The role of the Spanish imperial state in the mining‐led growth of Bourbon Mexico's economy1

Colonial Mexico's economy experienced a long phase of growth during the eighteenth century. Around 1800, silver exports and fiscal surplus remittances from the colony rose to unprecedented levels. We study the contribution of the Spanish imperial state's policy to the expansion of silver production and the leading role of mining in economic growth and its fiscal implications. We find evidence to support a more favourable view of both the mining sector and the imperial state than that commonly presented in the literature. The interruption of colonial ‘mining‐led growth’ helps to explain the ‘lost decades’ for the economic development of Mexico after independence.     

A view from behavioral political economy on China's institutional change

A behavioral political economy framework is built on the basis of prospect theory to explain the induced and imposed institutional changes during China's market reform, giving special attention to the integrated effects of economic and political institutions. According to prospect theory, how rulers frame their decisions — in the prospects of gains or losses, influences how much risk they will take. China's market reform has been largely framed in the prospects of economic gains, for which the continuously growing private sector is the driving force. China's central government adopts a growth-oriented incremental reform that coincides with the prediction of prospect theory.     

Remedy or Poison: Impacts of China's Outward Direct Investment on Its Exports

During the past decade, China's outward direct investment (ODI) and exports have experienced rapid growth, drawing increasing attention to the relationship between them. Using the gravity model based on panel data on China's ODI and trade to 174 countries and regions during 2003–2012, the present paper investigates the impacts of China's ODI on exports. We find that China's ODI to a host country significantly promotes China's trade with that economy: a 10‐percent increase in ODI stock can lead to a 2.14‐percent increase in exports, a 2.07‐percent increase in imports and a 2.87‐percent increase in net exports. The scale of the host country's economy, its infrastructure and its distance to China also have significant impacts on China's exports. Therefore, growth in ODI will facilitate China's trade and integration into the global economy, and enhance industrial upgrading in China by transferring the low‐end industries abroad.     

数字经济对中国区域产业结构优化的影响

运用线性加权法、灰关联熵模型及耗散结构理论,基于产业结构合理化与产业结构高级化理论,对近年来区域数字经济发展现状、产业结构现状及区域数字经济发展对产业结构的影响进行研究。通过测算相关指标得出,中国区域数字经济水平呈持续增长的趋势,但区域间存在差别,东部省份数字经济水平优于西部省份。灰关联熵模型及耗散结构理论结果显示,数字经济能够显著促进区域产业结构优化升级。     

Why is Inflation in China a Monetary Phenomenon？

This paper proposes that inflation in China during the post‐reform era (1978 onwards) is always a monetary phenomenon. We construct a multivariate dynamic model based on Friedman's quantity theory of money and use the standard Granger causality test to show that money growth contains significant predictive power for inflation during the underlying period. The finding is robust to alternative measures of monetary aggregates and both closed and open economy frameworks. The baseline finding of the paper indicates that quantitative tools remain the most important policy instruments for China to manage its inflation effectively.     

生态工业工程在发展矿区循环经济中的应用

本文根据循环经济的理论内涵,分析了其生态经济的本质;引入和扩展可更新资源生态产业链概念进行矿区生态产业链设计,构架矿区城市生态产业链设计的理念与矿区城市循环经济的初步模式;在生态工业工程理念指导下,以徐州市为例,进行典型资源型(矿区)城市循环经济建设研究.     

A Dual-Price Demand Theory for Economies under Transition

China adopted a dual-price system shortly after the economic reform started in 1978 to liberalise its price control. This led to the coexistence of both plan and market prices for an identical good in the economy. The conventional demand theory developed based on the pure market economies is not useful in explaining consumers' behaviour in the transitional economies such as China in which both plan and market prices are prevalent. This study develops an alternative demand theory for a dual-price (or dual-track) economy and derives the dual-price Slusky equation that identifies a replacement effect of price liberalisation. This demand theory distinguishes itself from the conventional demand theory and explains the ways in which consumers respond to the price liberalisation during the reform period. The new demand theory shows that the gradual approach to reform is superior to the ‘Big Bang’ approach in terms of reducing the ‘corrected inflation’ during the transition period. The new theory also suggests that the price elasticity of demand is higher in the dual-track system than that in a full market economy, implying that the price elasticity diminishes over the process of price liberalisation. This theory is tested using the Chinese aggregate consumption data.     

Does GDP Distort Mexico's Economic Performance?

Between 1961 and 1980, Mexico's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita grew nearly 3.50% annually. During the 1980s, however, it shrank about 0.50% per year. GDP figures suggest that there was sustained economic growth for the 1960s and 1970s, changing suddenly to contraction in the 1980s. This impression may be misleading. GDP does not account for housework or informal production outside households. Further, GDP also may be distorted by transactional activities, which are expenditures to support transactions, not actual output consumed. This study recalculates output for Mexico for the 1961-1990 sample period, controlling for transactional activities and nonmarket production. We find that GDP misstates Mexico's “actual” economic growth. In the 1960s, the economy expanded more quickly than GDP suggests. But in the 1970s, growth was less than half that of the 1960s. The economy indeed slumped in the 1980s, but not as terribly as the official figures indicate. Mexico's economy did not collapse suddenly in the early 1980s; actual economic growth had slowed dramatically during the 1970s.     

The Contribution of Exports to the Mexican Economy During the First Globalisation (1870–1929)

This article provides an assessment of the contribution of exports to the Mexican economy during the first globalisation. This implies revisiting conventional explanations based on the tradition of structuralism and dependency theory, using a new, complete set of data on Mexico's foreign trade, and evaluating the direct contribution as well as the indirect benefits provided by export activities, through mechanisms that linked foreign trade to the rest of the economy. The most important among these were positive externalities, spillovers, and backward and forward linkages.     

Earnings Management in Response to the Introduction of the Australian Gold Tax*

Earnings from gold mining in Australia remained tax‐exempt for almost seven decades until January 1, 1991. In the early 1980s, rapid economic prosperity induced by escalated gold prices brought the Australian gold‐mining industry under intense political scrutiny. Using a variant of the modified Jones model, this paper provides evidence of significant downward earnings management by Australian gold‐mining firms, which is consistent with their attempts to mitigate political costs during the period from June 1985 to May 1988. In contrast, test of earnings management over a similar period in a control sample of Canadian gold‐mining firms produced insignificant results. Further, empirical results are robust to several sensitivity tests performed. During the period from June 1988 to December 1990, the Australian firms were found to have engaged in economic earnings management. This is consistent with the sample firms' incentive of maximizing economic earnings immediately prior to the introduction of income tax on gold mining. The findings of this study help to understand the impact of earnings management on the efficient resource allocation in an economy. They also contribute toward understanding the linkage between regulation of accounting for special purposes and general‐purpose financial reporting.     

中国省域数字经济内涵及水平测度研究

构建数字经济指标体系,运用熵值法测算2010—2019年中国31省份数字经济发展水平,并基于聚类分析法对数字经济进行动态和静态分析。结果表明：数字经济指标中,数字产业化对数字经济的影响最大,数字基础设施影响较小;中国省域数字经济发展水平呈现非均衡的状况,上海和北京位于数字经济发展的领先区;发达区主要分布在东部区域,而中等区和落后区主要分布在中西部区域;发达区和中等区与领先区的差距逐步缩小,落后区与前3个区域差距有扩大的趋势。     

非公有企业促进绿色经济发展战略研究

经过多年的改革,非公有企业已成为我国社会主义市场经济的重要组成部分并且给中国的经济发展带来了蓬勃的动力。绿色经济是符合可持续性发展目标的产业经济,绿色经济的发展与非公有企业之间的关系密不可分。基于我国非公有企业的发展现状以及我国的资源条件、经济环境,研究了非公有企业对我国绿色经济发展的积极作用及促进方式——发展绿色产业的产业链、帮助培养绿色科技人才并提供发展机遇与渠道、提升技术创新能力促进环境技术进步、吸引投资者对绿色项目进行投资、助力政府的绿色政策制度。通过对于促进作用的分析找出仍需加强的内容并给出相关建议——区域绿色经济发展协调性需加强、科技人才的管理方式需要创新、非公有企业监管存在漏洞、绿色创新质量及创新氛围尚待加强。     

Differences in returns to FDI between China's coast and interior: One country,two economies?

In principle, returns to factors of production within single economic systems should exhibit relatively uniform returns. Notwithstanding the fact that over the past 30 years China's economy has increasingly liberalized both internally and externally, it is widely understood that wages received by industrial workers in the coast and interior have widely diverged. However, less is known about how, between China's coast and interior, relative returns to domestic capital and foreign investment have fared, although we do know that the surge of foreign direct investment in China in recent decades has been overwhelmingly concentrated in the coastal region. This paper investigates comparative factor returns within China's industrial sector as measured by the marginal productivities of labor, domestic capital, and foreign capital. Using balanced and unbalanced samples of enterprise data during 1998–2004, we find significant differences between the returns to each of these factors. This paper explores the differences in estimates of factor returns that arise from the use of balanced versus unbalanced samples and least squares versus fixed effects estimators. We conclude that while returns to labor and domestic capital are higher in China's coastal economy, returns to foreign-owned capital are higher in the interior region. Indeed, the differences are indicative of those found in the literature that estimates cross-country comparisons between OECD and developing economies, suggesting that China's economy exhibits some of the differences found between the world's more and less developed economies.     

北京市数字经济发展现状与对策

数字经济已成为中国区域经济高质量发展的重要引擎。北京作为国际科技创新中心,数字经济一直走在全国前列,是打造全球数字经济标杆城市的先行区。近年来北京数字经济发展速度迅猛、发展势头良好,在打造全球数字标杆城市方面效果凸显,但在数字经济的国际化融合、数据跨境安全流动方面仍面临巨大挑战。在全面分析北京数字经济发展现状和优势的基础上,探讨北京数字经济发展面临的问题与挑战,提出北京数字经济高质量发展的对策建议,希望为北京打造全球数字标杆城市提供参考借鉴。     

Hazardous waste management in South African mining – a CGE analysis of the economic impacts

There is no doubt that improved hazardous waste management in mining and mineral processing will reduce environmental and health risks in South Africa. However, sceptics fear that waste reduction, appropriate treatment and disposal are not affordable within the current economic circumstances of the country. In particular, it is argued that higher treatment and disposal costs would weaken the country's international competitiveness in important export markets on the one hand, and place heavy adjustment costs on black workers on the other. Thus, improvements in waste management are not enforceable, from either an economic or a social point of view. This article deals mainly with the first aspect and touches upon the second. It investigates the short-term and long-term sectoral impacts of an environmental tax on hazardous waste in South African mining, using an open-economy multisectoral computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The results bear out the expectation that the possibilities for shifting higher production costs are limited in an open economy. Moreover, the results also show that the brunt of the adjustment resulting from an isolated approach towards hazardous waste management will have to be borne by black workers.     

China： Unscathed through the Global Financial Tsunami

This paper investigates the reasons behind the resilience of China＇s economy to the global financial tsunami. China ＇s economy is lowly leveraged in its banking, household, public and external sectors and, therefore, is less plagued by the global deleveraging than most developed economies. Chinese domestic sectors have improved significantly over the past decade, giving them larger capacity to cope with external shocks than during the Asian financial crisis a decade ago. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that China＇s economic growth is highly dependent on exports, we find that the main growth engine for China is domestic demand. Destocking, rather than falling exports, was the main cause of the sharp economic slowdown in China in late 2008 and early 2009. Therefore, the global economic slowdown should have limited impact on China＇s economy. We forecast a sustained eeonomic recovery in China in 2009-2011, with real GDP growth exceeding 10 percent in 2010.     

China's oil product pricing mechanism: What role does it play in China's macroeconomy?

The oil product pricing mechanism is a regulation system that was introduced in the late 1990s to control the oil product prices in China. For the first time to our knowledge, we provide an empirical evaluation of this regulation system, with a particular focus on its role in China's macroeconomy. Based on monthly data between 2000 and 2013, we find that: (i) contrary to the general public's impression, the mechanism is ‘fair’ overall in the sense that it responds to the rise and fall of international oil price symmetrically; (ii) the effect of the mechanism on the Chinese economy, however, is very limited; and (iii) the limited effect of the mechanism holds for different levels of regulation during the studied period, suggesting that potential deregulation may have little impact on the economy.     

A colonial legacy of African gender inequality? Evidence from Christian Kampala, 1895–2011

The colonial legacy of African underdevelopment is widely debated but hard to document. In this article, occupational statistics from Protestant marriage registers of historical Kampala are used to investigate the hypothesis that African gender inequality and female disempowerment are rooted in colonial times. We find that the arrival of Europeans in Uganda ignited a century‐long transformation of Kampala involving a gender Kuznets curve. Men rapidly acquired literacy and quickly found their way into white‐collar (high‐status) employment in the wage economy built by the Europeans. Women took somewhat longer to obtain literacy and considerably longer to enter into white‐collar and waged work. This led to increased gender inequality during the first half of the colonial period. However, gender inequality gradually declined during the latter half of the colonial era, and after Uganda's independence in 1962 its level was not significantly different from that of pre‐colonial times. The data presented here also support Boserup's view that gender inequality was rooted in indigenous social norms: daughters of African men who worked in the traditional, informal economy were less well‐educated, less frequently employed in formal work, and more often subjected to marital gender inequality than daughters of men employed in the modernized, formal economy created by the Europeans.     

Thirty years of legal and economic reform in China: growth,institutions, and laws

China's impressive economic growth over three decades has seemingly occurred in the absence of a strong legal system. This paper views China's reform process over the past three decades as one that has entailed a gradual introduction of market forces into areas of the economy, which requires both dismantling the structure of the centrally planned economy and developing market-oriented institutions. This paper argues that China's transition is premised on a set of informal, and increasingly formal, institutions that provided incentives during the process of gradual liberalization. Therefore, institutional developments were not absent. The exploration of the interplay between growth and institutions leads to the conclusion that continued economic growth in China will depend on implementing legal reforms better suited to the nature of the decentralized economy, hastened by the introduction of international economic laws and rules with greater global integration.     

Structural Changes in a Reforming World Economy: Implications for Indonesia

How will rapid East Asian industrialisation and international trade policy reforms affect Indonesia's economy? Taking an economy-wide perspective and drawing on projections to 2005, based on a global applied general equilibrium model (GTAP), we show the impact of Uruguay Round implementation, and explore other international influences on Indonesia's and neighbouring economies. Trade reforms likely to accompany China's (and Taiwan's) membership of the WTO are projected to boost the competitiveness of Indonesia's primary sectors at the expense of light manufacturing and the overall economy, while failure by OECD countries to honour Uruguay Round obligations to open their textile and clothing markets would reduce industrialisation in the region, slowing growth in its net food imports. The benefits to Indonesia of APEC liberalisations are also reported. All projections were completed in 1997 before the enormity of the financial crisis became clear; follow-on research should quantify the growth slowdown's impact on these results.