk. Our results underscore the importance of housing in the resumption of basic economic activity.     

Government Expenditures and Revenues: Evidence from Asymmetric Modeling

In this article, we examine the relationship between U.S. federal revenues and expenditures while relaxing the assumption of a symmetric adjustment process underlying the conventional cointegration and error correction model. Threshold autoregression and momentum threshold autoregression models are used to ascertain the empirical link between the two variables of the budgetary process. Our results suggest that revenues and expenditures are cointegrated and that the adjustment process of the budgetary disequilibrium is asymmetric. The application of the asymmetric error correction model indicates that revenues and expenditures respond to the long-run requirements of the budgetary balance only when the budget is worsening.     

Mobile Payment and Informal Business: Evidence from China's Household Panel Data

This paper uses household panel data to explore the impact of mobile payments on China's household business activity. Using a difference‐in‐difference fixed effect specification, I find that mobile payment users are more likely to operate small‐scale and self‐employed informal businesses. The impact of using mobile payment primarily derives from the transition of agricultural families to business owners and the development of informal businesses. The paper illustrates an associated increase in employment and income for family members, with more pronounced effects on low‐income and rural households. It also provides prima facie evidence of the increase in fund transfers, which is important for risk sharing that informal businesses may encounter.     

政府控制、政府干预与管理者自利——基于财务困境视角的经验研究

本文以中国上市公司为样本,研究政府控制、政府干预对财务困境公司管理者自利行为的影响。研究发现,政府干预程度较低的地区,发生财务困境时管理者明显节制了自身的自利行为;但在政府干预较严重的地区,财务困境公司在职消费的倾向加重。在非政府控制的公司中,发生财务困境时管理者没有收敛其自利行为;与之相比,政府为实际控制人的财务困境公司在职消费与超常薪酬显著降低。上述结果表明,制度环境层面上的政府干预干扰了公司外部治理机制,从而加重了困境公司管理者代理问题,而在政府控制的困境公司,管理者则面临着较强的制度规范和行政约束。     

Farm technology and technical efficiency: Evidence from four regions in China

In this paper we fit stochastic frontier production functions to data of Chinese farms grouped into each of four regions—North, Northeast, East, and Southwest—over 1995–1999. These frontier production functions are shown to have statistically different structures, and the elasticities provide some evidence of diminished marginal products of chemical inputs in the East and capital services in the North and Southwest. Labor has a low elasticity except in the North. Standardized technical efficiency scores are estimated for the farms and are shown to have the same structure across regions and to be related to the age of the household head, land fragmentation, and the village migration ratio, controlling for year effects and village or regional fixed effects.     

资产财富和居民消费——来自中国省际面板数据的经验证据

随着双循环发展战略的提出,如何提升我国居民消费成为研究热点。与已有研究不同,文章首先从省际视角研究了居民消费行为的影响因素,证实了金融资产和住房资产分别对消费产生的促进作用和抑制作用,且金融资产的促进作用大于住房资产的抑制作用。其次,文章探讨了两种资产对不同种类消费品的影响,金融资产增加主要促进教育娱乐医疗等改善性消费,住房资产增加则主要抑制基本品消费。最后,文章对不同省份居民消费的影响因素进行异质性分析,发现金融资产对消费的促进作用随收入、资产增加先上升后下降,而住房资产对消费的抑制作用随收入、资产增加先上升后下降,金融资产和住房资产在东部地区影响小于西部地区,且受区域教育、人口和收入结构影响。综上来看,提升居民收入水平,改善居民收入结构,控制房价过度上涨,改善资本市场在资产分配中的作用,加大政府在教育、医疗、养老等公共服务方面的投入能够有效改善家庭资产结构,提升居民消费水平。     

WIC Participation and Relative Quality of Household Food Purchases: Evidence from FoodAPS

We examine the effect of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on the quality of household food purchases using the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) and propensity score matching. A healthy purchasing index (HPI) is used to measure nutritional quality of household food purchases. WIC foods explain the improvement in quality of food purchases, not self‐selection of more nutrition‐conscious households into the program. The improvement in purchase quality was driven entirely by WIC participating households who redeemed WIC foods during the interview week. There was no significant difference between WIC participants who did not redeem WIC foods and eligible nonparticipants. In this sample, there is no evidence that lack of access to clinics has adverse effects on participation nor is there evidence that HPI depends on supermarket access. A supervised machine learning process supports our main conclusion on the importance of WIC foods.     

中国农村地区消费收敛的证据:家庭调查数据

本文的目的在于提出研究消费收敛的经济模型，将模型应用到中国的一系列数据中；并且讨论研究结果的各种含义。本论文的主要发现有(a)全部谷物、精细谷物、食用油、家禽、水产品和糖证实为条件收敛；(b)动物脂肪和红色肉食品是消费分散；(c)收入增长的不平衡和市场的不发达是消费收敛的障碍；(d)收敛商品的收敛速度比较慢。     

Household appliance ownership and income inequality: Evidence from micro data in China

As the residential sector is becoming increasingly important in the total energy consumption and appliance ownership is a significant but under-examined driver, this study investigates the relationship between income inequality and appliance ownership using panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). We find that income inequality has negative impacts on appliance penetration rate across specifications, except for the initial development stage. On average, households start adopting air conditioners at a threshold of over 60,000 (2011 RMB) based on annual income, much higher than TV, fridge and washer (8500–9000 RMB). The empirical results validate the S-shape curve of appliance established in the literature. To understand the magnitude of the impact and policy implications, we further simulate the impact of poverty alleviation and the penetration paths under inclusive versus exclusive income growth. Our results demonstrate that current poverty line is too low to achieve appliance adoption – a signal for modern life-styles. In addition, a more inclusive growth path could lead to much higher penetration for regions that have relatively low growth rate.