Do public account financial statements matter? Evidence from Japanese municipalities

Many governments are introducing business-like accounting systems. This paper examines the fiscal effects of compiling business-like financial statements on the expenditures of local governments in Japan as a complement to cash-based reporting. Using the variation in the deadlines for compiling new statements given by the central government in a difference-in-differences instrumental variable approach, we found that business-like financial statements have limited effects on municipalities’ expenditures but have short-run effects on social assistance expenses. This might be a part of the reconstruction of their expenditure structure.     

The RAS Approach in Updating Input–Output Matrices: An Instrumental Variable Interpretation and Analysis of Structural Change

The main purposes of the paper are to reconsider the rationale of the RAS method, and to attempt to improve on its interpretation and usefulness. The substitution and fabrication factors in the RAS method are interpreted as statistical estimates obtained by the method of instrumental variables. This enables the computation of asymptotic standard errors for the factors and the relative precision of the predicted technical coefficients. Furthermore, an adjustment cost minimization model to describe how a sector determines its substitution and fabrication factors is presented. The solutions of the model provide another rationale for the RAS method, and the associated Lagrangian multipliers can be useful for assessing structural constraints and structural change.     

Effects of a holiday trip on health and quality of life: evidence from a natural experiment in South Korea

We examine whether having a holiday trip affects an individual’s well-being, namely quality of life, health status, stress level and health behaviours. We use the two-stage estimation method to control for endogeneity of a travel experience, exploiting a natural experiment of distributing Travel Vouchers at random among qualified applicants in South Korea in 2012. We find that, for applicants whose decision to travel is influenced by receiving a voucher, a travel experience has no significant effects on the traveller’s well-being measured 3–12 months later. We also find that the OLS estimates overstate benefits of a travel.     

A (home)land with a sea: the leisure and tourism in the Western Balkans of Kosovan migrants and their children living in London

This paper focuses on the trips to the homeland and the embedded tourist practices of Kosovan migrants in the Western Balkans. Drawing from the diasporic tourism literature, it emphasises the role of (material) space and place in these movements and tourist practices. Findings show that return trips to Kosovo involved for the participants leisure mobilities in the context of Albania and other Albanian-speaking areas in the Balkans. The paper concludes by questioning the strong connection in the existing literature between diasporic tourism and ethnicity, arguing that the former is also affected by material space – in the Kosovan case, more specifically, the sea – as an aspect of migrants’ experiences. Migration, leisure mobilities and tourism in the case of Kosovan migrants and the (West) Balkans region, at least, appear to have their historical, temporal and spatial specificities.     

REGIONAL TIES AND DISCRIMINATION: POLITICAL CHANGE,ECONOMIC CRISIS,AND JOB DISPLACEMENTS IN SOUTH KOREA, 1997–99

Probing into the incidence of job displacements during the 1997–99 recession period, this study offers theoretically grounded micro‐causal explanations for regional ties and regional discrimination in South Korea. Our statistical analysis reveals the significant impact of a worker's birth region (the basis of regional ties and discrimination) on the layoff process. Native Kyongsang workers are found to have faced higher rates of layoff in Seoul‐Kyongki regional firms than native Jolla workers during the recession period. The Kyongsang–Jolla layoff rate gap is mainly due to differential treatment rather than a difference in observable characteristics. The findings suggest that the problem of regional ties and regional discrimination is more deep‐rooted and widespread in South Korea than previously reported.     

The Theory and Econometrics of Health Information in Cross-Sectional Nutrient Demand Analysis

Understanding the role of health information in food and nutrient demand has become an important issue over the last decade. Endogeneity and measurement error are two empirical problems that are inherent in this type of analysis. While some type of instrumental variables estimation would appear the obvious solution, this article provides several theoretical and empirical reasons why this is not the case in cross-sectional analysis. An alternative estimation strategy is pursued, an empirical example is given, and the implications are discussed.     

A Conceptual Framework for Quantitative Text Analysis

Quantitative text analysis refers tothe application of one or more methods for drawingstatistical inferences from text populations. Afterbriefly distinguishing quantitative text analysisfrom linguistics, computational linguistics, andqualitative text analysis, issues raised during the1955 Allerton House Conference are used as a vehiclefor characterizing classical text analysis as aninstrumental-thematic method. Quantitative textanalysis methods are then depicted according to a2 × 3 conceptual framework in which texts areinterpreted either instrumentally (according to theresearcher's conceptual framework) orrepresentationally (according to the texts' sources'perspectives), as well as in which variables arethematic (counts of word/phrase occurrences),semantic (themes within a semantic grammar), ornetwork-related (theme- or relation-positions withina conceptual network). Common methodological errorsassociated with each method are discussed. Thepaper concludes with a delineation of the universeof substantive answers that quantitative text analysisis able to provide to social science researchers.     

高新技术产业园区创新活动内生性与效率 ——基于非平衡面板内生随机前沿模型的分析

基于非平衡面板内生随机前沿模型,通过2009-2019年54个高新技术产业园区的非平衡面板数据,分析了高新技术产业园区创新活动的内生性与效率的关系.研究发现:科技经费和从业人员存在内生性,市场结构、科技经费和从业人员对创新效率有显著的正面影响;面板内生随机前沿模型可以显著地区别于外生随机前沿模型的创新效率估计.     

Openness,Regional Trade Agreements and Growth: Evidence from Asia*

This paper assesses the relationship between regional trade agreements, trade integration and economic growth in 21 South and South‐East Asian countries over the period from 1980 to 2004. We aim to answer the following questions. First, how does the trade policy of a given country (and countries within the same region) affect a nation's domestic growth? Second, should developing economies in South and South‐East Asia engage in regional trade agreements (RTA) or move towards broad liberalization? Our results show that openness of either a single country or of its neighbors does not affect a nation's growth and that the impacts of RTA are unclear (if not detrimental to growth in some cases, once endogeneity is accounted for). Panel Granger‐causality tests running from openness to growth yield mixed results and some conclusions depend on the particular subsample under scrutiny.     

户籍制度改革的制度效果——社会学制度主义学派的一种解读

户籍制度与农民工问题紧密相联,理论上讲,解决农民工问题就要改革户籍制度.但实际中,农村户口向城市迁移的现实情况表明了改革后的户籍制度对农民工户口迁移没有起到预期的显著效果.以社会学制度主义学派的视角来解读其原因,在于改革后价值观念系统的改变相对滞后,从而阻碍了户口迁移步伐.