The impact of growth and inequality on rural poverty in China

This paper analyzes the evolution of poverty in China from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, employing a version of Shapley decomposition tailored to unit-record household survey data. The changes in poverty trends are attributed to two proximate causes—income growth and shifts in income distribution. Different data sets, poverty lines, poverty measures, and equivalence scales are used to examine the robustness of the results. Potential biases arising from ignoring differential regional prices and inflation are also investigated. Notwithstanding some ambiguities in the results, it is consistently found that rural poverty increased in the second half of the 1990s and adverse distributional changes are the main cause. Journal of Comparative Economics 34 (4) (2006) 694–712.     

The role of China in the world economy: evidence from a global VAR model

Since the 1980s, China has experienced very high economic growth, and its share in global trade has increased rapidly. Currently, however, the Chinese economy is rebalancing, and its growth is slowing. This paper investigates the spillover effects on other countries of a negative demand shock and negative stock price shock in the Chinese economy. We apply a global vector autoregressive model, which enables us to model international linkages between countries. Our results show that a one per cent negative China GDP shock reduces global growth by 0.22% in the short run. We find that GDP shock affects emerging economies more strongly than advanced economies. We also show that a stock price shock affects only emerging economies and does not affect advanced economies.     

The reduction of the UK budget deficit: a human rights perspective

This paper contributes to new thinking in economics by employing a human rights perspective to examine the budget deficit reduction strategy of the UK coalition government, as set out in 2010 in the June budget and October Spending Review. Focusing on economic and social rights, the paper explains the human rights obligations of governments and key human rights principles. As examples of how they should be applied to examine the deficit reduction strategy, it examines the implications of the policy changes for child poverty and gender equality, and finds that in both cases there is evidence to suggest non-compliance with the human rights obligations of the UK government.     

Ulipristal acetate for pre-operative treatment of moderate-to-severe uterine fibroids in women of reproductive age in The Netherlands: cost minimization analysis and budget impact analysis

Objective: Ulipristal acetate has been found to be non-inferior to other pre-operative treatments of uterine fibroids, particularly leuprolide. The objective of this study was to assess the pharmacoeconomic profile of ulipristal acetate compared to leuprolide for the pre-operative treatment of moderate-to-severe uterine fibroids in women of reproductive age in The Netherlands. The analysis was performed and applied within the framework of the ulipristal acetate submission for reimbursement in 2012.

Methods: A decision model was developed to compare the total costs of ulipristal acetate compared to leuprolide, the standard care in The Netherlands. The target population of this study corresponded to the type of patients included in the PEARL II clinical trial; i.e. women of reproductive age requiring pre-operative treatment for uterine fibroids. Sensitivity analysis was implemented to assess uncertainties. Data regarding costs, effects, and other input parameters were obtained from relevant published literatures, the Dutch Healthcare Insurance Board, and expert opinion obtained by means of a panel of experts from several medical centers in The Netherlands.

Results: In The Netherlands, the total costs of ulipristal acetate and leuprolide were estimated at €4,216,027 and €4,218,095, respectively. The annual savings of ulipristal acetate were, therefore, estimated at €2,068. The major driver of this cost difference was the cost of administration for leuprolide. Sensitivity analyses showed that ulipristal acetate mostly remained cost-saving over a range of assumptions. The budget impact analysis indicated that the introduction of ulipristal acetate was estimated to result in cost savings in the first 3 years following the introduction. The results of this study were used in the decision on reimbursement of ulipristal acetate according to the Dutch Reference Pricing system in 2012.

Conclusion: Ulipristal acetate was cost saving compared to leuprolide and has the potential to provide substantial savings on the healthcare budget in The Netherlands.     

The effect of rural labor migration on poverty alleviation: a village-level study in China

The construction of the new socialist countryside is being carried out in China nowadays. Although lots of successful experience has been gotten, different problems occur in various regions yet. To analyze the relationships among rural labor migration, poverty alleviation and characteristics of migrants is important in considering the effect of rural labor migration on the construction of the new socialist countryside. Available sampling and typical case study are adopted and 236 questionnaires are collected from[bur villages in northwest GuangxL China, Daxin Lixin, Longhe and Yongchang. We analyze the rural labor migration status, characteristics of migrants, remittance situation and income, household income and the ratio of remittance income to total household income. A bout 2/3 of the households have migrants in surveyed villages. And nearly half of the migration households have only one fam- ily member as migrants in the four villages. The migrants mainly comprise male and the younger, with the education level of junior middte school and higher More than half of the migrants are employed in Guangdong Province. But the characteristics of migrants in Yongchang are more diverse. The rural labor migration in the village is extremely active and extensive. And over 60% of the household with family members as migrants have remittance income. The rate in Yongchang is extremely high (80%). And the income of households with migrants getting remittance income significantly higher than their counterparts. More than half of their income comes from remittance as far as the former kind of household is concerned And in Yongchang, the rate is nearly 80%. The conclusion is that rural labor migration is popular and extensive in lots of villages. And the migration and remittance play an important role in rural household income, especially in some poor villages. For this kind of village, the rural labor migration may be some "compulsory course" in rural development. And the rural labor emigration is an essential way in poverty al-leviation. This is the first step in the construction of the new socialist countryside.     

我国劳动力质量对数量的抑制效应——基于高校招生和人口出生率的省级空间面板分析

利用中国大陆31个省区2005—2019年空间面板数据,采用变异系数、探索性空间数据分析以及空间计量模型等方法分析高等教育招生和人口出生率的时空演进特征,以及劳动力质量对数量的抑制效应。研究发现:(1)高校招生的峰值省份和人口出生率的谷值省份高度重叠,两者的空间集聚特征和收敛性发展趋势明显。(2)高等教育扩招降低了人口出生率,即劳动力质量对数量存在抑制效应,且在高等教育资源富集的东部和中部地区作用最大。(3)家庭财富对生育率的影响呈现较大的区域差异,在我国整体层面和中西部地区以收入效应为主,在东部地区以替代效应为主。(4)公共教育经费支出有助于提高生育率,城镇化降低了中部和东部的生育率,一孩一孩半二孩等计划生育政策都对生育率产生抑制。     

The economic effects of restrictions on government budget deficits: imperfect private credit markets

Summary. The present paper is an extension of Ghiglino and Shell [7] to the case of imperfect consumer credit markets. We show that with constraints on individual credit and only anonymous (i.e., non-personalized) lump-sum taxes, strong (or “global”) irrelevance of government budget deficits is not possible, and weak (or “local”) irrelevance can hold only in very special situations. This is in sharp contrast to the result for perfect credit markets. With credit constraints and anonymous consumption taxes, weak irrelevance holds if the number of tax instruments is sufficiently large and at least one consumer's credit constraint is not binding. This is an extension of the result for perfect credit markets. Received: August 28, 2001; revised version: March 25, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" We thank Todd Keister, Bruce Smith, and two referees for helpful comments. Correspondence to: C. Ghiglino     

Expectation and satisfaction of rural tourism：a case study of Hainan,China

This study uses the rural tourist motivation scale to measure the motivations, expectations, and satisfaction of nearly 200 rural tourists in five areas of Hainan, China by importance-Performance Analysis （IPA） and factor analysis. The results show that the main motivation for participating in rural tourism is to be close to nature, improve family rela-tionship and relaxation. Tourists are highly satisfied with the landscape and pastoral views as well as the friendliness of the local people and hotels. The results also show that the sample people most care about easy parking and reasonable prices, and they expect ethnic festivals and farm life experiences. Besides the environment, facilities, recreational activities and psychological experience of rural tourism, the overall satisfaction is high. The results of this study can be used by local government leaders as well as the tourism industry to devise ways to promote and improve rural tourism.     

Land transfer in rural China: incentives,influencing factors and income effects

ABSTRACT

Land transfer incentives and their effect on farmers’ income in developing countries have been widely examined in the literate, but little is known about the driving mechanism of rural household income effect during land transfer. To fill in this gap, this paper explains the incentives of land transfer, analyses the influencing factors of farmers’ decision on land transfer, then measures the income effects of land transfer and identifies the main sources of income effects, utilizing open-access data collected through the China Family Panel Studies. The empirical results show that land flow out or in is beneficial to raise farmers’ income, indicating that the income effects have a positive feedback to farmers’ decision on land transfer. Further analyses reveal that land flow-out farmers and land flow-in farmers have different main sources of income growth. Our finding suggest that optimizing the incentive role of China’s existing rural land property system can help orderly flow of rural land resources, which subsequently increases rural household income.     

Regional technical efficiency and technology gaps in rural China: evidence from CHIP surveys

This paper uses household-level datasets called Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) surveys to investigate the regional technical efficiency, technology gap, and their determinants in rural China. A metafrontier production function approach is employed to fit the values of the technical efficiency and the technology gap ratio of rural households in six regions of China. The findings indicate that the technical efficiency improved remarkably from 1988 to 2002, but the technology gap ratio among regions changed slightly in the same period. The findings also show a negative relationship between the technology gap ratio and the regional technical efficiency for all regions except the northwest that has the lowest value of both the technical efficiency and the technology gap ratio. Next, the Tobit model is employed to discern the sources of efficiency and technology gaps. The results show that quality of agricultural labor, agricultural infrastructure, natural conditions, and farmer's political status have significant effects on farms' technical efficiency and technology gap ratio.     

Equilibria in a dynamic global game: the role of cohort effects

Summary. We introduce strategic waiting in a global game setting with irreversible investment. Players can wait in order to make a better informed decision. We allow for cohort effects, which arise endogenously in technology adoption problems with positive contemporaneous network effects. Formally, cohort effects lead to intra-period network effects being greater than inter-period network effects. Depending on the nature of the cohort effects, our game may or may not satisfy dynamic increasing differences. If it does, our model has a unique rationalizable outcome. Otherwise, multiple equilibria may exist as players want to invest at the same point in time others do.Received: 13 July 2004, Revised: 20 May 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C72, C73, D82, D83.We thank George-Marios Angeletos, Helmut Bester, Andreas Blume, Estelle Cantillon, Frank Heinemann, Christian Hellwig, Larry Karp, Tobias Kretschmer, In Ho Lee, Robin Mason and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. We also thank seminar participants at the EEA-meeting in Stockholm 2003, ESRC Workshop in Warwick 2004, Free University Berlin, IAE (Barcelona), Keele, MIT, Southampton, University of Pittsburgh, and at a CEPR-conference in Brussels 2002 for comments, and the European Union for providing financial support through the TMR network on network industries (Contract number FMRX-CT98-0203). This paper was completed while the first author visited the Department of Economics at MIT, whose hospitality he gratefully acknowledges.     

Precautionary motivation and consumption insurance: Empirical analysis of household consumption behavior in rural China

Based on a household survey in rural China, this paper discusses parameters such as precautionary motive, excess sensitivity, consumption insurance, and inter-temporal substitution in the household consumption function in rural China. The conclusions of the paper indicate that there is a significant precautionary motive in household consumption in rural China, but the function of consumption insurance is very limited, and the consumption is also excessively sensitive to the income change. Such parameters are different among consumers within different groups. __________ Translated from Zhongguo Nongcun Jingji 中国农村经济 (Chinese Rural Economy), 2006, (4): 12–19     

The effect of female representation on political budget cycle and public expenditure: Evidence from Italian municipalities

This study analyzes the impact of the gender composition of political institutions on the political budget cycle (PBC) and on the size and structure of public expenditure. An instrumental variable approach is implemented to evaluate the influence of female politicians in municipal councils. The introduction of gender quotas for Italian municipalities is used as an exogenous variation in female participation in politics. The results show that: (i) fluctuations in local public spending are only slightly affected by the presence of a wider female representation; (ii) an increase in the number of elected women reduces the overall amount of public expenditure; (iii) this reduction involves fields typically affected by PBC (e.g., roads' maintenance) except those related to females' needs (e.g., kindergarten, primary education, and social care).     

构建河北农村多元化投融资体系的路径探讨

资金投入是新农村建设的物质基础和财力保障,健全完善多元化的农村投融资体系,对支持新农村建设具有深远的意义。本文从财政支农重点投向、深化农村金融体制改革、调动农民自主投资、引导社会资本、证券直接融资与吸引外资等几个方面阐述了健全农村投融资体系的路径选择,以期为河北新农村建设提供充足的资金支持。     

R&D subsidy and output subsidy in a duopoly: The role of technology spillover and R&D budget

Technology spillover and research and development (R&D) budget are relevant on government subsidies that aim at improving social welfare through enhancing R&D incentives of firms. However, there has not been related literature considering these two factors. To fill this gap, this paper examines the effect of technology spillover and R&D budget on R&D competition of duopolistic firms and government subsidies by constructing a game-theoretic model. We find that while each firm's profit sometimes increases with R&D budget for low coefficient of technology spillover, this profit may decrease with R&D budget for high coefficient of technology spillover due to the intensified R&D competition. We show that when both R&D budget and the coefficient of technology spillover remain high, R&D subsidy leads to higher social welfare than output subsidy and otherwise R&D subsidy results in lower social welfare.     

Political budget cycles and voting within a federal country: The influence of political alignment

We study how distributive politics affects political budget cycles and voting within a federal country. Our model predicts not only that the president favors politically aligned governors with larger transfers, but also that voters favor gubernatorial candidates aligned with the expected presidential incumbent because larger transfers are expected in the future. These predictions are upheld by the data from Argentinean provinces during the 1984–2014 period. Our findings imply that political alignment can trump the selection effect of voting the most competent candidate. This can help explain in particular coattail effects when gubernatorial and presidential elections are concurrent.     

The impacts of social pension on rural household expenditure: evidence from China

In 2009, China began to implement a new social pension scheme in rural areas. We examine the impacts of this social pension on two main components of rural household expenditure, consumption and agricultural production investment. Our findings show that on average, rural households increase consumption by 1–3% and agricultural investment by as high as 6–9% in pilot counties. Further estimations reveal that the pension mainly affects the households with old-aged members and the poorer families, and that the saving rate hasn’t been changed by the pension, which support more the contingent income than the life-cycle hypothesis. We also find that among various types of expenditures, the most dramatic increases have occurred in food consumption and operational inputs on agricultural production.     

The impact and economic cost of environmental regulation on energy utilization in China

This article utilizes three data envelopment analysis-based models: a no environmental regulation model, a weak environmental regulation model and a strong environmental regulation model to reveal the impact of environmental regulation on China’s regional total-factor energy efficiency (TFEE) during the period of 2003–2010. To take a further step, these three models are adjusted for calculating the correspondingly macro-economic cost of environmental regulation. The estimation results show that at present, the level of China’s environmental regulation is relatively low, and an enhancing of environmental regulation would lead to a sufficient increase of China’s regional TFEE with an enormous economic cost as its price. That means in China, the nationwide environmental stress is high, and the regulation cost is very huge. Strengthening environmental regulation would inevitably have some negative influences on China’s economy in the short run. Based on our findings, some corresponding policies are also proposed in this article.     

The effects of transition on the distribution of income in China

Using two large samples for 1988 and 1995 we decompose the Gini coefficient of household income according to type of income with the purpose of analyzing reasons for the rapid increase of inequality. The results show that the change in relative size of money income and its changed profile are found to be the major processes behind the rapid increase of income inequality in rural China. Changes in housing allocation and an increased number of retirees in combination with higher benefits have made inequality increase in urban China and in China as a whole. JEL classification: D31, P27.