Does Chinese Environmental Policy Affect Income Inequality? Evidence from the Central Environmental Protection Inspection

This paper investigates the effect of environmental policy on income inequality. It focuses on the central environmental protection inspection led by the central government in China. Using a difference-in-differences approach, it finds evidence that environmental regulation decreased the per capita income and enlarged the gap between urban and rural income while showing an insignificant effect on employment. Although the policy can reduce pollution levels and bring environmental benefits in aggregate, the findings of this study suggest that the regulations appear to have reduced the proportion of manufacturing industry and hindered general innovation and investment from entrepreneurs, which resulted in greater inequality. Rural residents suffered more from environmental regulation due to relatively high migration costs and their disadvantaged human resources on the aspects of health, education level, and skills. The local government's execution incentive can also play a key role in the effectiveness of environmental policy. Regions with lower GDP growth targets and younger government leaders were affected significantly with regard to the income growth of local residents and the urban–rural income gap.     

Do the self-employed underreport their income? Evidence from Japanese panel data

This paper examines to what extent self-employed households underreport their income to tax authorities in Japan. To this end, we employ the so-called expenditure-based approach, which essentially compares the current expenditure of self-employed and wage earner households while controlling for their income, net worth, and household characteristics. Using Japanese household-level panel data for the period 2009−2019, we find that the self-employed possibly underreport their income by 33.0–36.4%. Our findings are also robust to the different preferences (degree of risk-loving, time discount rates, etc.), planned retirement age, and degree of measurement error in expenditure between the self-employed and wage earners.     

Do Migrants Rob Jobs? New Evidence from Australia

This study contributes to the recent debate on immigration and unemployment in Australia by investigating the causal linkage between immigration and unemployment. The question of whether 'immigrants rob jobs' is examined by identifying the sources of unemployment through causal linkages between unemployment and other key variables such as immigration. The research finds no Granger causality between immigration and unemployment, but does run from industrial structural change to the high unemployment rate in Australia. This research also finds that both GDP growth and immigration inflow reinforce each other in the course of economic development in Australia.     

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.     

Do Free Trade Agreements Increase the New Goods Margin? Evidence from Korea

We analyze the changes in the composition of bilateral trade—and more specifically, in the new goods margin—following the free trade agreements (FTAs) signed by Korea between 2004 and 2008. We find that new goods trade increased disproportionately after the FTAs came into effect, and that least-traded goods (LTG)—those accounting for the lowest 10% of trade prior to the FTAs—ended up accounting for 37% of post-FTA trade with FTA partners. In contrast, the corresponding share for a comparable group of countries that did not sign FTAs with Korea was only half as large, averaging close to 20%. We also find that only less than 2% of all least-traded products accounted for most of the growth in LTG trade, and that those goods tended to be clustered in the same industries as the intensively-traded goods. Furthermore, a larger fraction of LTG became heavily traded for the case of FTA partners than for non-FTA countries. Finally, we find evidence that least-traded imports were subject to higher pre-FTA tariff protection than other products.     

Do Currency Barriers Solve the Border Effect Puzzle? Evidence from the CFA Franc Zone

In this paper, we use a gravity model to investigate the extent to which currency barriers explain the border effect puzzle, i.e. the impact of national borders on international trade. We focus on the two monetary unions of the CFA Franc Zone in West and Central Africa. We find that these countries display large border effects, and that currency barriers explain between 17 per cent and 28 per cent of the overall border effect. JEL no. F11, F15, F33     

What Have Remittances Done to Development? Evidence from the Caribbean Community and Common Market

This paper analyzes the long-run impact of remittances on socio-economic development in the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) between 1970 and 2013. We find that remittances have improved the health indicators, reducing infant and child mortality, and food deficit and improving life expectancy, and sanitation and water sources, especially in the rural areas. However, remittance inflows have no significant impact on education and communication infrastructure. Neither do they contribute to any demographic changes.     

Do Parents Invest Less in Worse-Performing Children? Evidence from the Asian Financial Crisis

This article uses data from Indonesia around the time of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis to examine the role of parental preferences in human capital accumulation. Using a household fixed-effects estimation, I test whether parental education spending is affected by child mathematics test scores. I find that parents are more sensitive to the human capital of younger children, who are penalised for having lower skills than their older siblings. Differences in investment by child gender or birth order are evident in 2000 but not in 1997. This suggests that parents may have an efficiency investment strategy only when resource-constrained, and that education of younger children may be a luxury good.     

Do Remittances Induce Inflation? Fresh Evidence from Developing Countries

The goal of this article is to examine the determinants of inflation in both the short run and the long run for 54 developing countries using a panel data set covering the 1995–2004 period. Apart from the commonly used economic determinants of inflation, we model the impact of remittances and institutional variables on inflation. Using the Arellano and Bond panel dynamic estimator and the Arellano and Bover and the Blundell and Bond system generalized method of moments estimator, we find evidence that in developing countries remittances generate inflation. The effect of remittances on inflation is more pronounced in the long run. Moreover, we find that openness, debt, current account deficits, the agricultural sector, and the short‐term U.S. interest rate have a positive effect on inflation. We also find that improvements in democracy reduce inflation.     

Do men and women discriminate against women for the same reason? Evidence from China

In this study, we examine whether men and women form gender discrimination for the same reason. To do that, we build an experimental Chinese labor market in which employers evaluate the productivity of workers who perform a real-effort task. Before evaluation, the employer observes the worker’s personal and group information. The personal information contains gender identity and a signal of productivity. The group information reveals the productivity distributions of some other male and female workers who do not differ in average productivity. However, it shows more male workers at the very top productivity levels and more female workers at the very bottom productivity levels in one treatment than in the other. According to the belief-based theory, there will be a greater degree of discrimination against female workers in the former. We find that, however, only male employers’ evaluations are well predicted by this approach. Female employers behave oppositely: their degree of gender discrimination is smaller in the treatment emphasizing men’s advantage in the tails of the productivity distributions. To explain female employers’ evaluations, we adopt the preference-based approach. Our findings suggest that employers of different genders can have different motivations for gender discrimination, and thus call attention to the theoretical foundation of gender discrimination and policy measures aimed at reducing gender discrimination.     

Do Immigrant Groups Differ in Welfare Usage? Evidence from the U.S.

The study of welfare participation in the United States prior to the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and afterward has primarily focused on comparing native and immigrant households. Analyses that have gone beyond this broad classification have focused on comparisons across race, with particular focus on Hispanic immigrants. This paper moves away from the existing literature by investigating whether there is a difference in welfare usage among immigrant based on their birthplace. Using a probit model, we investigate this potential difference by testing two related hypotheses. Our results suggest that the probability of welfare usage for immigrants with similar characteristic, differ for some immigrant groups. We also find that for some immigrant groups, citizen and noncitizens differ with respect to welfare usage.     

Do Foreign Firms Transfer Gender Norms in the Labour Market? Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Closing the gender gaps in economic opportunities is crucial for boosting economic growth and the empowerment of women. In this paper, we study how foreign firms contribute in reducing gender disparities in the labour market by transferring the gender norms of their country of origin to the affiliates in the host countries. We use cross sectional data on foreign firms located in 19 Sub Saharan Africa countries in 2010 by UNIDO. We find that firms coming from more gender equal countries employ more female workers in their affiliates. This effect is more relevant for the highly skilled female workers.     

Financial Performance of SMEs Evidence on the Influence of Environmental Uncertainty： A Conceptual Framework

The purpose of this study is to understand the association between environmental uncertainty and financial performance of small and medium enterprises （SMEs）. Current study describes the influence of environmental uncertainty on the financial performance of SMEs in lraq. The objective of this study was to assess the influence of environmental uncertainty on financial performance of SMEs. SMEs play an important economic role in many countries. In Iraq for example, the available data from the Central Organization for Statistics （COS） indicate that private sector in Iraq consists primarily of SMEs where those companies represent 99% of all companies in lraq and this sector contributed over 50% of new jobs created. Despite their significance, facing competitive business environment, SMEs are required to develop innovation strategy in order to sustain competitive advantage. SMEs also are faced with the threat of failure with past statistics indicating that three out five fail within the first few months. This study sought to understand how SMEs manage the challenges they face. These challenges seem to change （evolve） according to different environmental uncertainty conditions. In this study, authors will develop an empirical model that can be applied in other sectors to improve financial performance of SMEs in lraq.     

Do corporations overinvest？ Evidence from Tunisia

The authors study the positive relationship existing between internal net worth and investment. This relationship has been interpreted in the financial literature as evidence showing that the management overinvests the free cash flow available to them in poorly-performing, sub-optimal investment projects. In this paper, the authors empirically tackle this problem in the case of the manufacturing and industrial Tunisian corporations and show that our empirical regularities do not stand for this interpretation. The authors conversely prove that overinvestment does not seem to occur on the basis of the grouping results. Hereby, there do not corroborate the empirical regularities documented in Lamont （1997）.     

Do Female Managers Affect Productivity? Evidence from Zimbabwean Manufacturing Firms

Using a large dataset of Zimbabwean manufacturing firms extracted from the two waves of World Bank Enterprise Surveys of 2011 and 2016, the study investigates the impact of female management on firm's productivity in Zimbabwe's manufacturing firms. The study estimates a modified production function, to incorporate gender dimension, using a random effects estimation model. The results show that the effect of having a female manager on firm productivity varies by geographical location in the case of Zimbabwe. Specifically, the productivity of firms which have a female top manager, and are located in Harare, experience a negative productivity differential as they significantly reduce their productivity gap by 9.9 percent. On the other hand, the study found that having a female top manager in manufacturing firms located in Bulawayo significantly increases productivity by 7.9 percent compared to firms located in the Midlands area. We also find that the effect of a female manager on firm productivity differs by sectors, stressing the need for domestic economic policy to consider these dynamics. Given the importance of location in determining the contribution of a production manager on firm performance, the government may need to implement policies that consider location‐specific factors to enhance productivity of the manufacturing sector of Zimbabwe.