A multidimensional analysis of poverty in China from 1991 to 2006

Most studies have reported non negligible improvements for China in terms of poverty during the last three decades. However, this result is potentially hampered by two limitations. First, it may be contingent to the specific choices made regarding the poverty line and the poverty indices used for the analysis. As a consequence, it may collapse if one uses alternative poverty lines or poverty measures. Second, it results from a focus on the sole monetary aspects of poverty. As income does not cover all facets of well-being and since the relationship between these two concepts are quite fuzzy, it may be worth using a broader view of well-being, hence opting for a multidimensional approach of poverty analysis. In the present paper, these two issues are addressed using multidimensional stochastic dominance procedures on the joint distribution of income, education and health in seven Chinese provinces.     

Negative equity and wages

We examine the relationship between housing equity and wage earnings using nine waves of the national American Housing Survey from 1985 to 2003. Employing a rich set of time and place controls, a synthetic mortgage instrumental variable strategy, and a first difference estimator we find that people underwater on their mortgage command a significantly lower wage than other homeowners. The finding survives a number of robustness checks for reverse causality and unobserved heterogeneity. We also explore other determinants of “house lock” including loss aversion, a low existing mortgage interest rate and property tax assessment caps, but do not find these factors mitigate the effect of negative equity on wages.     

Asian holding of US Treasury securities: Trade integration as a threshold

This paper empirically investigates if there have been any shifts in regimes with Asian holding of US long-term Treasury securities with particular attention paid to the role of growing regional integration in trade. A panel regression estimation of eight Asian countries for 1998–2004 confirms the striking persistency of the portfolio weight of US Treasury securities. It also reveals, without a surprise, that the traditionally strong trade link with US as well as exchange rate regime and volatility of local currency bond index explain observed overinvestment in US Treasury securities deviating from what can be warranted by the market share of the US Treasury securities. What is interesting, however, is the estimated regime switches as found when examined with a threshold estimation (Hansen, 1999). We find three thresholds which divide the sample into four regimes—a decreasing persistency as intraregional trade link becomes tighter.     

Research Productivity in Business Economics: The Case of Marketing

Abstract. The German Economic Review ( GER ) recently published a paper by Fabel, Hein and Hofmeister about research productivity in Austrian, German and Swiss universities. The authors derive the rankings of institutions and subject areas by analyzing an impressive and comprehensive dataset, which captures the research output of business administration departments. While these rankings might hold at an aggregate level, they lack face validity at a subject-specific level. This lack of validity is demonstrated in the case of marketing by analyzing the research output of the top-ranked institutions in top-ranked journals. A number of proposals to overcome these kinds of problems are provided.     

FIRM AND GOVERNMENT AS ACTORS IN PENROSE'S PROCESS THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL GROWTH: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE RESOURCE-BASED VIEW AND OWNERSHIP–LOCATION– INTERNATIONALISATION PARADIGM

Edith Penrose's The Theory of the Growth of the Firm proposed a process theory of growth based on the pursuit of knowledge by the firm and unconstrained by government. In her subsequent studies of foreign direct investment by large firms in developing countries, Penrose considers the firm and government as actors in the same growth process. This paper explores the development of Penrose's expanded process theory of growth from 1955 to 1973 in which she assumes that neither dual actors nor foreign expansion requires a new or special theory. This finding has implications for the resource-based view and the eclectic ownership–location–internationalisation paradigm interpretations of international business.     

Characterization of Normal Distribution Related to Two Samples Based on Regression

Characterization of normal distribution related to two samples based on second conditional moments has been obtained. This characterization has been transformed to a characterization based on the UMVU estimators of the density function. These results are generalized to k samples from normal distributions. Finally applications of these characterization results to goodness-of-fit test are discussed.     

Public sector motivation and development failures

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the relationship between public sector motivation and development. In the model the public sector produces a public good and workers are heterogeneous in terms of public sector motivation (PSM). Wages in the private sector increase with the quality of the public good. In this context, public sector wage premia (PSWP) have two opposite effects: low PSWP helps screen workers with PSM into the public sector, while high PSWP helps motivate workers to be honest. Raising PSWP may not improve the quality of governance and multiple equilibria might arise. The model highlights that the relative importance of workers selection and provision of ”on the job” incentives in the public sector varies in systematic ways with wages in the private sector. We provide anecdotal and original empirical evidence consistent with the theoretical predictions and discuss some policy implications for public sector reforms in developing countries.     

ICT and agricultural productivity: evidence from cross-country data

This article carries out agricultural production function estimations, based on data for the period 1995–2000 on 81 countries, to present empirical evidence on the relationship between the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) and agricultural productivity. It is found that new ICT has a significantly positive impact on agricultural productivity. The evidence suggests that the adoption of modern industrial inputs in agricultural production relies on the information and communication infrastructure. However, the empirical evidence from this study also suggests that new ICT could be a factor for the divergence between countries in terms of overall agricultural productivity. Not only do we find that the ICT adoption levels of the richer countries are much higher than those of the poorer countries, but also that returns from ICT in agricultural production of the richer countries are about two times higher than those of the poorer countries. A plausible explanation for the poorer countries' relatively low productivity elasticity of ICT is the lack of important complementary factors, such as a substantial base of human capital.     

Male–female wage discrimination in Chinese industryInvestigation using firm‐level data1

We use firm‐level data to analyze male–female wage discrimination in China's industry. We find that there is a significant negative association between wages and the share of female workers in a firm's labour force. However, we also find that the marginal productivity of female workers is significantly lower than that of male workers. Comparing wage gaps and productivity gaps between men and women, we notice an intriguing contrast between state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) and private firms. The wage gap is smaller than the productivity gap in SOEs, while the converse is true for private firms. These results suggest that women in the state sector receive wage premiums, whereas women in the private sector face wage discrimination.