A new assessment of economic integration in East Asia: Application of an industry-specific G-PPP model

It is well known that intra-industry trade and cross-border production networks have promoted economic growth and regional integration in East Asia. However, regional supply and production chains may have been formed differently across industries, reflecting different degrees and a different scope of regional economic linkages at an industry level. This paper makes a threefold contribution. First, to assess industry-level differences, this study adopts the generalized purchasing power parity (G-PPP) model using industry-specific producer prices. Second, the momentum threshold autoregressive (M-TAR) model is employed to allow for possible nonlinearity arising from the dynamic nature of regional economic growth and development. Third, the Granger causality test is also conducted to assess whether regional economies have autonomously integrated. The empirical results reveal that economic integration has progressed more autonomously in the electrical industry, as well as in the transportation equipment industry, as China and the ASEAN countries have become the final destination markets for finished products in these two industries.     

Tourism and regional income inequality: Evidence from China

This study examines the role of tourism development in reducing regional income inequality in China. First, the theoretical foundation for how tourism affects regional income inequality is discussed. Second, based on the conditional convergence framework, this study proposes a spatiotemporal autoregressive model to capture spatial and temporal dependence as well as spatial heterogeneity. Tourism development is introduced as a conditional convergence factor in an attempt to examine whether the convergence speed is accelerated by regional tourism development. Third, the effects of international and domestic tourism in narrowing regional inequality are compared both globally and locally. The empirical results indicate that tourism development contributes significantly to the reduction of regional inequality, with domestic tourism making a greater contribution than international tourism.     

区域中心城市创新生态圈要素架构、生态特征与运行机制

区域中心城市创新生态圈以生物学为隐喻，注重发挥创新主体的能动作用，能够放大区域中心城市发展优势。在回顾创新生态圈理论渊源的基础上，界定区域中心城市创新生态圈内涵，明确创新生态圈要素构成；以企业聚集发展为逻辑起点，探讨区域中心城市创新生态圈生态特征；基于生态学、创新理论等跨学科知识，构建区域中心城市创新生态圈演进模型，探究其运行机制。研究认为，区域中心城市创新生态圈具有开放式协同、动态自调节、多样性共生、自组织演化等生态特征，其运行机制由协同共生机制、风险识别与防控机制、利益分配机制和环境匹配机制共同组成。     

高新区设立与区域绿色经济增长——基于PSM-DID模型

运用非径向方向距离函数测算了2003-2016年中国277个地级市绿色全要素增长率，在此基础上，采用倾向匹配的双重差分法实证评估国家高新区对绿色经济增长的影响，并分析其影响机制和传导途径。结果表明：国家高新区显著推动了绿色经济增长，主要通过推动“技术领导者转移效应”实现;国家高新区对绿色经济增长存在明显异质性，呈现出“边际效应递减”。中部地区、低等级城市和“成长期”国家高新区对绿色经济增长促进作用较大，高新区对协调区域绿色发展具有重要意义。传导途径表明，国家高新区以创新驱动人力资本效应、财政配置效应和对外开放效应促进绿色经济增长。     

国家重点科技资源支撑区域创新经济产出的空间差异研究

根据2011-2014年科技部《国家重点科技基础条件资源调查表》以及国家统计年鉴数据,首先,使用赫芬达尔指数定量描述了利用国家重点科技资源进行创新活动的非均衡性。其次,使用网络DEA方法,实证分析了2012-2014年中国(内地)各省份国家重点科技资源对区域创新发展的支撑作用。研究表明,国家重点科技资源对区域创新发展的支撑作用不仅取决于资源创新生产阶段,而且受制于重点科技资源支持下的区域创新发展阶段。重点科技资源的支撑作用还有较大提升空间,70%的省份创新成果转化能力有待提高,且大部分省份的国家重点科技资源未实现优化配置。此外,全国及东部、中部和西部国家重点科技资源对区域创新发展的支撑效率不存在绝对收敛趋势。     

Food safety recall effects across meat products and regions

Food safety is one of the key issues for the international meat market. As a major meat exporter, few things facing the U.S. meat industry in recent years have garnered more attention than food safety events and policies. The impacts of Food Safety Inspection Services (FSIS) recalls on United States consumer meat demand are estimated using monthly grocery-scanner data identifying effects across products, geographic regions, and recall type. Results suggest beef E. coli recalls significantly reduce the demand for recalled ground beef contemporaneously among most, but not all, regions in the United States. Evidence of heterogeneity in demand impacts across regions and products is provided for the first time. Domestic and international implications for policy makers, industry leaders, and researchers are discussed.     

Regional development and migration in the Lower Basin of the Zambezi River. The importance of property rights

Globalization is associated with pressures and conflicts over natural resources, with migration, urbanization and development. The analyzes these phenomena focusing the Lower Basin of the Zambezi River in Mozambique where external demand over natural resources have been associated with huge projects on transport infrastructures, coal mining and agroforestry, somehow correlated with recurring conflicts. The approach proposes and uses a regional development model that highlights the impacts of the spatial allocation of property rights on income and migration. Results show the importance of resources ownership in the spatial profile of development and social unrest.     

Using principles of justice to assess the modal equity of regional transportation plans

While equity has been an important consideration for transportation planning agencies in the U.S. following the passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI specifically) and the subsequent Department of Transportation directives, there is little guidance on how to assess the distribution of benefits generated by transport investment programs. As a result, the distribution of these benefits has received relatively little attention in transportation planning, compared to transport-related burdens. Drawing on philosophies of social justice, we present an equity assessment of the distribution of accessibility in order to define the rate of “access poverty” among the population. We then apply this analysis to regional transportation plan scenarios from the San Francisco Bay Area, focusing on measures of differences between public transit and automobile access. The analysis shows that virtually all neighborhoods suffer from substantial gaps between car and public transport-based accessibility, but that the two proposed transportation investment programs reduce access poverty compared to the “no project” scenario. We also investigate how access and access poverty rates vary by demographic groups and map low-income communities within access impoverished areas, which could be the subject of further focused investments.     

Speculative bubbles or market fundamentals? An investigation of US regional housing markets

This paper investigates the existence of speculative bubbles in the US national and 21 regional housing markets over three decades (1978–2015). A new method for real-time monitoring exuberance in housing markets is proposed. By taking changes in the macroeconomic conditions (such as interest rate, per-capita income, employment, and population growth) into consideration, the new method provides better control for housing market fundamentals and thereby it is expected to significantly reduce the chance of false positive identification. Compared with the method of Phillips et al. (2015a, 2015b), the new approach finds a dramatic reduction in the number of speculative housing markets and shorter bubble episodes in the US. It locates only one bubble episode in the early-to-mid 2000s over the whole sample period in the national housing market. At the regional level, it identifies two periods of speculation: late 1980s and early-to-mid 2000s. The early-to-mid 2000s bubble episode lasts longer and involves 16 metropolitan statistical areas.     

The source of global stock market risk: A viewpoint of economic policy uncertainty

This study explores the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in four countries or regions (China, Japan, Europe, and the United States) on the contagion risk of investments in the global stock market. The stock returns of 22 stock markets worldwide are analyzed to determine which region’s EPU exhibits the greatest effect on regional systematic risk in the global stock market and on volatility risk in individual stock markets. First, all of the samples, the markets of different continents and the spillover indices of the developed and emerging markets, are calculated to observe the dynamic correlation among these markets with the aim of quantifying regional systematic risk and further examining the contagion risk effect of EPU. The results indicate the following: EPU in China is the most influential, and its contagion risk spreads to different regional markets, except for Europe; the effect of EPU in the United States is inferior to that in China; EPU in Japan merely influences contagion risk in emerging markets; contagion risk in European markets is not influenced by the four EPU indices; and EPU in Europe is not influenced by contagion risk in the global stock market. However, according to the volatility risk in each market, the EPU in Europe and China respectively influence Asian countries and European countries the most. These results may be attributable to the extremely high trade dependence among these countries because the performance of international enterprises is mainly determined by the economic policies of their trading partners.