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on China |
| By: | Stephan Heblich; Marlon Seror; Hao Xu; Yanos Zylberberg |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of large, successful manufacturing plants on other local producers in China, focusing on "Million-Rouble Plants" built in the 1950s during a brief alliance with the U.S.S.R. The ephemeral geopolitical situation and the locations of allied and enemy airbases provide exogenous variation in plant siting. We find a boom-and-bust pattern: Counties hosting these plants were 80% more productive than control counties in 1982 but 20% less productive by 2010. This decline reflects the performance of local establishments, which exhibit low productivity, limited innovation, and high markup. Specialization hindered spillovers, preventing the emergence of new clusters and local entrepreneurship. |
| Keywords: | Industrial policy; regional development; manufacturing agglomeration; knowledge spillovers; China; economic history |
| JEL: | R11 R53 J24 N95 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26188 |
| By: | Hu, Yan; Maurer, Stephan |
| Abstract: | Do minorities benefit from social networks? In this paper, we study this question using the historical example of China's first modern bureaucratic organization, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. Drawing on newly digitized personnel records from 1876-1911, we first show that the Chinese clerks employed by the service were predominantly Cantonese. Using the plausibly exogenous transfers of clerks across stations, we then estimate that a non-Cantonese (minority) clerk benefited significantly from meeting at least one colleague from his same province and dialect. Such connections led to faster promotion and a 5.6% salary increase, with even stronger effects when meeting a clerk who was either senior or of high quality. |
| Keywords: | Chinese Maritime Customs Service, social connections, wages, promotion, minorities |
| JEL: | J15 J31 J45 N35 N75 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cexwps:342438 |
| By: | Song, Jing; Min, Shi |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how administrative decentralization affects the income of rural residents in China. Since 2002, China has implemented the counties power expansion (CPE) reform, which devolves part of the economic and social management authority previously held by prefecture-level cities directly to county governments. Exploiting the staggered implementation of the reform across counties as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ a staggered difference-in-differences approach and find that the CPE reform significantly increases the per capita disposable income of rural residents, with an average increase of approximately 5.7%. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the incomeenhancing effect is stronger in counties with higher fiscal self-sufficiency, counties that simultaneously implemented the direct provincial fiscal administration reform, and counties located in major grain-producing areas. Further mechanism analysis reveals that the reform promotes rural income growth through two channels: the expansion of nonagricultural employment and the advancement of agricultural modernization. Our findings suggest that institutional reforms centered on county-level governance constitute an effective pathway for improving rural welfare and provide important policy implications for the design of decentralization reforms in developing countries. |
| Keywords: | Community/Rural/Urban Development |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404762 |
| By: | Long, Joe; Medici, Carlo; Qian, Nancy; Tabellini, Marco |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the economic consequences of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned immigration from China. The Act reduced the number of Chinese workers of all skill levels living in the United States. It also reduced the labor supply and the quality of jobs held by white and U.S.-born workers, the intended beneficiaries of the Act, and reduced manufacturing output. The results suggest that the Chinese Exclusion Act slowed economic growth in western states until at least 1940. |
| JEL: | J15 J21 N32 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19541 |
| By: | Zhang, Jingna |
| Abstract: | Can a public pension change how rural households transfer farmland? We study China’s New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), exploiting its age-60 eligibility threshold in a fuzzy regressiondiscontinuity design applied to three waves of the China Family Panel Studies (2014–2018), with identification coming from individual older-member pension receipt. Pension receipt raises the probability that a household rents out farmland, and the response is concentrated entirely on market-oriented transfer: paid rental-out rises sharply while zero-rent rental-out, a proxy for nonmonetized relational transfer, does not move. The market-side response is largest among households with the weakest cultural and structural ties to kin and village, for whom relational transfer carries the lowest implicit cost. The estimates are robust to controls for child remittance, off-farm labor, and non-farm income, and we find no contemporaneous discontinuity in private kin transfers. Pension income thus does more than relax the household budget: it shifts the institutional form of land transfer from relational support toward market-oriented exchange. Social insurance, in this setting, operates as a land-market institution. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404387 |
| By: | Liang, Xiaomeng; Yang, Chenyujing; Xue, Yongji |
| Abstract: | Balancing ecological restoration and grain production is a core challenge for land management in arid and semi-arid regions. Large-scale ecological engineering programs are often assumed to constrain agricultural output through land-use competition, yet rigorous causal evidence on their long-term effects and underlying mechanisms remains scarce. This study investigates whether and how China’s Three-North Shelter Forest Program (TNSFP) affects grain production. Guided by the social–ecological systems framework and ecosystem services theory, we hypothesize that large-scale ecological restoration can enhance agricultural output through improvements in ecosystem services rather than crowding out cropland. Using county-level panel data from China covering 2000–2022, we estimate the causal impact of TNSFP on grain production employing a two-way fixed effects model, complemented by the Callaway and Sant’Anna difference-in-differences approach (CSDID), event-study analysis, placebo tests, and multiple robustness checks. Grain production data are combined with satellite-derived vegetation indices, air quality indicators, and ecosystem quality measures to identify mechanism pathways. The results show that TNSFP significantly increases county-level grain production, with baseline estimates indicating an average rise of approximately 3.4 units and larger effects after controlling for agricultural inputs, climate, and socioeconomic conditions. CSDID estimates confirm robust positive effects, . Event-study results reveal negligible pre-treatment trends and gradually accumulating post-treatment effects. Mechanism analysis demonstrates that improved vegetation cover, enhanced air quality, and overall ecosystem quality jointly promote grain production, with ecosystem quality playing a dominant role. Significant regional and land endowment heterogeneity is observed, with stronger effects in cropland-abundant counties and limited impacts in Northwest China. These findings provide new causal evidence that ecological restoration can generate synergistic benefits for land restoration and food production, offering important implications for sustainable land management in dryland regions. |
| Date: | 2026–07–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:jmdz7_v1 |
| By: | Loren Brandt; Chaoran Chen; Xiaoyun Wei |
| Abstract: | Structural transformation can affect not only where people work, but also whether they participate in market work. We study this margin in China, where rapid movement out of agriculture coincided with a large decline in labor force participation. Using census and rural household data, we show that the post-2000 decline was concentrated among rural indi- viduals and broad-based across demographic groups and regions. We develop a quantitative model in which rural household members choose between market work and home production, subject to mobility barriers. Quantitatively, the model closely matches the observed decline without targeting it: agricultural productivity growth releases labor from agriculture and substantially reduces participation, while non-agricultural productivity growth only partially offsets this effect, as mobility barriers limit labor reallocation. |
| Keywords: | labor force participation, home production, structural change, labor supply, labor mobility, within-household labor allocation, productivity growth, China |
| JEL: | E02 E13 J21 J22 O11 O14 O41 |
| Date: | 2026–08–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-826 |
| By: | Bobbie, Kelvin |
| Abstract: | This study examines how trade-war shocks reshape soybean markets beyond their effects on prices. Focusing on the 2018–2019 Sino–U.S. trade war and the renewed trade disruptions of 2025, we evaluate whether restrictions on access to China, the world's largest soybean importer, altered price discovery, cross-commodity linkages, risk transmission, and market quality in soybean futures markets. We combine daily futures data from the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and China's Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) to compare market responses across the two episodes. Using event-study methods, connectedness measures derived from vector autoregressions, and a copulabased CoVaR framework, we analyze how trade-war shocks affect information leadership in U.S. soybean markets, spillovers across the agricultural complex, and tail-risk transmission between U.S. and Chinese soybean markets. We hypothesize that trade-war disruptions weaken the price discovery role of CBOT soybean futures, intensify risk spillovers, and reduce market quality through higher volatility and lower liquidity. Findings will contribute to understanding how geopolitical trade disruptions affect commodity market resilience, information transmission, and the reliability of benchmark agricultural futures markets. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural Finance, Farm Management |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404348 |
| By: | Marina Glushenkova; Marios Zachariadis |
| Abstract: | We investigate the extent to which the substantial decline in price dispersion across Chinese cities can be attributed to the emergence and expansion of e-commerce. We find that online trade exerted a strong negative effect on bilateral price differences across Chinese cities over time for the period from 2006 to 2021. Furthermore, we find that the impact of online trade on price integration was even more pronounced for cities located farther apart geographically. As a result of this mechanism, price dispersion declined significantly over the study period, reaching levels comparable to those observed among core euro-area economies by the end of the sample period. |
| Keywords: | market segmentation, price convergence, e-commerce, road infrastructure, welfare |
| JEL: | E3 F4 H54 O5 R4 |
| Date: | 2026–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucy:cypeua:02-2026 |
| By: | Zhang, Chunlan; Zhao, Jinsong |
| Abstract: | Does institutional design mitigate the biodiversity loss associated with urban land expansion? This study addresses this question by evaluating China's 2018 "Increment-Stock Linkage" (ISL) policy, which mandates that greenfield land quotas be contingent upon the verified redevelopment of existing brownfield land. By integrating monthly county-level bird observation data from the China Bird Report with comprehensive land transaction records, we employ a triple-difference (DDD) empirical strategy that exploits cross-sectional variation in counties' pre-reform reliance on new land development. Our findings reveal a significant reversal in land–biodiversity elasticity: following the reform, elasticity shifts from −0.027 in control counties to +0.009 in treatment counties. We trace this reversal to two complementary channels: at the extensive margin, reduced greenfield conversion preserves edge habitats essential for landscape connectivity; at the intensive margin, the shift toward brownfield redevelopment raises land use efficiency and compels compensatory urban greening within densified cores. These biodiversity gains are most pronounces among migratory and the ISL reform operates |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404498 |
| By: | Liu, Jianfeng; Ma, Xiaochen; Ma, Yubei; Wan, Yue |
| Abstract: | This study examines how intergenerational co-residence mitigates mental health consequences of widowhood in China. Using longitudinal data (2011-2020) from CHARLS and a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find widowhood increases depressive symptoms by 1.815 points (CES-D scale). However, sustained co-residence with adult children is associated with offsetting approximately 79.6% of this adverse effect. Alternative support mechanisms— financial transfers, visits, and remote communication — provide no comparable protection. Mechanism analysis reveals that co-residence protects by stabilizing social networks rather than by monitoring health behaviors. We quantify protection value at 2, 790 RMB per person-year, translating to 7.4 billion RMB annual social benefits under a 70% co-residence scenario. The non-substitutability of embedded family support implies that policies should prioritize maintaining pre-existing co-residence arrangements rather than relying on crisis-activated or remote support interventions. |
| Keywords: | Health Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404596 |
| By: | Rodriguez Castelan, Carlos; Vazquez, Emmanuel; Winkler, Hernan |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the local effects of the 2018–19 U.S.-China trade disruptions on Mexico. Combining detailed municipal-level customs data with U.S. tariff schedules, it estimates that municipalities with greater export concentration in products targeted by U.S. tariffs on China (hereafter, tariff exposure) experienced significantly larger nearshoring dividends. An increase of 1 percent in tariff exposure led to a 4.3 percent increase in municipality-level exports to the United States, with gains concentrated in northern and south-central states. These export gains translated into broad labor market improvements: total labor income rose by 5.6 percent for each 1 percent increase in tariff exposure, driven by job creation rather than wage growth as average earnings remained unchanged. The effects were heterogeneous across skill levels, with the largest employment rate gains among semi-skilled workers. Beyond job quantity, the shock improved job quality: each 1 percent increase in tariff exposure reduced labor informality by 0.25 percentage points, with newly created jobs disproportionately being formal. Effects were driven primarily by manufacturing but extended to services through local spillovers. The findings indicate that trade policy changes between major economies can significantly reshape the spatial distribution of economic activity and the quantity and quality of jobs in third-party countries. |
| Date: | 2026–06–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11419 |
| By: | Liu, Huilin; Harou, Aurelie |
| Abstract: | Open crop residue burning creates serious environmental externalities, but the role of land tenure institutions in farmers’ burning decisions remains unclear. This paper examines how two major land reforms in rural China affected agricultural fires. Using county-level reform timing, satellite-based fire data, and a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that the Land Contracting and Transfer Reform (LCTR) of 2003 increased agricultural fire occurrence and intensity, while the Land Titling Reform (LTR) of 2014 reduced it. We explain these opposing effects by showing that LCTR expanded production and limited the availability of labor, increasing the pressure to dispose of agricultural residue. By contrast, LTR reduced fires by changing planted area by strengthening tenure security, parcel level accountability and incentives to program long-term soil productivity. The findings show that land tenure institutions can affect pollution externalities in agriculture and that secure property rights can generate environmental benefits beyond direct regulation. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404438 |
| By: | Chen, Wei; Wang, Xinyue; Yu, Jialing; Chen, Junliang |
| Abstract: | Infrastructure-led development and agricultural land preservation represent competing priorities in rapidly developing countries. This study examines the causal impact of rural road construction on land use in China from 1995 to 2020, using a village-level panel of 381, 153 villages, a long-difference IV estimator, and a structural decomposition of land conversion pathways. We find that each additional kilometer of road reduces cropland by 4.781 hectares and increases construction land by 5.371 hectares, with 98.8% of cropland outflow flowing to construction land. The 2010 intensification of the cropland red line reduced the per-kilometer cropland effect by 27% and the construction land effect by 32%, but the conversion mechanism persists, especially near county seats. Policy effectiveness is spatially heterogeneous: the red line curbed conversion mainly in remote villages, while peri-urban areas maintain high conversion rates. These findings imply that infrastructure evaluation must account for land use costs, and that command-and-control regulation needs price-based complements in spatially differentiated land markets. |
| Keywords: | Community/Rural/Urban Development |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404757 |
| By: | Yun-Long Zhang; Jia-Ning Kang; Xiaoming Kan; Lan-Cui Liu; Zhimin Huang; Song Peng; Biying Yu; Yi-Ming Wei |
| Abstract: | Decarbonizing existing coal-fired power plants can contribute to near-term climate mitigation, but identifying cost-effective retrofit strategies is complicated by interactions among mitigation technologies. Here we develop an interaction-aware optimization framework that jointly evaluates energy conservation, biomass co-firing, and carbon capture across 1, 885 coal-fired power plants in China while accounting for plant heterogeneity and shared biomass and CO2 storage resources. We find that technology interactions alter both mitigation costs and the emission reductions attributable to individual measures, thereby changing cost-optimal technology portfolios and marginal abatement cost curve at the fleet level. Approximately 1.2 Gt CO2 yr-1 can be mitigated at negative marginal cost, while reaching carbon neutrality requires a marginal abatement cost of US$56 t CO2-1. Progressively deeper mitigation shifts the cost-optimal portfolio from energy conservation toward biomass co-firing and ultimately carbon capture, with biomass combined with carbon capture enabling net-negative emissions. Explicitly accounting for interactions among mitigation technologies therefore provides a more consistent basis for evaluating coal-power decarbonization and coordinating retrofit investment, infrastructure development, and climate policy. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.11404 |
| By: | Seth G. Benzell; Laurence J. Kotlikoff; Victor Yifan Ye |
| Abstract: | This study deploys a multi-region, dynamic life-cycle, general equilibrium model to assess demography’s impact, through the course of this century, on global development. Our model’s 17 regions encompass more than 150 countries comprising 99% of the world’s population. Output is produced with three labor skill groups and internationally-mobile capital, with each country deciding annually whether to adopt its frontier automation technology. Our model features region-specific fiscal policy, TFP growth, and idiosyncratic mortality. Agents live for 100 years, first as children, then as workers, and then as retirees. Work and saving decisions are governed by CES preferences. Lifespan is uncertain, but there are no annuities apart from state pensions. Hence, bequests, while significant, are unintended. Our fertility, mortality, and net immigration rates are region- and age-specific and align fully with the UN’s projections. To illustrate demographics’ power to impact the global transition, we simulate our model under the UN’s markedly different demographic projections for 2017 and 2024. The 2024 forecast is particularly pessimistic about China’s fertility prospects. Both projections produce very substantial global aging, a major global capital glut producing very low long-run real capital returns. The latest forecast entails 10% lower global GDP in 2100 and far higher payroll tax rates to fund old-age benefits. Most important, it entails a major change in the course of economic hegemony with China’s 2100 global GDP share falling from 25.6% to 14.9% and the US share rising from 11.2% to 14.4%. Our results are sensitive. Should the US eliminate all future immigration, its 14.4% global 2100 GDP share would drop to 9.2%. And were global fertility to follow the UN’s low variant, 2100 world output would be one third, not one tenth lower. The level and division of global output is also highly sensitive to the speed at which AI expands frontier technologies. Accelerated AU/AI – 4x faster-than-recent growth in capital’s share through 2050 – or Transformative AU/AI – 10x faster capital-share growth – reinforce demographic forces, ensuring long-run US economic hegemony. Indeed, Transformative AI combined with 2024 demographics implies US and Chinese 2100 global GDP shares of 25.3% and 16.9%, respectively. And not withstanding its considerable technological catch up, the US retains, based on our calibration, a technological edge over China throughout the century. |
| JEL: | E10 E13 E60 F19 F47 H2 J1 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35618 |
| By: | Xu, Zhaoyang; Zhu, Lei; , KuoRayMao; Xue, Yongji |
| Abstract: | In the context of global climate mitigation, low carbon energy transitions have become central to sustainable development. However, while pursuing environmental objectives, such transitions may also reshape patterns of resource distribution and participation through institutional arrangements, generating new forms of inequality across distributive, procedural, and recognition dimensions. China, as the world's largest developing country and a major carbon emitter, provides an analytically rich context for examining how low carbon transitions intersect with equity concerns. This study investigates three photovoltaic projects in China: the Tengger Desert New Energy Base in Ningxia, the Dezhou Rooftop PV Program in Shandong, and the Yancheng Solar-Fishery Integration Project in Jiangsu. Drawing on field interviews and policy document analysis, the study employs a thematic grounded coding approach to develop a four dimensional analytical framework covering spatial entitlements, revenue distribution, technological adaptation, and policy design. The findings show that vulnerable rural communities often face constrained spatial rights, limited benefit sharing, uneven adaptive capacity, and restricted participation in top down governance processes. Based on this analysis, the paper develops policy recommendations to enhance institutional inclusiveness, optimize benefit-sharing mechanisms, and strengthen local governance capacity. These insights provide both theoretical contributions to the study of energy justice and practical references for promoting equitable and sustainable energy transitions in the Global South. |
| Date: | 2026–07–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:56j9h_v1 |
| By: | Hugo Oriola; Jamel Saadaoui |
| Abstract: | International organization loans are often expected to reassure investors, yet market responses to projects and loans vary sharply across recipient countries. We argue that loan approvals function as noisy signals of policy credibility, and that geopolitical alignment with major powers shapes how financial markets interpret these signals--through channels whose sign depends jointly on the institutional basis of the lender's credibility and on which power the recipient is aligned with. Using a monthly dataset covering more than 100 countries, we examine how loan approvals by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) affect financial conditions in non-permanent members of the UN Security Council. We find weaker, only marginally robust evidence that alignment with the US is associated with more favorable currency reactions to IMF lending, tentatively consistent with a shareholder-credibility channel; alignment with Russia is associated with less favorable currency reactions, consistent with a leniency channel, although this result is also only marginally robust to cluster-robust inference. We do not find a comparable effect for alignment with China. For the ADB, whose credibility rests less on conditionality than on continuity of financing, alignment with China or Russia is instead associated with more favorable currency reactions, consistent with a backstop channel. Stock prices and Treasury bill yields display markedly weaker and less consistent conditioning effects. |
| Keywords: | international organizations, United Nations, geopolitical preferences, catalytic effect, Asian Development Bank, International Monetary Fund |
| JEL: | D78 F30 F42 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2026-69 |
| By: | Ruiqi Sun |
| Abstract: | Trade policy increasingly targets individual firms and products rather than entire sectors or countries. This paper develops a framework for evaluating granular trade policies in highly differentiated markets. Using an event-study design, I first show that product-pair elasticities of substitution are systematically related to the similarity between product descriptions. Motivated by this evidence, I develop a general-equilibrium trade model with oligopolistic competition. Products are heterogeneous in their attribute mix and quality, and substitution strength varies continuously with product similarity. I apply the theory to the mobile app sector and evaluate China's Great Firewall Project (GFW). Removing the GFW raises Chinese consumers' utility from app-based leisure but reallocates profits away from Chinese companies (e.g., Tencent) toward foreign companies (e.g., Meta). In the benchmark calibration, this profit shift more than offsets the direct consumer gain: removing the GFW lowers Chinese welfare by 0.146%, while raising welfare by 0.311% in the United States and 0.080% in the rest of the world. |
| Keywords: | granular trade policies, generalized translog demand, digital service trade |
| JEL: | F12 F13 F14 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12913 |
| By: | Zihao Zhang; Yuanbo Zhang; Xiaolei Ma; Yuan Liao |
| Abstract: | Urban decarbonization often raises the cost of travel, yet which neighbourhoods can adapt remains largely invisible under normal conditions. We leverage the 2026 US-Iran oil shock as a natural experiment, applying a hierarchical panel regression discontinuity design to 1.7 trillion point-of-interest visits across 122, 000 neighbourhoods in China and the United States. Mobility range declined in nearly three-quarters of neighbourhoods, but responses varied systematically with pre-shock urban conditions. Exposure to energy-intensive travel explained the largest share of modelled heterogeneity in both countries, while adaptive capacity and activity composition further shaped how travel was reorganized. Longer baseline travel intensified contraction, whereas greater car dependence constrained adjustment. Crucially, similar mobility outcomes arose from different processes: some neighbourhoods maintained travel by absorbing higher costs, whereas others appeared structurally locked into travel they could not reorganize. Fuel-price shocks, therefore, act as urban stress tests, revealing otherwise hidden inequalities in mobility adaptation. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.12281 |
| By: | , KuoRayMao; Zhang, Qian; Truslove, Micaela (Desert Research Institute) |
| Abstract: | Payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes have become a widely used policy instrument for states to incentivize desirable environmental behaviors to meet conservation and preservation goals. However, many studies have shown that market-based regulatory mechanisms may change human-environment relationships, generating the commodification of natural resources and environmental inequalities. Our case study of an extensive grassland PES scheme in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China demonstrates that implementation is highly contingent upon existing state structures, political ideologies, national economic imperatives, and the ability of PES designers to account for the complexity of human-environment interactions. The state's conflicting mandates to provide environmental protection and facilitate economic growth have undermined conservation and worsened environmental inequality in the region. Our chapter contributes a more nuanced understanding of how normative functions of state-led ecosystem valuation and environmental interventions in an illiberal context may lead to the overutilization of natural resources that exacerbates stratification and injustice in top-down, centralized environmental governance models. |
| Date: | 2026–07–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:pcz54_v2 |
| By: | Bhattarai, Keshav; Adhikari, Ambika P. (Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS)) |
| Abstract: | As Nepal urbanizes, expands infrastructure, strengthens local governments, and explores deeper connectivity with India and China, climate change is increasing floods, landslides, heat, and water insecurity. Rapid internal migration, rising disaster risks, youth outmigration, and dependence on remittances are also revealing the limits of conventional urban development, especially in the mountainous region. The central challenge for Nepal is no longer just to accommodate growing towns and cities, but to build settlements that are safe, productive, environmentally resilient, and capable of sustaining long-term prosperity. This paper argues that Nepal's urban future must be guided by a new development paradigm centered on safe, smart, and resilient settlements. This is even more applicable for Nepal’s mountainous regions. This article presents an integrated framework that links risk-sensitive land use, climate-resilient infrastructure, ecological stewardship, productive local economies, digital technologies, and accountable governance to emerging opportunities in air, rail, and highway connectivity, data centers, medical tourism, higher education, and climate services. Rather than viewing urbanization as an inevitable consequence of rural-to-urban migration and economic growth, the article proposes that well-planned settlements should become Nepal's primary platform for reducing disaster risk, creating jobs, expanding exports, and strengthening national resilience in the twenty-first century. |
| Date: | 2026–07–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:kjhq3_v1 |
| By: | Fu, Liang; Li, Gucheng |
| Abstract: | Growing attention has been paid to how agricultural technology adoption affects crop production. However, little is known about the effects of smart agricultural technology on agricultural production performance. This study uses survey data from 1, 146 rice farmers to examine the effects of smart agricultural technology (SAT) adoption on rice yield, technical efficiency, net returns and production costs. To reduce selection bias caused by farmers’ selfselection into SAT adoption, this study applies a doubly robust inverse probability weighted regression adjustment estimator. The results show that SAT adoption significantly increases rice yield, technical efficiency and net returns by 10.63%, 10.26% and 27.69%, respectively. It also reduces production costs by 3.83%. Further analysis shows that SAT adoption significantly reduces fertilizer, pesticide, labor and other inputs. These results are broadly consistent with estimates from propensity score matching and endogenous switching regression models. The findings suggest that promoting SAT adoption among smallholder rice farmers can help increase yield and net returns, improve efficiency, reduce input use and support agricultural green transformation. |
| Keywords: | Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404714 |
| By: | Hiroyuki Yamada (Keio University) |
| Abstract: | Thermal inversions have become the standard instrument for estimating the causal effect of air pollution, underpinning at least 81 published studies of health, labor, firm, and crime outcomes. Seventy-seven percent of those studies concern China, and none concerns Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper examines whether the design can be transported to the regions where pollution research is expanding fastest. We link 120, 820 children in 26 Sub-Saharan African countries and 128, 919 in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal to 0.01° satellite PM2.5 and to ERA5 temperature profiles measured at local dawn, and we estimate a single two-stage least squares specification six times, changing only the definition of the inversion instrument. Five of the six definitions come from published practice, and the sixth is an elevation-robust variant of our own. In the African sample, we find that all six first stages are strong and correctly signed (F=57-356). However, the second stages split by instrument family. Pressure-level definitions give positive but insignificant effects on child respiratory illness, whereas surface-layer definitions, the modal implementation in the literature, give significant negative ones. Over-identification tests reject the cross-family pairings of the count and continuous instruments (p |
| Keywords: | thermal inversion, instrumental variables, air pollution, child health, external validity, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia |
| JEL: | Q53 I15 O13 C26 |
| Date: | 2026–08–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:keo:dpaper:dp2026-018 |
| By: | Chung, Andy; Zhang, Junsen |
| Abstract: | This paper develops and tests a life-cycle hypothesis of sleep investment. Motivated by evidence from psychology, aging, and sleep research that the consequences of insufficient sleep become increasingly severe with age, we argue that individuals facing stronger productivity incentives should increasingly preserve sleep as they age. We formalize this idea in a simple life-cycle framework in which sleep is a productive activity that competes with work and leisure for time. We test the framework using longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). We focus on adolescent physical attractiveness and college education as two characteristics associated with occupational sorting and long-run productivity incentives. While both characteristics exhibit little association with sleep duration in early adulthood, their relationships with sleep become increasingly positive over the life cycle. Attractive individuals and college graduates experience substantially less negative declines in sleep duration with age and increasingly sleep longer relative to their counterparts in later adulthood. Additional analyses show that these patterns are strongest among workers and are not readily explained by mental health, sleep difficulties, social participation, or reverse causality through sleep affecting later attractiveness. More broadly, the findings suggest that differences in long-run productivity incentives contribute to divergent sleep trajectories over adulthood and support a life-cycle perspective on sleep investment. |
| Keywords: | sleep, life cycle, health investment, physical attractiveness, college education |
| JEL: | I12 J22 J24 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1802 |
| By: | Fabrice Kampfen (University College Dublin); Owen O'Donnell (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Xuezheng Qin (Peking University) |
| Abstract: | A multidimensional regression discontinuity design reveals large and asymmetric spillovers from personalized health information within Chinese families. Warning a man that he has high blood pressure (BP) is estimated to reduce his wife’s BP by 7.5% and her probability of high BP by 24% points, while there is no female-to male spillover. Warning a parent (father, particularly) reduces their adult child’s BP. Identified mechanisms are reduced adiposity (spousal) and healthier behavior (intergenerational). Asymmetry can be explained by joint health production under collective but gender-unequal household decision making. We demonstrate screening even for non-communicable disease risk can generate positive spillovers. |
| Keywords: | Health behavior, Peer effects, Information, Collective household, Screening |
| JEL: | C21 I12 I15 |
| Date: | 2026–08–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260049 |
| By: | Liu, Xuan |
| Abstract: | Large-scale water resource reallocations combat regional scarcity but often obscure localized environmental costs. Evaluating China's South-to-North Water Diversion Project using a synthetic difference-in-differences framework, we estimate that the project increased topsoil salinity by an average of 3.16% in water-receiving counties. We show that this salinization is driven by a dual mechanism: new canal seepage artificially raises local water tables, while prohibitive marginal water prices prompt farmers to reduce irrigation, disrupting the traditional downward salt leaching process. The effects of this ecological shift are highly asymmetrical. Because post-diversion salinity remains safely within the tolerance range of winter wheat but systematically breaches the physiological yield-reduction threshold of summer maize, the environmental burden falls disproportionately on the summer growing season. Consistent with this biophysical constraint, we find that farmers rationalized production by reducing their maize acreage by 19%. Incorporating these estimates into structural agronomic models, we calculate that this asymmetric soil degradation exacts a marginal shadow cost of 920 million RMB per year in the agricultural sector. |
| Keywords: | Resource/Energy Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404732 |
| By: | Bai, Jie; Barwick, Panle; Cao, Shengmao; Li, Shanjun |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the impact of FDI via quid pro quo (technology for market access) in facilitating knowledge spillovers and quality upgrading. Our context is the Chinese automobile industry, where foreign automakers are required to set up joint ventures (JVs) with domestic automakers to facilitate technology transfers in return for market access. Our identification strategy exploits a unique dataset of detailed vehicle quality measures and relies on within-product variation across quality dimensions. We show that affiliated domestic automakers tend to adopt the quality strengths of their JV partners, consistent with knowledge spillovers. We rule out alternative explanations, such as endogenous JV formation, geographic proximity, overlapping customer bases, brand image association, and patent transfers. Additional analysis suggests that worker flows and supplier networks mediate knowledge spillovers. Overall, knowledge spillovers due to ownership affiliation under quid pro quo contributed 8.3% of the quality improvement experienced by affiliated domestic models between 2001 and 2014, relative to nonaffiliated domestic models. |
| JEL: | O14 O25 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19440 |
| By: | Xu, Chenguang; Chao, Zenghui; Gu, Wenhao; Zhang, Jun |
| Abstract: | Using a novel transaction plant-protection UAV data in China, this paper examines how agricultural subsidy payment delays affect agricultural technology adoption. The analysis estimates zero-truncated Poisson correlated random effects models with spatial Durbin extensions. Global and Local Moran's I tests show significant spatial clustering in UAV adoption. In the preferred spatial Durbin zero-truncated Poisson model, subsidy payment delay significantly reduces local plant-protection UAV adoption. This negative effect holds after controlling for spatial dependence and county characteristics. The control function approach further addresses potential endogeneity, and the result remains stable. Adoption is constrained on both the extensive margin and the intensive margin. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the delay effect is not uniform across counties. The negative impact is stronger in counties with lower lagged fiscal expenditure, smaller grain sown area, and higher GDP per capita. The study emphasizes that timely delivery of payments is just as important as the subsidy's nominal value or eligibility rules. |
| Keywords: | Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404717 |
| By: | Junjie Li; Yukitoshi Matsushita |
| Abstract: | This paper develops efficient difference-in-differences (DID) estimation under partial interference with a cluster incremental propensity score (CIPS) policy. We define direct and spillover average treatment effects on the treated, establish their identification, and derive their efficient influence functions, from which we construct a cross-fitted estimator. Simulations confirm its finite-sample validity, and an application to China's New Rural Pension Scheme uncovers a significantly negative within-household spillover of pension participation on co-residents' labour income. |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.19925 |
| By: | Adsera, Alicia (Princeton University); Arenas, Andreu (University of Barcelona); Boix, Carles (Princeton University) |
| Abstract: | We examine how individuals value political and economic goods and institutions through a conjoint experiment in eight countries: Argentina, urban China, India, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, and the United States. Respondents choose between societies that randomly vary in personal and country income, inequality, social mobility, safety, public healthcare, and free elections. We estimate marginal effects and willingness to pay for outcomes at the country and respondent levels. Valuations of personal and country incomes and safety are similar across countries. By contrast, the value of democracy, defined as free elections, varies substantially. The average Chinese respondent is willing to give up democracy for an increase in individual income equal to one quarter of average country income, whereas the average American would do so only for twice the U.S. average country income. Unlike income and safety, for which most individual-level variation is explained by personal characteristics, variation in preferences for free elections is substantially explained by respondents’ country. Our findings contribute to research on human preferences, demand for democratic institutions, and policy and redistributive preferences. |
| Keywords: | democracy, safety, willingness to pay, conjoint experiment, income |
| JEL: | H11 H51 I13 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18844 |
| By: | Jiahao Weng |
| Abstract: | This study develops an agent-based financial market model to explain stock-price momentum and reversal through the joint effects of local herding and delayed information diffusion. Investors form heterogeneous Gaussian beliefs about the next-period price, choose among buying, selling, and remaining inactive, and revise their action probabilities in response to neighboring investors. The local interaction structure is represented by von Neumann and Moore lattices and is later replaced by Erd\H{o}s--R\'enyi and Watts--Strogatz networks for robustness. A separate information process updates investor beliefs through a finite-speed diffusion mechanism, allowing informational adjustment to be distinguished from behavioral imitation. The simulations show that stronger herding produces spatially clustered trading, larger price fluctuations, and more pronounced excess kurtosis in returns. Faster information diffusion reduces the time required for prices to approach the signal-implied value, whereas the combination of information diffusion and social reinforcement generates overshooting and subsequent reversal. An empirical application to China's A-share market compares conventional CSAD and LSV measures with a rolling tail-based herding indicator obtained after Johnson $S_U$ transformation. The indicators display similar time variation and rise during major market disruptions. These findings identify information delay, local social reinforcement, and the eventual decay of herding as complementary mechanisms behind momentum and reversal. |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.27063 |
| By: | Scholz, Tobias |
| Abstract: | The Indian government is seeking to expand the country's space programme in order to strengthen national security, promote economic growth and bolster India's global standing. Its aim is to achieve strategic autonomy in the field of civilian space activities and technological sovereignty in the military sphere. In the area of security policy, India's quest for sovereign capabilities is a race against time owing to its rivalry with China. But despite improved investment and regulatory conditions, there has not yet been any significant progress towards the development of a robust and competitive space economy. India's most important strategic partner in the space sector is the US, with which it closely cooperates on trade, security and intelligence matters. In the field of civilian space activities, however, there is a growing interest in cooperation with European actors. India wants to attract more investment into the country, close technology gaps and diversify its partnerships. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swprps:342491 |
| By: | Wang, Huajin; Mallory, Mindy |
| Abstract: | The 2018–2019 U.S.–China trade war disrupted soybean export markets, but whether those disruptions propagated to downstream poultry prices remains unclear. This study traces price transmission along the soybean-to-chicken supply chain using weekly futures-price innovations and regime-specific local projections. Upstream price transmission lost persistence during the retaliatory-tariff period, with sustained propagation over subsequent weeks collapsing especially for soybean meal prices, and recovered during the Phase One period. Wholesale and retail poultry prices show little evidence of systematic pass-through. The results suggest that trade-policy disruptions to price transmission were concentrated upstream, with U.S. chicken consumers largely insulated from the shock. |
| Keywords: | Demand and Price Analysis, International Relations/Trade |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:asea26:404811 |
| By: | Goldberg, Pinelopi Koujianou; Juhász, Réka; Lane, Nathan; Lo Forte, Giulia; Thurk, Jeff |
| Abstract: | The resurgence of subsidies and industrial policies has raised concerns about their potential inefficiency and alignment with multilateral principles. Critics warn that such policies may divert resources to less efficient firms and provoke retaliatory measures from other countries, leading to a wasteful "subsidy race." However, subsidies for sectors with inherent cross-border externalities can have positive global effects. This paper examines these issues within the semiconductor industry: a key driver of economic growth and innovation with potentially significant learning-by-doing and strategic importance due to its dual-use applications. Our study aims to: (1) document and quantify recent industrial policies in the global semiconductor sector, (2) explore the rationale behind these policies, and (3) evaluate their economic impacts, particularly their cross-border effects, and compatibility with multilateral principles. We employ historical analysis, natural language processing, and a model-based approach to measure government support and its impacts. Our findings indicate that government support has been vital for the industry's growth, with subsidies being the primary form of support. They also highlight the importance of cross-border technology transfers through FDI, business and research collaborations, and technology licensing. China, despite significant subsidies, does not stand out as an outlier compared to other countries, given its market size. Preliminary model estimates indicate that while learning-by-doing exists, it is smaller than commonly believed, with significant international spillovers. These spillovers likely reflect cross-country technology transfers and the role of fabless clients in disseminating knowledge globally through their interactions with foundries. Such cross-border spillovers are not merely accidental but result from deliberate actions by market participants that cannot be taken for granted. Firms may choose to share knowledge across borders or restrict access to frontier technology, thereby excluding certain countries. Future research will use model estimates to simulate the quantitative implications of subsidies and to explore the dynamics of a "subsidy race" in the semiconductor industry. |
| Keywords: | Semiconductors; Subsidies; Multilateralism |
| JEL: | F13 F61 L63 N60 O38 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19402 |
| By: | Xu, Chenguang; He, Xinyue |
| Abstract: | Algorithmic trading is commonly used in agricultural futures markets. Using high-frequency order-book data for Dalian Commodity Exchange of corn and soybean meal futures, this paper studies how algorithmic trading affects price volatility and tail risk in China's agricultural futures markets. The evidence points to a dual effect: Algorithmic trading significantly lowers conventional realized volatility; At the same time, it increases downside tail co-movement and Asymmetry between each contract and agricultural futures market. This conclusion is supported by robustness checks that exclude the DCE 7.0 transition period, reconstruct tail-risk measures using 5-minute data, and use the combined day-and-night trading session. In addition, while the Symmetrized Joe-Clayton copula baseline check confirms the robustness of the empirical tail-risk results to an alternative tail-dependence measure, we also use instrumental variables to test how algorithmic trading affects volatility. Further analysis investigates the impact of quantitative trading on volatility under different volatility regimes and during the rollover periods of dominant contracts. This study provides a theoretical basis for the “dual-effect” mechanism in agricultural financial derivatives markets and proposes regulatory suggestions for algorithmic trading in agricultural futures markets. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural Finance, Farm Management |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404354 |