nep-cna New Economics Papers
on China
Issue of 2013‒11‒02
three papers chosen by
Zheng Fang
Ohio State University

  1. Confucianism and Preferences: Evidence from Lab Experiments in Taiwan and China By Liu, Elaine M.; Meng, Juanjuan; Wang, Joseph Tao-yi
  2. Factor Intensity, Product Switching, and Productivity: Evidence from Chinese Exporters By Yue Ma; Heiwai Tang; Yifan Zhang
  3. An evaluation of poverty prevalence in China: New evidence from four recent surveys: By Zhang, Chunni; Xu, Qi; Zhang, Xiaobo; Xie, Yu

  1. By: Liu, Elaine M. (University of Houston); Meng, Juanjuan (Peking University); Wang, Joseph Tao-yi (National Taiwan University)
    Abstract: This paper investigates how Confucianism affects individual decision making in Taiwan and in China. We found that Chinese subjects in our experiments became less accepting of Confucian values, such that they became significantly more risk loving, less loss averse, and more impatient after being primed with Confucianism, whereas Taiwanese subjects became significantly less present-based and were inclined to be more trustworthy after being primed by Confucianism. Combining the evidence from the incentivized laboratory experiments and subjective survey measures, we found evidence that Chinese subjects and Taiwanese subjects reacted differently to Confucianism.
    Keywords: social norm, Confucianism, time preferences, risk aversion, trust
    JEL: C91 Z10
    Date: 2013–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7684&r=cna
  2. By: Yue Ma (Lingnan University); Heiwai Tang (Tufts University and MIT Sloan); Yifan Zhang (Lingnan University)
    Abstract: This paper analyzes the causal relations between firms' productivity, factor intensity and export participation. Using propensity score matching techniques and firm-level panel data for Chinese manufacturing firms over the 1998-2007 period, we find strong evidence of domestic firms self-selecting into export markets with higher productivity ex ante, and enhanced productivity ex post. No such pattern is observed among foreign-invested ?rms. We also find that both domestic and foreign new exporters exploit China?s low labor costs and specialize in their core competence, that is, firms become less capital-intensive after exporting, relative to the matched non-exporting counterparts in the same industry. To rationalize these results that contrast with most findings in the existing literature, we develop a variant of the multi-product model of Bernard, Redding, and Schott (2010) to consider varying capital intensity across products. Using transaction-level export data, we find evidence that Chinese exporters add new products that are more labor-intensive than existing products and drop products that are less labor- intensive, supporting the model predictions. Firms with a bigger decline in capital intensity after exporting are found to have a larger increase in measured TFP.
    Keywords: Exporters, Productivity, Factor Intensity, Multi-product Firms
    JEL: F11 L16 O53
    Date: 2013
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpc:wpaper:0913&r=cna
  3. By: Zhang, Chunni; Xu, Qi; Zhang, Xiaobo; Xie, Yu
    Abstract: Knowledge of actual poverty prevalence is important for any society concerned with improving public welfare and reducing poverty. In this paper, we calculate and compare the poverty incidence rate in China using four nationally representative surveys: the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) of 2010, the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) of 2010, the Chinese Household Finance Survey (CHFS) of 2011, and the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) of 2007.
    Keywords: Poverty, Household surveys, Household expenditures, household consumption, Surveys, income, Sociology,
    Date: 2013
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1293&r=cna

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