Geographical Location of Foreign Direct Investment and Wage Inequality in China

This paper examines the relationships between distance and the transportation costs of international trade on the location‐specific effects of foreign direct invest‐ment and provincial per capita income in China. Applying the economic geography model proposed by Redding and Venables (2004), it traces the increasing wage inequality among the coastal and inland provinces by focusing on the distance of foreign‐owned firms from access to international markets and to suppliers of intermediate inputs. First, a gravity‐type equation is used to construct the ‘market access’ and ‘supplier access’ variables. Then, the effect of market and supplier access on provincial wage rates is estimated. The results indicate that distance does affect international trade and geography explains roughly one‐third of the wage differential. Greater market access increases the provincial wage gap, while larger supplier access increases the wage difference in trade destined for the foreign market but decreases the wage difference in trade targeted for the domestic market. Similar findings also result from applying the estimations to two local firm types: state‐owned enterprises and collective‐owned enterprises.     

FDI in Chinese Cities: Spillovers and Impact on Growth

This study reconsiders the question of impact of FDI on growth performance. We rely on a dataset of Chinese cities between 1990 and 2002 to investigate the effects of FDI in the traditional growth regression framework using the GMM estimator for dynamic panels. Our growth model incorporates an explicit consideration of spatial dependence effects in the form of spatially lagged income and FDI. Our results reveal that Chinese cities take advantage not only of FDI flows received locally but also of FDI flows received by their neighbours.     

On Income Convergence among China,Hong Kong and Macau

Hong Kong and Macau were reunited with China in the late 1990s as two special administrative regions (SARs). Over the last half century, they were China's good examples of economic development, windows of openness and investors. Owing to historical reasons, China lagged far behind Hong Kong and Macau in terms of per capita incomes. However, rapid economic growth in China over the last three decades must have brought about a significant convergence of the three economies. China's economic success has benefited from the integration of its two SARs and the coastal provinces, especially Guangdong, in terms of technological spillover, massive investment and trade. The economic trickledown, direct investment and trade must have been important drivers of economic integration and income convergence. This paper aims to analyse the trend and studies the determinants of income convergence between China and its two SARs. Both parametric and non‐parametric techniques are employed to quantify the pace of convergence on per capita incomes in Hong Kong, Macau and the Chinese provinces over a period of more than 40 years. We find no evidence of convergence in the pre‐reform period, but strong evidence of both absolute and conditional β‐convergence in the post‐reform period. Over the reform period, the pace of convergence is less than 1 per cent per annum without controlling for trade and more than 2 per cent conditional on trade.     

Economic geography and international inequality

This paper estimates a structural model of economic geography using cross-country data on per capita income, bilateral trade, and the relative price of manufacturing goods. We provide evidence that the geography of access to markets and sources of supply is statistically significant and quantitatively important in explaining cross-country variation in per capita income. This finding is robust to controlling for a wide range of considerations, including other economic, geographical, social, and institutional characteristics. Geography is found to matter through the mechanisms emphasized by the theory, and the estimated coefficients are consistent with plausible values for the model's structural parameters.     

技术创新、市场分割与收入不平等——基于中国省级面板数据的分析

基于1998—2017年中国省级面板数据，分析了省级层面收入不平等程度及其影响因素，重点研究了技术创新和市场分割对收入不平等的作用。研究结果显示，样本期内基尼系数总体水平较高，呈现出了先上升后下降的走势。地区收入差距与技术创新之间存在U型关系，当前“知识溢出”效应超过了“技能溢价”效应，创新水平的提高将有助于缩小地区收入差距；市场分割不仅会加剧地区收入不平等，还会通过阻碍技术创新间接弱化创新对收入差距的缓解作用。地区收入不平等与经济发展水平之间存在倒U型关系，贸易依存度、人均受教育年限和人均社会保障支出的提高有助于缩小地区收入差距，工业化率的提高则会加剧地区收入差距，财政支出对地区收入差距的作用不明显；动态面板模型的研究结果表明，地区收入差距具有惯性特征。最后，基于研究结论，给出了有针对性的政策建议。     

Per capita income,market access costs,and trade volumes

There is strong empirical evidence that countries with lower per capita income tend to have smaller trade volumes even after controlling for aggregate income. Furthermore, poorer countries do not just trade less, but have a lower number of trading partners. In this paper, I construct and estimate a general equilibrium model of trade that captures both these features of the trade data. The key element of the model is an association between trade costs (both variable and fixed) and countries' development levels, which can account for the effect of per capita income on trade volumes and explain many zeros in bilateral trade flows. I find that market access costs play an important role in fitting the model to the data. In a counterfactual analysis, I find that removing the asymmetries in trade costs raises welfare in all countries with an average percentage change equal to 29% and larger gains for smaller and poorer countries. Real income inequality falls by 43%.     

Regional disparity of embedded carbon footprint and its sources in China: a consumption perspective

Carbon emission reduction could be achieved through extensive cooperation between relevant groups such as businesses, governments and consumers. Generally, carbon emissions stem from consumer behaviour. To tackle the increasingly serious energy crisis and climate change in China, it is thus vital to control carbon emissions generated by the country's urban consumers. From a consumption perspective, we utilize a self-organizing feature map model to analyse the spatial differentiation of per capita embedded carbon footprint (ECF) in urban China. We found that the spatial differentiation is significant with the per capita ECF of the east coastal area at a high level and that per capita disposable income is the key factor affecting ECF. Based on these findings, potential business opportunities to develop low-carbon products are discussed.     

Cross‐Country Determinants of Early‐Stage Necessity and Opportunity‐Motivated Entrepreneurship: Accounting for Model Uncertainty

Model uncertainty is one of the most pervasive challenges in the social sciences. Cross‐country studies in entrepreneurship have largely ignored this issue. In this paper, we evaluate the robustness of 44 possible determinants of early‐stage opportunity‐motivated entrepreneurship (OME) and necessity‐motivated entrepreneurship (NME) that are broadly classified in four groups: (1) economic variables, (2) formal institutions, (3) cultural values, and (4) legal origins and geography. The results, which are based on a representative world sample of up to 73 countries, suggest that institutional variables associated with the principles of economic freedom are most robustly correlated with OME and NME. Our findings also identify net income inequality and Scandinavian legal origins as weakly robust predictors of both types of entrepreneurial activity. Furthermore, we find that log GDP per capita is only a weakly robust predictor of NME, but not OME. We discuss implications for future research.     

Factors Influencing China’s Exports with a Spatial Econometric Model

This article employs a spatial econometric model to examine whether China’s exports are affected by political risk, economic integration, and spatial effects. The results show that as China’s economy has grown, a home market effect is evident for its exports. A higher level of economic integration is beneficial to China’s exports. A substitutive relationship is discovered between China’s OFDI and exports. In addition, the higher income per capita of partner countries and the high degree of economic openness are both beneficial to China’s exports. The partner countries of China, with their higher values of export trade, have been mostly countries with lower political risk.     

Trade openness and the environmental Kuznets curve: Evidence from Chinese cities

This paper examines the impact of economic growth and trade openness on environment in 261 Chinese cities over the period of 2004–2013, using recently developed continuously updated fully modified method which allows for both cross-sectional dependence and endogeneity. Two types of pollutants, industrial waste water and sulphur dioxide are investigated, and three measures of openness are employed in the regression. From the results, we find that the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis holds not only for the whole China, but also in different regions. It is estimated that wastewater pollution increases with economic development until per capita GDP reaching the turning point of 42,991–48,828 yuan (in constant 2002 price), which varies depending on the specific measure of trade openness. The turning point for sulphur dioxide is found to occur at a much lower income level around 9,588–10,663 yuan per capita GDP. Furthermore, export is mostly found to be positively related with pollution and the impact of import is likely to be negative for both the whole China and across regions, if the significance is identified in the estimation results.     

Determinants of workers’ remittances: An empirical investigation for a panel of eleven developing Asian economies

We explore the key motives of migrant workers’ remittances from abroad for 11 major Asian migrant‐sending countries. Using panel regressions, we find that relative higher growth rate, interest rate and capital market returns of home over the host, investment, financial deepening at home have significant impact on remittance inflows into Asia, along with higher per capita incomes and international crude oil prices. With incorporation of per capita incomes and lagged impact of remittances, we observe an emergence of consumption motives to remit. Therefore, we conclude that both investment and altruistic motives are the driving forces for remittances inflows into the Asian economies.     

Financial Development,Financial Structure and Income Inequality in China

Using panel data of 23 provinces during the period 1996–2012, this paper investigates the impacts of financial development and structure on income inequality in different administrative districts (urban, rural and overall) in China. The results produced by the dynamic generalised method of moments estimator provide some evidence for a linear and inverse ‘U‐shape’ relationship between financial development and income inequality, and increasing the relative importance of financial markets to banks helps to reduce income inequality. Furthermore, the results of panel threshold regressions show that the benefits of financial development only occur if the stock market activity has reached a threshold level and disappear if the stock market capitalisation has reached a certain scale. Meanwhile, the impact of the financial structure weakens as the financial development expands and the proportion of financial markets increases. We also find that the impacts of financial development and structure on rural income inequality are stronger than those on urban income inequality.     

Enlargement and the EU Periphery: The Impact of Changing Market Potential

We study the impact of changing relative market access in an enlarged EU on the economies of incumbent Objective 1 regions. First, we track the impact of external opening on internal spatial configurations in a three‐region economic geography model. External opening gives rise to potentially offsetting economic forces, but for most parameter configurations it is found to raise the locational attractiveness of the region that is close to the external market. Then, we explore the relation between market access and economic activity empirically. We simulate the impact of enlargement on EU Objective 1 regions. Predicted market‐access‐induced gains in regional GDP and manufacturing employment are up to seven times larger in regions proximate to the new accession countries than in ‘interior’ EU regions. We also find that a future Balkans enlargement could be particularly effective in reducing economic inequalities among the EU periphery, due to the positive impact on relative market access of Greek regions.     

经济一体化、政治风险和第三国效应对中国OFDI的影响

利用空间计量模型实证分析经济一体化、政治风险、第三国效应等因素对中国OFDI的影响。实证结果发现:中国OFDI型态倾向于复合性的FDI,且不受第三国效应影响;经济一体化程度越高越不利于中国OFDI,东道国的政治风险越高越不利于中国OFDI;此外,人均收入越高及文化邻近程度越高的国家,越显著有利于中国OFDI,东道国市场机会对中国OFDI有显著负向影响;中国的OFDI,国有企业居主导地位,且倾向于投资技术含量相对较低的产业。     

中欧制成品产业内贸易影响因素实证分析

分析了中国与欧盟制成品产业内贸易状况,并对中欧制成品产业内贸易的影响因素进行了实证研究,结果表明:中欧制成品贸易主要是建立在中欧资源禀赋差异基础上的垂直型产业内贸易,中欧人均收入差距和欧盟对华直接投资显著地促进了中欧制成品产业内贸易的发展,而规模经济、市场规模因素对中欧制成品产业内贸易有较强的抑制作用。同时,研发投入对中欧制成品产业内贸易的影响并不显著。表明虽然近年来中国政府对科技教育发展增加投入,一定程度上减小了中欧研发水平的差距,但是对中国出口贸易转型的作用仍然比较有限。     

Entrepreneurship and income inequality in southern Ethiopia

This article uses inequality decomposition techniques in order to analyze the consequences of entrepreneurial activities to household income inequality in southern Ethiopia. A uniform increase in entrepreneurial income reduces per capita household income inequality. This implies that encouraging rural entrepreneurship may be favorable for both income growth and income distribution. Such policies could be particularly successful if directed at the low-income, low-wealth, and relatively uneducated segments of the society.     

进出口贸易抑制了企业创新吗--基于收入差距的调节作用

开放经济下企业进出口与企业创新的关系备受学者们关注,但从收入差距的视角出发探讨进出口对企业创新的影响的相关研究较少。鉴于此,文章利用工业企业数据库与海关贸易数据库的合并数据,实证检验企业进出口、收入差距和企业创新三者之间的关系,结果显示:(1)出口依赖对企业创新无确定性作用,中间品进口依赖则不利于企业的创新活动;(2)收入差距显著抑制了企业的创新活动,但有效缓和了企业进口对企业创新的抑制作用;(3)收入差距对创新的作用受到地区人均收入水平的限制,人均收入越高,抑制作用越明显;(4)企业出口规模不会对收入差距的直接抑制作用产生明显的影响。研究结论对全面开放新格局下进出口贸易政策的调整以及中国企业向全球价值链高端攀升有一定的参考价值。     

Foreign direct investment and labor productivity: New evidence from China as the host

We use a pooled city‐level data set, consisting of 2032 observations from 11 consecutive years, to examine the causal relationship between the intensity of FDI inflow and the increase of technical efficiency in various cities in China. The results confirm the exis‐tence of feedback effects between per capita FDI intensity and labor productivity. However, FDI intensity in terms of the geographical size of the city does not Granger‐cause the increase in labor productivity. Spillover efficiency to various cities in China is investigated in detail. We split the sample into coastal and inland cities, taking into consideration time lags. The feedback effects of labor productivity on inward FDI also are estimated statistically. Finally, we discuss the policy implications of our research. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Spatial divisions of expertise: Knowledge intensive business service firms and regional development in Norway

This article explores the regional geography of professional, information and intellectual services in Norway. Norway is used as one way of critiquing the global cities literature by exploring the multiple ways in which knowledge intensive services are created and consumed outside global cities. Norway's regional geography of knowledge services is one of concentration and dispersal; both processes are explained by the ways in which clients access external expertise. An evolving spatial division of expertise is identified based on the ways in which service suppliers and consumers access and combine expertise that is available in different locations. Part of this evolving spatial division of expertise is illustrated in the ways in which large European providers of consultancy expertise have displaced American providers from Norway's top ten ranking of consultancy providers. The paper identifies a series of fundamental changes that are taking place in the consultancy industry that affect the ways in which consultancy is provided to the Norwegian market.     

中国城市幸福感的空间差异及影响因素

本文以我国地级以上城市数据为基础,利用空间计量经济模型对幸福感的空间分布状况及其影响因素进行了分析检验。研究结论表明,我国城市幸福感呈现出典型的俱乐部特征并带有显著的地域差异。幸福感作为一种较为长期稳定的指标,受到前期条件、城市人均储蓄状况、公共服务等变量影响,而城市人均GDP、基础设施、城市特征等硬性指标对幸福感的空间差异几无影响。此外,上述影响因素的区域效应也必须引起足够重视。在推进"幸福城市"建设中,构建一个"倾斜而平坦"的城市体系显得尤为重要。