Did the New Deal solidify the 1932 Democratic realignment?

The critical election of 1932 represented a turning point in the future electoral successes of the Democrats and Republicans for over three decades. This paper seeks to measure the importance of the New Deal in facilitating the Democrats' control of the federal government well into the 1960s. We test whether long-differences in the county-level electoral support for Democratic presidential candidates after the 1930s can be attributed to New Deal interventions into local economies. We also investigate more narrowly whether voters rewarded Roosevelt from 1932 to 1936 and from 1936 to 1940 for his efforts to stimulate depressed local economies. Our instrumental variable estimates indicate that increasing a county's per capita New Deal relief and public works spending from nothing to the sample mean ($145) would have increased the long-run support for the Democratic party by 2 to 2.5 percentage points. We further find that the long-run shift toward the Democratic party after 1928 was not a function of the Roosevelt landslide victory in 1932. Roosevelt's ability to win over voters during the 1936 and 1940 elections with New Deal spending, however, did matter for the long-term.     

Sex imbalance,marital matching and intra-household bargaining: Evidence from China

This paper studies the effects of sex imbalance on matching patterns in China's marriage markets. We hypothesize that the economic inequality caused by economic liberalization, together with sex imbalance, will lead to women's hypergamy (marrying up). Employing CGSS data, our empirical findings support the hypothesis. We also establish that sex imbalance enhances the postnuptial bargaining power of the wife vis-à-vis the husband in intra-household resource allocation. The findings are robust to IV estimation and robustness checks.     

Do firms' political connections depress the union wage effect? Evidence from China

Our paper reconciles the debated literature on the role of the Chinese unions by exploring the heterogeneous effects of unionization on wages in firms with and without political connections. We utilize a survey of 1268 firms in 12 cities to verify our hypothesis that wages increase due to unionization, but this union wage effect is significantly depressed by firms' political connections. Through a detailed analysis of the mechanism behind the empirical results, we conclude that unions increase workers' wages by strengthening the bargaining power of workers, while this bargaining power can be weakened by firms' political connections. Our main conclusion is robust to a series of robustness checks. Moreover, the results from quantile regressions inform us that the union wage effect and the role of political connections may vary along with the firms' wage distribution. Our findings suggest that the solution to further increase wages for low-wage workers and reduce wage inequality is to make the labor union an independent organization which can freely bargain with firms in terms of workers' wages and benefits, rather than an agency subordinate to the government whose role can be affected by the government support and undermined largely by firms' political connections.     

The Voluntary Inclusion of Forecasts in the MD&A Section of Annual Reports*

Abstract. In this study, we appeal to theories advanced by Darrough and Stoughton (1990) to enhance our understanding of why some firms may voluntarily include directional forecasts in their annual reports while others do not. The data are consistent with their predictions that a firm's disclosure policy reflects its concern for both financial market valuation and product market competition. We find that for “good news firms, the probability of forecasting is increasing in the financing requirements but decreasing in the threat of competitor entry. The converse holds for “bad news” firms. These results lend further empirical support to the observation that the familiar good news hypothesis tested in the management earnings forecast literature offers only a partial explanation for the decision to forecast. Interestingly, however, even after controlling for financial and product market considerations, an overall voluntary disclosure bias still exists in the data. The data also provide support for the OSC's concern about a voluntary disclosure bias. Only 17.5 percent of our sample forecasts represent revisions downward relative to the previous year's results. However, in contrast to the OSC's concern about a general lack of forward-looking disclosures in annual reports, 35.9 percent of our sample firms include directional forecasts in their MD&A or elsewhere in the annual report.     

新形势下社区居委会群众工作研究

群众路线不仅仅是我们党在历史过程中取得胜利的关键,同时也是我们党在新时期、新阶段取得建设胜利的重要理论实践基础之一。街道的社区居委会是和老百姓之间联系最为密切的一个部门,与老百姓的距离是最接近的。街道的社区居委会所提供的社区服务质量问题以及群众满意度,都会直接影响到人民群众对于我们党的印象,甚至影响政府和党委在人民群众心目中的地位。因此,走群众路线,深入基层,做好社区服务工作,对新形势下保持党的先进性有着重要的意义。     

The Economics of Animal Farm

This paper uses George Orwell's fictional story Animal Farm to make a comparison between Orwell's predictions and the Chinese experience with communism. An analogy is made between two characters from his novel, Napoleon the Boar, who attains power, and Boxer the horse, who does not. These are analogous to members and nonmembers of the Communist party, respectively. Readily available data by Griffen and Renwei (1988) are then used to compare the economic conditions of approximately 22,000 individuals. The empirical results strongly support many of Orwell's predictions. A theoretical predatory growth model that potentially explains the results is also introduced.     

Debates over labor reforms in Post‐Mao China (1978–1995)

Why was it that, from 1978 to 1995, the central government of the People's Republic of China did not successfully implement labor reforms? The paper explains the outcomes of China's labor reforms in a statist perspective. The hypothesis is that, despite labor reforms of 1978 to 1995, due to the limited autonomy of the central government, China has not successfully formulated and implemented employment reforms. Ideological coherence and organizational unity among the central party‐state elites are the preconditions for the autonomy, or more accurately, relative autonomy of central governments. Conflicts and debates among various factions destroy the cohesion of the central government, weakening the relative autonomy of the central government to act as a coherent entity.     

Does Central Bank Transparency Impact Financial Markets? A Cross-Country Econometric Analysis

Blinder et al. (2001) argues that more open public disclosure of central bank policies may enhance the efficiency of markets. We examine this claim by studying for a set of seven industrialized countries whether selected central banks' moves toward more open disclosure during the 1990s improved or worsened the predictability of the corresponding national financial markets. Employing methodologies analogous to Campbell and Shiller (1991), we find that for all countries, the forecasting error has decreased for interest rates on the respective government bonds across most maturity lengths, and that the expectations hypothesis has generally performed better at the short end of the yield curve. Our results also tentatively show that the effects are stronger for central banks that made the move to greater disclosure, compared to those banks that resisted increasing the public's information set. These findings are consistent with Tabellini's (1987) view that central bank secrecy will hinder the smooth functioning of financial markets.     

The pressure of economic growth and the issuance of Urban Investment Bonds: Based on panel data from 2005 to 2011 in China

This paper explores the motivations behind the issuance of Urban Investment Bonds (UIBs) to stimulate local economies in China after the 2008 global financial crisis. Based on panel data from 2005 to 2011, we find that pressure to achieve economic growth has a positive effect on the issuance of UIBs, while fiscal pressure has the opposite effect on UIB issuance. We also find that the tenure of municipal party secretary, the revenue of land-use right transfer and fiscal pressure will change the impact of economic growth pressure on UIB issuance. These results are consistent with a pattern in which China's local government officials are influenced by the central government's assessment of local economic growth performance and have promotion-related incentives to maintain and develop the local economy.     

Taxation in the Tanzanian gold sector: Overview of impacts and possible solutions

This paper analyses the factors that reduce the gold sector's contribution to the Tanzanian government's revenue. Tanzania is among Africa's largest gold exporters. Yet ordinary Tanzanians have seen little benefit from this. This is partly because the government has enacted tax laws that are, as we shall see, overly favourable to multinational mining companies, and partly because of the same companies' business practices. Critics argue that the government fails to capture a substantial amount of state revenue as a result of low royalty rates, unpaid corporate taxes and tax evasion by major gold mine operators. This paper argues that the Tanzanian government should try to increase its share of revenues by taxation based on revenues, increasing its auditing skills and its involvement in mining, as well as by increasing the transparency of contracts and limiting the discretionary power of policy-makers in negotiating contracts.     

绿色民航发展的三方演化博弈研究

为推动我国民航绿色发展，实现碳达峰、碳中和目标，通过构建政府、机场企业和民航运输企业三方的演化博弈模型，研究不同情境下各方的稳定演化策略。数值仿真分析了关键参数变化对主体策略的影响。研究发现，政府的激励措施和惩罚力度能促进绿色发展，但补贴过高或过低不利于民航运输企业绿色策略。因此，根据机场企业和民航运输企业成本结构，建议政府制定差异化激励政策，有助于实现绿色民航的可持续发展。     

POLITICAL DEMOCRATIZATION AND KMT PARTY‐OWNED ENTERPRISES IN TAIWAN

This article will study how the existence of KMT party‐owned enterprises (POEs) and their development are related to Taiwan's democratization. POEs are profit‐making enterprises managed by the KMT, the former ruling party. All previous studies about the relationship between democratization and POEs only draw attention to the economic resource aspects of POEs. But the POEs were also KMT political resources in the form of enterprises and became policy tools to the ruling party. This study will argue that the existence of the POEs was a factor that maintained the KMT government and supported its stable management during the process of democratization. Moreover, POEs as political resources enabled Lee Teng‐hui as KMT chairman to demonstrate strong leadership and push ahead with the completion of democratization. But Lee's political mobilization of POEs expanded money politics and perpetuated these enterprises as one of the “authoritarian legacies” in Taiwan's democratic politics.     

Good Girl,Bad Boy? Evidence Consistent with Collusion in Professional Tennis

We identify professional tennis matches where one player competes for extraordinarily high payoffs while their opposition does not. Players “on the bubble” of direct qualification to upcoming Grand Slam events face substantially higher stakes than opponents, which presents an opportunity for collusion. Our findings produce evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis of unethical behavior taking place on the men's tour, as bubble players are 5.1 percentage points more likely to beat better ranked opponents than in comparable nonbubble matches. However, no such evidence emerges when analyzing women's tennis. We find additional support for the hypothesis of match‐fixing activities on the men's tour from analyzing the occurrence of tie‐breaks and the fact that our results become stronger once monetary incentives were increased after the 2013 season. Finally, the betting market does not predict this phenomenon, further confirming our suspicion of irregular activities.     

Short-run and long-run effects of exchange rate change on trade balance: Evidence from China and its trading partners

As one of largest exporting countries in the world, China has experienced a large amount of trade surpluses for the past decade. However, a growing criticism has been focused on the manipulation of Chinese Yuan (RMB) exchange rate by the Chinese government. While China implemented the exchange rate reform policy in July 2005, the question, whether its currency is undervalued remains as a debatable issue. Different from previous studies by focusing on individual trading partners, this paper tests the short-run J-Curve hypothesis and long-run trade balance effect of real exchange rate between China and its eighteen major trading partners using a panel dataset over the 2005–2009 period. We adopt the methodologies of panel cointegration test, fully modified OLS for heterogeneous cointegrated panel (panel FMOLS) and panel error correction model (panel ECM) to investigate the above examination. Our empirical results lend support to the inverted J-curve hypothesis between China and its trading partners. However, we find that a real appreciation of RMB has a decreasing long-run effect on China's trade balance in only three of the eighteen trading partners, while it has an increasing long-run effect in five of the eighteen trading partners. These mixed findings, therefore, lead to the empirical evidence that the real appreciation of RMB has no overall long-run impact on China's trade balance.     

The impacts of market power on power grid efficiency: Evidence from China

Since 1980s, China has experienced a series of reforms to support the development of electricity industry, and the latest one is in 2015. The essence of this new reform is to improve efficiency and lower energy cost. However, China's electricity market has its particularity. The “provinces as entities” is the main regulation frame in China's electricity sector. The operation of the electricity industry can be seen as a game result and interest compromise between the local government and grid companies, and this “win-win exchange” regulation failure leads to grid market power. The profit mode of the grid enterprises will be gradually changed with the deepening of new electricity reform. How to regulate electricity transmission and distribution sector and improve grid efficiency becomes a crucial problem to address. This paper aims to examine the relationship between market power and power grid efficiency. We calculate the unconditional and conditional efficiency of grid companies by applying a conditional slack-based measure (SBM) model. The empirical results show that grid efficiency is at a low level and the indicators differ among provinces and regions. Moreover, market power indeed has significant negative effects on power grid efficiency. These findings provide some insightful references for the future development of China's power industry and electricity reform.     

Testing Monetary Policy Intentions in Open Economies

Temple (2002) argues that the inflation level used in Romer (1993) lacks power in revealing the policy intentions of monetary authorities, Temple also points out that Romer's use of the openness-inflation correlation cannot be explained by time consistency theory. In this article, we demonstrate that more open economies experience less inflation volatility and persislence. We attribute our findings to the hypothesis that monetary authorities in more open economies adopt more aggressive monetary policies. This pattern emerges strongly after 1990. Our results indicate that the near-universal regime shift in 1990 is not just a simple process of increased monetary policy aggressiveness, but an increased response to economic openness.     

Discretionary Disclosures to Risk‐Averse Traders: A Research Note

Verrecchia (1983) investigates a manager's incentives for costly, discretionary disclosure of his information to risk‐averse traders when the functional form of prices is exogenously specified. We extend Verrecchia (1983) by deriving the endogenously determined functional form of prices that would arise when all traders have constant risk tolerance. We show that these endogenously determined prices are inconsistent with the assumed prices in Verrecchia (1983) when the manager elects to not disclose. We derive the manager's disclosure strategy for our setting and extend the comparative static results in Verrecchia (1990) for risk‐neutral traders to a setting where traders have constant risk tolerance and prices are endogenously derived. Further, in our setting, discretionary disclosure does not affect how traders price risk of different outcomes. Also, we offer a representation of risk‐averse traders' prices using risk‐adjusted distributions. Finally, these results provide implications for empirical‐archival discretionary disclosure studies.     

Seigniorage in the Civil War South

During the U.S. Civil War, the Confederate Congress adopted three currency reforms that were intended to reduce the quantity of Treasury notes in circulation by inducing the money-holding public to exchange their notes for long-term bonds. In this paper, we examine the political factors that influenced the adoption of the reforms and their effect on the flow of seigniorage - revenue that the government derived by using the newly-printed Treasury notes to purchase the goods and services it required. We argue that the bifurcation of the Confederate Congress into two groups – those legislators that represented the Confederacy's interior and those from areas no longer under Confederate control – contributed to the adoption of the reforms. Our findings indicate that representing an area outside of the rebel government's control increased the likelihood that a legislator would support efforts to reform the currency by over 90 percent. In addition, our results indicate that the rate of monetary expansion in the South was below that which would have maximized the revenue from seigniorage. We find that the reforms reduced the flow of seigniorage by approximately 57 percent, depriving the Confederate government of much-needed revenue.     

Deciding to Peg the Exchange Rate in Developing Countries: The Role of Private-Sector Debt

We argue that a higher share of the private sector in a country’s external debt raises the incentive to stabilize the exchange rate. We present a simple model in which exchange rate volatility does not affect agents’ welfare if all the debt is incurred by the government. Once we introduce private banks who borrow in foreign currency and lend to domestic firms, the monetary authority has an incentive to dampen the distributional consequences of exchange rate fluctuations. Our empirical results support the hypothesis that not only the level, but also the composition of foreign debt matters for exchange-rate policy.     

Magnitude and volatility of Taiwan's net foreign assets against Mainland China: 1981–2009

The ongoing private capital inflows from Taiwan to China is a steady concern for Taiwan's policymakers. According to the official data, Taiwan's private enterprises have cumulatively invested about US$ 150–280 billion in China since 1987. However, the figures are widely perceived to be an underestimation and there exists a huge gap even between the estimations conducted by different government departments. The purpose of this paper is to re-estimate Taiwan's net foreign assets (NFA) against China, revising the so-called “dark matter” hypothesis proposed by Hausman and Sturzenegger (2006, 2007). In contrast to the current statistics being limited to registered direct investment or census investigation, the advantage of our model is that direct investment, portfolio investment, and the possible knowledge and property spillovers are included. We show that changes in Taiwan's NFA against China over GDP are negative in economic and political turmoil, such as the missile crisis in 1995, Asian financial crises in 1997–98, and global tsunami in 2007–09. From 2000, the growth rates we simulate are never lower than the official data till 2009. We also suggest some possible economic causes that lead to the huge Taiwan's NFA against China.