The forthcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution: Its impact on society and firms

The impact of the industrial and digital (information) revolutions has, undoubtedly, been substantial on practically all aspects of our society, life, firms and employment. Will the forthcoming AI revolution produce similar, far-reaching effects? By examining analogous inventions of the industrial, digital and AI revolutions, this article claims that the latter is on target and that it would bring extensive changes that will also affect all aspects of our society and life. In addition, its impact on firms and employment will be considerable, resulting in richly interconnected organizations with decision making based on the analysis and exploitation of “big” data and intensified, global competition among firms. People will be capable of buying goods and obtaining services from anywhere in the world using the Internet, and exploiting the unlimited, additional benefits that will open through the widespread usage of AI inventions. The paper concludes that significant competitive advantages will continue to accrue to those utilizing the Internet widely and willing to take entrepreneurial risks in order to turn innovative products/services into worldwide commercial success stories. The greatest challenge facing societies and firms would be utilizing the benefits of availing AI technologies, providing vast opportunities for both new products/services and immense productivity improvements while avoiding the dangers and disadvantages in terms of increased unemployment and greater wealth inequalities.     

International spillovers of China's structural reforms

This paper sheds light on the international spillovers of China's reforms in upgrading industrial capabilities, liberalizing capital account, internationalizing the renminbi, and transition to flexible exchange rates. Drawing on two-country New Keynesian model of endogenous entry and portfolio adjustment, we find that China's industrial upgrading that peddles on yuan appreciation lifts all boats through global production network irrespective of capital account convertibility, degree of renminbi internationalization, and exchange rate reform. Feasibility of appreciation-driven upgrading is called into question, however, when renminbi reform and capital account liberalization go in parallel. We also show that international spillovers disappear once renminbi internationalization is associated with liberalized capital account and flexible renminbi exchange rates.     

Industrial land price between China’s Pearl River Delta and Southeast Asian regions: Competition or Coopetition?

The planned economy system’s previous form of industrial land market control in China has led to current market failure because of a large amount of industrial land being sold at a very low price, causing extensive overuse of land and negative effects on land management. As the “World Factory”, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) is well known for its rapid urbanization largely driven by Foreign Direct Investment in labor-intensive industries. A low-land price strategy has been commonly adopted by the local government in order to attract industrial investment. In the past decade, the PRD has increasingly faced the increasing competition from its neighboring competition from its neighboring countries in Southeast Asia that have established preference policies to attract FDI and foreign enterprises. Despite a growing body of literature on the internal forces of industrial land in China, little is known of the external forces involved except for the importance of FDI and the intensity of interregional competition between China and other countries in attempting to attract foreign investment. This research fills the knowledge gap by modeling the situation in the form of an international cooperative game model aimed at revealing the industrial land price formation mechanism between the PRD region and Southeast Asian regions. The conditions of industrial land in the area and several Southeast Asian countries are first analyzed for their industrial land price movements in recent years. A game theoretic model is then built that exhibits similar characteristics. The result indicates that the governments’ low land price strategy and the competition between the PRD and its neighboring countries have created unnecessarily high social and environmental costs. Policy suggestions are made to encourage a more appropriate use of industrial land in China, and the most important being the need for a mindset shift from competition towards coopetition between the PRD and Southeast Asian regions.     

Behavioral determinants of supply chain integration and coexistence

Economic theory considers physical production characteristics and related property rights as key determinants of the organization of an industry. Yet, we frequently observe coexisting governance modes within industries and firms, even when the transaction attributes of a commodity are homogenous. We test whether risk and time preferences, price expectations, and trust in supply chain types can explain variations and coexistence in governance. Specifically, we experimentally elicit economic preferences of forest managers in the Swiss wood sector. We find that all behavioral dimensions are related to the choice of sales channel. Most importantly, trust and expectations are key determinants in transferring property rights, while risk aversion, patience, and ownership structure explain the existence of plural forms at the firm level.     

Wheat variety yield data: Do commercial and public performance tests provide the same information?

Wheat yields from reported performance test results are of economic importance to wheat producers, since their profits depend on selecting the optimal variety for their location. However, our data shows differences in absolute and relative wheat yields between commercial and public wheat breeding program's performance test data in Kansas. Newly available data are used to test if the difference in yields arose from potential selectivity bias, and to determine the contribution of private and public wheat breeding programs to varietal yield improvement during 2007–2012. Both Heckman selection models and multiple regression showed no statistical evidence of the potential presence of selectivity bias rather, managerial practices, agronomic conditions, field location, and inherent genetic traits of the seed variety were identify as the source of yield differences.     

“嵌入性”约束下的产业转移制度安排——江苏省南北挂钩共建产业园区的经验借鉴

产业转移不仅是一种典型的经济行为,而且是一种社会行为。遵循经济学逻辑,当不同区域间的生产要素价格差距较大时,受市场信号指挥的企业就会自发采取适应性行为——向要素成本较低的区域进行梯度转移。现实中,尽管我国区域间的要素价格差距悬殊,但产业转移步伐远远落后于预期。从新经济社会学视角论证这种"经济悖论",发现嵌入本地的生产性、服务性、制度性、社会性网络制约着企业的异地转移行为,进一步提出产业转移是企业社会关系网络和协力合作网络"脱嵌-再嵌入"的过程,并以江苏省南北挂钩共建产业园区为例,验证了两地政府通力合作有利于降低"脱嵌"对企业异地生产的冲击,并能够帮助企业"再嵌入"异地社会关系网络和协力合作网络,从而有力地解释了我国区域间产业转移需要政府介入的新经济社会学逻辑。     

Accounting for breakout in Britain: The industrial revolution through a Malthusian lens

This paper introduces a simple dynamic model to examine the breakout from a Malthusian economy to a modern growth regime. It identifies several factors that determine the fastest rate at which the population can grow without engendering declining living standards. We then apply the framework to Britain and find a dramatic increase in sustainable population growth at the time of the Industrial Revolution, well before the beginning of modern levels of income growth. The main contributions to the British breakout were technological improvements and structural change away from agricultural production, while coal, capital, and trade played a minor role. In addition to solidifying the link between the Industrial Revolution and rising living standards, this research reconciles the gradualist and limited Crafts–Harley view of the Industrial Revolution with a dramatic and rapid change in Britain’s macroeconomic character.     

Objective methods for graphical structural learning

Graphical models are used for expressing conditional independence relationships among variables by the means of graphs, whose structure is typically unknown and must be inferred by the data at hand. We propose a theoretically sound Objective Bayes procedure for graphical model selection. Our method is based on the Expected-Posterior Prior and on the Power-Expected-Posterior Prior. We use as input of the proposed methodology a default improper prior and suggest computationally efficient approximations of Bayes factors and posterior odds. In a variety of simulated scenarios with varying number of nodes and sample sizes, we show that our method is highly competitive with, or better than, current benchmarks. We also discuss an application to protein-signaling data, which wieldy confirms existing results in the scientific literature.     

Assessing self-selection and endogeneity issues in the relation between activity-based costing and performance

Studies investigating the relation between ABC adoption and performance are inconclusive and plagued with econometric problems. This study extends prior research to investigate the association between ABC adoption and four manufacturing plant performance measures (cycle-time improvement, quality improvement, cost improvement, and profitability) and to assess selection bias and the endogenous nature of their relationship. I use the Heckman (1979) model to assess sample selection bias and the Wooldridge (2002) 2SLS-IV approach, to investigate endogeneity. After controlling for sample selection bias and endogeneity, the coefficient of ABC under the Heckman method and ABC_fit under the 2SLS-IV method becomes significantly higher compared to the coefficient of ABC under the OLS method. In addition, both the inverse Mills ratio, under the Heckman model, and Hausman F-test, under the Wooldridge 2SLS approach, are positive and significant, confirming the presence of both sample selection bias and endogeneity. Overall, I find that controlling for sample selection bias and endogeneity is essential in properly assessing the significance of ABC-performance association.     

“五年规划”该规划什么,不该规划什么?

在市场经济条件下，政府制定规划的基本作用与思路为“研判未来趋势，提出发展愿景，规划政府任务”，对市场进行“负面清单管理”，对政府进行“正面清单约束”。政府应提高治理能力，努力把自己该做的事做足、做好，少搞产业政策，减少对市场干预，做真正体现小政府、大市场、由市场起决定性作用的规划。