How did the world's poorest fare in the 1990s?

Drawing on 297 national sample surveys spanning 88 countries, we find that there was a net decrease in the overall incidence of both absolute and relative consumption poverty between 1987 and 1998. But it was not enough to reduce the total number of poor by various definitions. The incidence of absolute poverty fell in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East–North Africa, while it rose in Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe–Central Asia. Over the whole data set, interpersonal distribution improved slightly from the point of view of the poor, due mainly to growth in China.     

Dynamic modeling of regional house price diffusion in Taiwan

This paper examines the lead-lag relationships and the dynamic linkages among four regional house price indices in Taiwan. We employ the Johansen cointegration technique, Toda and Yamamoto’s Granger causality test, the generalized impulse response approach, and variance decomposition analysis to find out the extent and the magnitude of their relationships. The estimated long-run relationship between regional house prices appears to have remained stable throughout the sample period. Our empirical results show a bidirectional relationship between house prices in the most important economic center, Taipei City, and its suburban area, Taipei County. However, there are no causalities of house prices between Taipei City and other megacities in Taiwan. The mutual impacts of the shocks between house prices in Taipei City and Taipei County are significantly positive, while these impacts on Kaohsiung City, far from Taipei City, are insignificant. Finally, the results of the generalized impulse response approach indicate that the house prices indices of Taipei City are the most exogenous while those for Taipei County are the most endogenous.     

Health Status and Earnings of Migrant Workers from Rural China

The migration of rural laborers into cities for employment has been one of the main driving forces of China's economic growth over the past three decades. Based on a dataset collected by the Ministry of Agriculture of China from 2003 to 2007, this paper examines the impact of health on the earnings of migrant workers engaging in physically‐intensive work requiring good health. Our findings indicate that a poor health status not only weakens the incentive of rural laborers to participate in the migrant labor force but also significantly reduces their earnings. A migrant worker in poor health only earns 67 percent of what a healthy worker makes. Among all the human capital characteristics and family economic factors, health status is the most influential on earnings for less educated workers. Labor productivity has a greater impact on earnings than the annual number of days that a person works. Ongoing health‐care reforms aimed at the improvement of the health‐care services available to rural laborers are urged to help reduce poverty in rural China.     

There goes my hero again: sport scandal frequency and social identity driven response*

Abstract

With sport scandals reported frequently in the media, it is important to understand how associated stakeholders are affected. In the current work, we investigated the impact of off-field sport scandal on key stakeholders (the sport, implicated team, sponsor brand), and the roles played by team identification and scandal frequency. A 2 (fandom) × 3 (scandal frequency) between-subjects quasi-experiment examined responses to scandal news stories. Ingroup fan attitudes became less favorable toward all stakeholders following scandal, especially when it was described as repeat behavior. This differed to outgroup fan attitudes, which became less favorable toward the sport, but were generally negative and stable for other stakeholders, irrespective of scandal frequency. Respondents were willing to attribute responsibility to particular perpetrators rather than the team, and tended to endorse sponsorship continuation simultaneously with perpetrator removal/sanction. Findings have strategic implications for those involved in sponsorship, sport marketing, and sport management.     

Structural Breaks and the Convergence of Regional House Prices

This paper differs from past research by examining the issue of whether regime changes have broken down the stability of the ripple effect. The endogenous two-break LM unit test, derived in Lee and Strazicich (Review of Economics and Statistics 85: 1082–1089, 2003), is used to execute the ripple effect tests. Being different from the empirical results of the conventional unit root tests without structural breaks, the empirical results of the endogenous two-break LM unit root test support the existence of ripple effects for each city in Taiwan except Taipei City. Shocks to regional house prices of Taipei City cannot “ripple out” across the nation, because Taipei City is a regional global city which has resulted in higher house prices, but does not affect the house prices of the entire area. Furthermore, the empirical evidence demonstrates the breakpoints and presents real estate policies, financial crises, and natural disease that can cause structural breaks of regional house prices.     

日本与欧美农业环境支持政策对中国的启示

农业政策中与环境相关的支付政策越来越多。发达国家将WTO绿箱政策、农业直接支付政策与农业环境支持政策结合起来,这样既可以从根本上解决农业生产所带来的安全问题,也可以加深消费者对相关政策的理解与支持,同时从产业链的上游解决食品安全及农业的可持续发展问题。欧盟的Greening政策和日本实施的农业直接支付政策均以农户遵守农药化肥及农业废弃物处理的相关规范为前提,通过合理使用肥料及各种防治措施从不同程度上达到农业可持续发展、农业的多功能性及降低温室气体排放的目的,并由此获取政府的支持。文章通过对发达国家,特别是与中国农业形态类似的日本农业环境政策取向的分析及与欧美相关政策比较分析,认为中国首先应该完善循环农业的相关法律法规和标准,加强对农民的培训以及明确其应遵守的基本义务,对采取环境友好型农业生产方式的农民给予支持。     

Cost Channel of Monetary Policy: Financial Frictions and External Shocks

This paper deepens our understanding of the importance of the cost channel of monetary policy, where inflation adjusts with a firm's marginal cost of working capital. A model extended for a small, open economy with financial frictions is proposed and examined with data from Taiwan. The cost channel effect on inflation adjustment is substantiated by simultaneous generalized method of moments estimations and appears to be strengthened by financial frictions but mitigated by external shocks. Greater caution is hence required in the conduct of monetary policy for a bank-dependent emerging economy such as Taiwan because of the relative complexity in its supply-side interest rate pass-through.     

Portfolio concentration and fund manager performance

This research examines the relationships among portfolio concentration, fund manager skills, and fund performance in Taiwan's equity mutual fund industry, yielding several empirical findings as follows. First, after controlling for other factors, concentrated equity funds tend to have smaller net asset values, larger fund flows, higher turnover rates, and a younger age and prevail in smaller fund families. Second, concentrated fund managers buy and sell stocks more smartly based on economic trends or market factors than do diversified fund managers, i.e., they have better market‐timing abilities. Third, only partial evidence supports the premise that concentrated equity funds have better next‐quarter risk‐adjusted performances than do diversified ones, as these fund managers' skills positively correlate to risk‐adjusted fund performance. Fourth, fund managers who have better stock‐picking abilities and intensively invest in certain industries generally exhibit better Carhart's alpha in the next quarter than do other fund managers. Fifth, fund managers' stock‐picking abilities more closely relate to long‐term performance than do their market‐timing abilities. Lastly, positive performance persistence is much stronger than negative performance persistence, but concentrated funds do not have stronger performance persistence than do diversified funds.     

Motivations for Loan Herding by Chinese Banks and Its Impact on Bank Performance

This study uses a dynamic herding model that considers intertemporal and cross‐sectional correlation to confirm that loan herding occurs among joint‐stock commercial banks (JSCBs) and city commercial banks (CCBs). We clarify the motivations for bank loan herding. We find that loan herding by both JSCBs and CCBs results more from following the behavior of other same‐type banks than different‐type banks because of characteristic herding or reputational concerns. Loan herding by JSCBs is motivated by investigative herding, whereas loan herding by CCBs results from informational cascades. Moreover, loan herding has a significantly harmful impact on the operating performance of CCBs but not JSCBs, which may be explained by the irrational behavior of CCBs. Our results will help Chinese bank supervisors develop appropriate policies for handling loan herding.