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on Transition Economics |
| By: | Wang, Shenhao; Zhao, Jinhua |
| Abstract: | The urbanization and motorization of Chinese cities follow divergent trajectories. However, how the diversity occurred, particularly within the small and medium cities, is understudied. Using panel data from 287 cities from 2001 to 2014 and a time-series clustering method, this study identified representative trajectories along which Chinese cities were urbanized and motorized. Urbanization was measured by scale, wealth, urban form, and infrastructure; motorization by automobile, taxi, bus numbers, and subway lines. Chinese cities were classified into four clusters: 23 Cluster-1 cities were the large cities with heavy rails; 41 Cluster-2 cities were the low-density wealthy cities with auto-oriented mobility; 134 Cluster-3 cities were the low-density medium-wealth cities with moderate mobility levels; and 89 Cluster-4 cities were the high-density poor cities with lowest mobility levels. Comparing to the traditional three-tier structure, exclusively based on political tiers, the four-cluster structure respects the multi-dimensional nature of cities and reflects the essential diversities among the medium and small cities. While political tiers remain critical, other features including scale, density, infrastructure, and mobility patterns are also important: scale differentiates Cluster-1 from others; low density characterizes Clusters 2 and 3; heavy rail and auto-oriented mobility respectively identify Clusters 1 and 2. We contribute to China’s urban development literature by explicitly examining the temporal dimension, analyzing both urbanization and motorization, and incorporating all the medium and small cities in China. The distinct patterns of Clusters 2, 3, and 4 are evident, and the variation within them were as important as that between them and large cities. |
| Date: | 2018–07–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:cvjnx&r=all |
| By: | Maksym Obrizan (Kyiv School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Respondents from post-communist countries have been found to systematically report lower levels of happiness and self-rated health. While the first welfare gap in happiness has closed recently, the second transition gap in self-perceived gap only started to close. Specifically, this paper shows that treating all transition countries as a homogeneous group may be misleading and divides 28 transition countries into three groups. As result, in the most recent 2016 round of ‘Life in Transition’ survey, transition countries in Southern Europe are no longer different from non-transition nations in terms of their self-rated health. Although the gap in self-perceived health for transition nations in Eastern Europe is present in a basic model, it becomes less statistically and economically significant when subjective beliefs and macro-level variables are added. Countries from the former Soviet Union and Mongolia remain the only group in which respondents report 16.5−29.1% lower probability of ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’ health compared to other transition and non-transition countries. Controlling for communist party membership, ideological beliefs and macro-level variables somewhat reduces the gap for the former Soviet Union and Mongolia but it remains significant in multiple robustness checks. Although the gap in self-rated health now applies to only one group of transition countries, it remains an important empirical puzzle with far-reaching implications for health policy, demand for health care and the process of transition. |
| Keywords: | self-rated health, transition gap, Life in Transition |
| JEL: | I15 N34 P41 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ost:wpaper:385&r=all |
| By: | Zhe Geng; Jun Pan |
| Abstract: | We study the extent of price discovery in the onshore Chinese corporate bond market, focusing in particular on the information content of credit spreads in China. Using Merton's model of default, we construct credit measures of publicly listed firms, using information from their financial statements and stock valuation. We find that, only after the first default in 2014, do credit spreads in China become informative. Compared with the findings in the US credit market, the magnitude of price discovery in the Chinese market is rather limited. We also find that the presence of outside government support for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China results in a market segmentation between SOE and non-SOE issuers that is harmful to price efficiency and market stability. Since 2018, the non-SOE issuers have suffered from explosive credit spreads, unprecedented defaults, and shrinking new issuance, while the SOE issuers have remained largely intact. Meanwhile, our default measures show that the non-SOE issuers are in fact stronger in credit quality than their SOE counterparts of the same rating category. Examining the impact of this segmentation on price discovery, we find that non-SOE credit spreads become significantly more informative since 2018, as concerns over credit become front and center for the non-SOE issuers. By contrast, as investors seek safety in SOE bonds, there is no improvement in the information content of SOE credit spreads. |
| JEL: | G0 G1 G10 G12 G15 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26575&r=all |
| By: | Jie Bai (Center for International Development at Harvard University); Jiahua Liu |
| Abstract: | It is well known that various forms of non-tariff trade barriers exist within a country. Empirically, it is difficult to measure these barriers as they can take many forms. We take advantage of a nationwide VAT rebate policy reform in China as a natural experiment to identify the existence of these intranational barriers due to local protectionism and study the impact on exports and exporting firms. As a result of shifting tax rebate burden, the reform leads to a greater incentive of the provincial governments to block the domestic flow of non-local goods to local export intermediaries. We develop an open-economy heterogenous firm model that incorporates multiple domestic regions and multiple exporting technologies, including the intermediary sector. Consistent with the model’s predictions, we find that rising local protectionism leads to a reduction in interprovincial trade, more “inward-looking” sourcing behavior of local intermediaries, and a reduction in manufacturing exports. Analysis using micro firm-level data further shows that private companies with greater baseline reliance on export intermediaries are more adversely affected. |
| Keywords: | Trade barriers |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cid:wpfacu:373&r=all |
| By: | Chen, Xi (Yale University); Hu, Lipeng (Peking University); Sindelar, Jody L. (Yale University) |
| Abstract: | China's recently implemented New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), the largest social pension program in the world, was designed to provide financial protection for its rural population and reduce economic inequities. Yet the impact of this program is mitigated if those eligible fail to enroll. This paper examines the extent to which pension-eligible individuals, and their families, make optimal pension decisions. Families are involved in the NRPS decisions because, in most cases, adult children need to enroll as a prerequisite of their parents' receipt of benefits. We examine the decisions of both those eligible for pension benefits (i.e. over 60 years old) and their adult children. We use the rural sample of the 2012 China Family Panel Studies to study determinants of the decision to enroll in NRPS, premiums paid, and time taken to enroll.We find evidence of low and suboptimal pension enrollment by eligible individuals and their families. Suboptimal enrollment takes various forms including failure to switch from the dominated default pension program to NRPS and evidence that families do not make mutually beneficial intra-family decisions. For the older cohort, few individual and family characteristics are significant in enrollment decisions, but village characteristics play an important role. For the younger cohort, more individual-level characteristics are significant, including own and children's education. Village characteristics are important but not as much as for the older cohort. Our finding of suboptimal enrollment is important as it highlights the need for policies to improve enrollment. This paper provides needed information on the extent of the factors relating to suboptimal enrollment. |
| Keywords: | social pension, suboptimal choices, intra-family decisions, intergenerational arrangements, Family Binding Policy, default option |
| JEL: | J14 J18 R23 R28 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12843&r=all |
| By: | Tamara Sheldon; Rubal Dua (King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center) |
| Abstract: | Subsidies for promoting plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) adoption are a key component of China’s overall plan for reducing local air pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its light-duty vehicle sector. This paper explores the impact and cost-effectiveness of the Chinese PEV subsidy program. A vehicle choice model is estimated using a large random sample of individual-level data for new vehicle purchases in China for model year 2017. |
| Keywords: | China Electric Car Market, China New Energy Vehicle Policy, Subsidies for Electric Vehicle |
| Date: | 2019–12–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:prc:dpaper:ks--2019-dp77&r=all |
| By: | Pittman, Russell; Jandova, Monika; Krol, Marcin; Nekrasenko, Larysa; Paleta, Tomas |
| Abstract: | The European Commission years ago adopted a policy of encouraging the substitution of motor carrier haulage of freight with rail and water carrier haulage, as part of its “green” agenda of reducing fuel consumption, emission of pollutants, carbon intensity, and road congestion. Regarding railway freight in particular, one policy tool that the Commission has emphasized for this purpose is the restructuring of the rail sectors of member countries through the creation of competition for the incumbents by new train-operating companies (TOC’s) – on its face a less obvious policy choice than alternatives such as Pigouvian pricing measures or infrastructure subsidies. This paper focuses on one important commodity group – grain – in three EC member states and one non-member state – Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine – to examine the degree to which increased rail competition has been associated with increases in rail’s modal share, and more broadly to learn what appear to be the binding constraints to increases in rail’s share. Such constraints seem more closely related to shortages in infrastructure capacity than to a lack of competition among TOC’s. This suggests that other “models” of railway restructuring may be more effective in easing this constraint. |
| Keywords: | European Commission, railways competition, environmental protection, open access, motor carriers, intermodal competition |
| JEL: | L92 Q58 R11 R41 R42 R48 |
| Date: | 2019–12–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:97571&r=all |
| By: | Nie, Liang; Zhang, ZhongXiang |
| Abstract: | Existing studies have focused on the negative impact of inefficient resource allocation on energy performance in China’s factor market, but neglected to further explore the underlying reason for this phenomenon from the perspective of market segmentation. In this paper, the epsilon-based measure model, which combines the merits of radial and non-radial Data Envelopment Analysis, is employed to measure the energy efficiency, and price index method derived from Iceberg Transport Cost model is used to examine the degrees of market segmentation. On the basis, we use the Tobit model to empirically investigate the impact of market segmentation on China’s energy efficiency. The results show that although energy efficiency in the eastern region is higher than that in the central and western regions, the energy efficiency gap is narrowing significantly between the eastern and central, but insignificantly between the western and eastern. Although efforts have been made towards a unified national market, the western provinces still have more segmented markets than the eastern still. Econometric analysis indicates that market segmentation is negative to China’s energy efficiency significantly. This finding remains robust even if the endogeneity is excluded and the dependent variable is re-measured by the slack-based measure model, but is of a regional heterogeneity. We also find that factor market distortion, enterprises’ R&D investment, and industrial agglomeration are three mediation mechanisms through which market segmentation affects energy efficiency. In-depth analysis indicates that there is a Race to the Top competition centering on market segmentation among Chinese local officials in geospatial and economic space, which triggers a long-term inhibition to energy efficiency. |
| Keywords: | Resource /Energy Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2020–01–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemfe:301033&r=all |
| By: | Mathilde Maurel (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Thomas Pernet (UP1 UFR02 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - UFR d'Économie - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Zhao Ruili (SUIBE - Shangai University of International Business and Economics) |
| Abstract: | We study how a bank's involvement in a firm's financing may be in line with environmental policies pursued by the Chinese central government. Specifically, we evaluate the effectiveness of credit reallocation away from polluting projects when the government imposes stringent environmental policies. We combine the industries' financial dependencies with time, including cross-cities variation in policy intensity to identify the causal effect on the sulfur dioxide (SO2) emission. We find that SO2 emissions are lower in industries with high reliance on credits and stricter environmental regulations. Furthermore, our results suggest that locations with strong environmental policies lead firms to seek funding in less regulated areas, which confirms the pollution haven hypothesis. |
| Keywords: | Banks,Financial Dependency,Environmental regulation,China |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-02423350&r=all |
| By: | Mamlyuk, Boris N.; Library, Cornell |
| Abstract: | 10 Washington University Global Studies Law Review, (2011) This Article examines several waves of intellectual property (IP) regulation reform in Russia, starting with an examination into early Soviet attempts to regulate intellectual property. Historical analysis is useful to illustrate areas of theoretical convergence, divergence, and tension between state ideology, positive law, and "law in action." The relevance of these tensions for post-Soviet legal reform may appear tenuous. However, insofar as IP enforcement has emerged as one of the largest hurdles for Russia's prolonged accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), these historical precedents may help explain Russia's apparent theoretical and political disconnect from the WTO. If Russian policymakers and many Western analysts agree that Russia has complied with all necessary structural adjustment reforms for WTO accession (including reforming its IP legislation), then deeper points of contention between Russia and the West must be identified. One point of departure, the Article posits, is Russia's lingering inability to convey adherence to general international law. Thus, this Article re-conceptualizes the link between domestic and international legal orders by connecting the IP debate to broader debates over the nature of international law in the Soviet and post-Soviet space. Specifically, Part I examines how Soviet theorists attempted to reconcile IP regulation with Marxist ideology and socialist international law. Part II surveys the main IP law reform projects in post-Soviet Russia from 1992 to 2006, with particular emphasis on harmonization with global legal standards. The second part also provides a brief comparative analysis of Russia's latest IP law (effective 2008) and copyright protections in U.S. law as well as the 1971 Berne Convention. The Article concludes with an overview of doctrinal debates within Russia over harmonization, WTO accession, and international law. These debates shed light on the development of local resistance to further legal harmonization efforts, an issue of immediate relevance not just for policymakers working with Russia, but for broader law and development debates. |
| Date: | 2018–04–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:lawarx:zkcvu&r=all |
| By: | International Monetary Fund |
| Abstract: | At the request of the General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam, a technical assistance (TA) mission was conducted at the headquarters of the statistical office from April 8–12, 2019. The purpose of the mission was to evaluate the revised estimates of GDP, to ensure that the compilation process is aligned with the System of National Accounts 2008 (2008 SNA) and that the methodology employed for estimation is consistent and coherent. |
| Keywords: | National accounts;Price indexes;Gross capital formation;Household survey data;Gross domestic product;ISCR,CR,GSO,Vietnamese economy,national account,data gap,SUT |
| Date: | 2019–12–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfscr:19/373&r=all |
| By: | MIHAI, Florin Constantin |
| Abstract: | The paper examines the waste management issues in the villages annexed to administrative-territorial units of the Romanian cities which have been frequently neglected by urban waste operators. The lack of waste collection services in such peri-urban communities favored the illegal waste disposal practices particularly prior to EU accession. The extension of waste collection services from main cities to such areas is compulsory in order to mitigate the environmental risks and the public health threats. The paper estimates the amounts of household waste susceptible to be uncontrolled disposed of by peri-urban villages in different geographical areas of North-East region with a particular focus on Neamt county. The paper points out that these rural settlements should receive the same attention concerning the municipal waste management services as the main urban areas. Traditional recovery of waste fractions at the household level (e.g., home composting) should be further promoted in such areas in order to avoid illegal dumping issue and to prevent the landfill of biodegradable waste as requested by EU regulations. |
| Date: | 2018–06–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:b4er6&r=all |
| By: | Vassilis Monastiriotis (The London School of Economics and Political Science); Ivan Zilic (The Institute of Economics, Zagreb) |
| Abstract: | Is there an economic premium from state independence? We shed light on this question by analysing the unique historical case of the peaceful separation of Serbia and Montenegro in 2006-the last fully recognised internationally state-disintegration on European soil. Using the synthetic control approach, we find that independence for the seceding country (Montenegro) had a sizeable but transitory positive effect, boosting GDP per capita in the period immediately following independence, but with gains slowly evaporating in the longer period-which we attribute to increased vulnerability of the newly independent state to fluctuations in the international economic environment. In contrast, for Serbia, we find no evidence of an independence dividend. While these results are context-specific, the resemblance of Serbia and Montenegro’s case with the contemporaneous independence movements in Europe, namely in the realm of policy autonomy pre-separation, provide insights on possible economic outcomes of secessions on the national and supra-national level in Europe. |
| Keywords: | secession; independence; political disintegration; synthetic control; Western Balkans |
| JEL: | F15 O52 N14 |
| Date: | 2019–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iez:wpaper:1903&r=all |
| By: | Jelena Budak (The Institute of Economics, Zagreb); Edo Rajh (The Institute of Economics, Zagreb); Goran Buturac (The Institute of Economics, Zagreb); Anamarija Brkovic (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Economics and Business) |
| Abstract: | Attitudinal studies about gray market of tobacco products are in particular scarce for countries along the Balkan route that has been known as smuggling corridor for centuries. This empirical study fills the gap by using a large survey dataset of 21,000 citizens in seven Western Balkan countries: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo. The analyses of public opinion on tobacco gray market in the Western Balkans distinguishes smokers and non-smokers, includes a set of individual socio-demographic attributes (gender, age, level of education, occupation, income), and an indicator of the importance of the tobacco sector for the national economy. Citizens are grouped into four distinct clusters based on their attitudes towards tobacco gray market. The typology of citizens in the region reveals that public opinion differs primarily depending on whether an individual is a smoker or not. The most repressive attitudes and opinion that curbing gray tobacco market will reduce smoking come from non-smokers and from citizens of countries that have no comparative advantages in tobacco trade. The results showed the level of public awareness on the negative aspects of tobacco gray market. Finally, the analysis pointed out whether stricter sanctions were rated as appropriate actions to curb the gray market of tobacco, cigarettes and other tobacco products. |
| Keywords: | attitudes, tobacco trade, gray market, Western Balkans |
| JEL: | K42 L66 |
| Date: | 2019–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iez:wpaper:1904&r=all |
| By: | Howell, Anthony (Peking University) |
| Abstract: | This paper relies on recent proprietary data from the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) poor rural minority areas to examine the importance of credit constraints on internal labor migration. Specifically, a liquidity shock via the PRC’s minimum living standard assistance (MLSA) program is decomposed into its direct and indirect parts. The institutional features of the MLSA program permit an identification strategy that relies on a set of verifiable assumptions and an instrument variable framework. The results reveal that the direct effect on migration of MLSA is negative, although the net effect is positive driven by the large indirect effects, which are twice as large for ethnic minorities compared to the Han majority. Subsequent evidence further suggests that the main mechanism behind the indirect effect is informal interpersonal lending fostered by risk-sharing strategies. The findings imply that once liquidity is injected into a village it gets circulated in the community, stimulating migration particularly within credit-constrained minority communities. |
| Keywords: | ethnicity; indirect effect; liquidity constraints; migration; risk-sharing mechanisms; targeted cash transfers |
| JEL: | C21 J18 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2019–04–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbewp:0575&r=all |
| By: | Jiang, Yi (Asian Development Bank); Calub, Renz Adrian (Asian Development Bank); Zheng, Xiaoting (Jinan University) |
| Abstract: | We develop a framework to analyze urban water tariff setting and its welfare implications and apply it to a panel of cities in the People’s Republic of China in the 2000s. First, we find that peer cities’ water tariff levels have a significant influence on a city’s choice of tariffs. We use the peer cities’ average tariff as an instrumental variable to estimate water demand functions, which yields elasticity estimates of around –0.41 for both residential and industrial sectors. Second, estimation of cost functions reveals the supply of urban water services to be characterized by strong economies of scale with the majority of sample city–years on the downward sloping segment of marginal cost curves. More than half of the sample have residential water tariffs higher than the corresponding marginal costs while the share increases to 71% for the industrial sector. The deadweight loss calculated under first-best pricing suggests moderate welfare loss due to prices deviating from the equilibrium. Finally, we show that taking into account nonrevenue water losses justifies an efficient price higher than the equilibrium price. |
| Keywords: | deadweight loss; multiproduct cost function; nonrevenue water; water demand; water tariff |
| JEL: | L95 Q21 Q25 Q28 |
| Date: | 2019–05–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbewp:0580&r=all |
| By: | John Chung |
| Abstract: | While the standard trade models explain observed firm heterogeneity with variance in firms' innate productivity, discriminatory policies and political connections in China may also affect the firm size and generate resource misallocation across firms. In this paper, I show that the productivity heterogeneity alone has difficulty explaining the observed firm-level patterns in Chinese manufacturing sector. I document that larger firms exhibit lower average revenue productivity, revenue productivity variance is high conditional on firm size, and larger exporters exhibit lower export intensity. Introducing firm-level misallocation can help reconcile these facts and doing so matters for estimating the gains from trade. The misallocation model predicts the size of gains from trade that is 45% lower than the standard model predicts when both models are calibrated with the same Chinese manufacturing data. The result suggests that accounting for firm level heterogeneity in the dimensions other than productivity is important when estimating the gains from trade. |
| Keywords: | international trade, gains from trade, misallocation |
| JEL: | F12 F14 F62 O17 O19 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:abn:wpaper:auwp2020-01&r=all |
| By: | Lu, Haiyang; Nie, Peng (Xi’an Jiaotong University); Sousa-Poza, Alfonso (University of Hohenheim) |
| Abstract: | Although the strong positive correlation between parental educational expectations (PEE) and child academic achievement is widely documented, little is known about PEE's effects on child psychological outcomes and the mechanisms through which it may work. Hence, in this paper, using nationally representative data from the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 waves of the China Education Panel Survey, we investigate PEE's causal impact on adolescent subjective well-being (SWB) and the moderating role of the academic pressures that these adolescents perceive. Even though we find robust evidence for a positive causal relation between PEE and adolescent SWB, its moderation by adolescent-perceived academic pressure is negative. In addition, the facts that the benefits of PEE are greater for female adolescents and those from immigrant, one-child, and nonpoor families suggests that it may operate on adolescent SWB through increased family resources, improved family relationships, and higher adolescent aspirations linked to higher PEE. |
| Keywords: | China, parental educational expectations, adolescents, subjective well-being |
| JEL: | I21 I30 J13 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12832&r=all |
| By: | Malikov, Emir; Zhao, Shunan; Kumbhakar, Subal C. |
| Abstract: | Motivated by the longstanding interest of economists in understanding the nexus between firm productivity and export behavior, this paper develops a novel structural framework for control-function-based nonparametric identification of the gross production function and latent firm productivity in the presence of endogenous export opportunities that is robust to recent unidentification critiques of proxy estimators. We provide a workable identification strategy, whereby the firm's degree of export orientation provides the needed (excluded) relevant independent exogenous variation in endogenous freely varying inputs, thus allowing us to identify the production function. We estimate our fully nonparametric IV model using the Landweber-Fridman regularization with the unknown functions approximated via artificial neural network sieves with a sigmoid activation function which are known for their superior performance relative to other popular sieve approximators, including the polynomial series favored in the literature. Using our methodology, we obtain robust productivity estimates for manufacturing firms from twenty eight industries in China during the 1999-2006 period to take a close look at China's exporter productivity puzzle, whereby exporters are found to exhibit lower productivity levels than non-exports. |
| Keywords: | ANN sieves, control function, export, nonparametric, productivity, proxy, regularized estimation, TFP |
| JEL: | D22 D24 F10 L10 L60 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:98077&r=all |