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on Transition Economics |
| By: | Gao, Li; Zhang, Wendong; Mei, Yingdan; Sam, Abdoul G.; Song, Yu; Jin, Shuqin |
| Abstract: | We examine how land tenure arrangements affect Chinese crop farmers’ adoption of straw retention, a key conservation practice promoted by the Chinese government in part to curb rising air pollution. Using data from a 2016 farmer household survey covering 1,659 crop plots in Henan Province in central China, we analyze whether farmers are less likely to adopt straw retention on rented plots compared to own-contracted plots. To address the potential endogeneity of the choice of renting from others, we use an instrument exploiting the role of remittance income from household members migrated to cities in a bivariate probit model and a control function approach, respectively. Our main results reveal that the Chinese crop farmers’ likelihood of adopting straw retention were almost cut in half on rented plots compared to their owned plots, assuming the assumptions for biprobit or control functions hold. This suggests greater attention is needed to examine the spillovers across agricultural and environmental policies as China pushes for both a nationwide land rental market and more sustainable agricultural practices. |
| Date: | 2018–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genstf:201812010800001609&r=all |
| By: | Wang, Pingping; Zhang, Wendong; Li, Minghao; Han, Yijun |
| Abstract: | Farmers in China and many other developing countries suffer from low technical efficiency of chemical fertilizer use, which leads to excessive nutrient runoff and other environmental problems. A major cause of the low efficiency is lack of science-based information and recommendations for nutrient application. In response, the Chinese government launched an ambitious nationwide program called the “Soil Testing and Fertilizer Recommendation Project†(STFRP) in 2005 to increase the efficiency of chemical fertilizer use. However, there has been no systematic evaluation of this program. Using data from a nationally representative household survey, and using wheat as an example, this paper first quantifies the technical efficiency of chemical fertilizer use (TEFU) by conducting stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), then evaluates the impact of STFRP on the TEFU using a generalized difference-in-difference approach. We found that STFRP, on average, increased TEFU in wheat production by about 4%, which was robust across various robustness checks. The lessons learned from STFRP will be valuable for China’s future outreach efforts, as well as for other countries considering similar nutrient management policies. |
| Date: | 2019–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genstf:201901010800001678&r=all |
| By: | Grzegorz Krochmal |
| Abstract: | This work is dedicated to finding the determinants of voting behavior in Poland at the poviat level. 2019 parliamentary election has been analyzed and an attempt to explain vote share for the winning party (Law and Justice) has been made. Sentiment analysis of tweets in Polish (original) and English (machine-translations), collected in the period around the election, has been applied. Amid multiple machine learning approaches tested, the best classification accuracy has been achieved by Huggingface BERT on machine-translated tweets. OLS regression, with sentiment of tweets and selected socio-economic features as independent variables, has been utilized to explain Law and Justice vote share in poviats. Sentiment of tweets has been found to be a significant predictor, as stipulated by the literature of the field. |
| Date: | 2020–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2010.03493&r=all |
| By: | Balsalobre-Lorente, Daniel; Driha, Oana M.; Bekun, Festus; Sinha, Avik; Fatai Adedoyin, Festus |
| Abstract: | The main contribution of the present study to the energy literature is linked to the interaction between economic growth and pollution emission amidst globalization. In contrast to the existing studies, this research explores the effects of economic and social isolation as dimensions of globalization. This allows underpinning the effects on the Chinese economic development of the isolation phenomenon as a consequence of coronavirus (COVID-19). To this end, annual time frequency data is used to achieve the hypothesized claims. The study resolutions include (i) The existence of a long-run association between the outlined variables (ii) The long-run estimates suggest that the Chinese economy over the investigated period, is inelastic to pollutant-driven economic growth as reported by the dynamic ordinary least squares, fully modified ordinary least squares and canonical regressions with a magnitude of 0.09%. (iii) The Chinese isolation is less responsive to its economic growth while the country political willpower is elastic as demonstrated by current government commitment to dampen the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is marked by the aggressive response by the government officials resolute by flattening the exponential impact of the pandemic. Based on these robust results some far-reaching policy implication(s) are underlined in the concluding remark section. |
| Keywords: | Economic growth; COVID-19; CO2 emissions; Isolation; Globalization; China |
| JEL: | Q5 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:102894&r=all |
| By: | Xu, J.; Pollitt, M.; Xie, B-C.; Yang, C-H. |
| Abstract: | China is reforming its electricity supply industry under the guidance of the No.9 document published in 2015. However, such reform has not been supported by new legislation until now. China unveiled an Energy Law draft in April 2020 for public consultation. It is widely regarded as an attempt to provide a legal foundation for ongoing energy sector reforms. This paper introduces the legislative background to China’s Energy Law and then identifies the weaknesses of the April 2020 Energy Law draft from the perspective of international experience. We find that although the Energy Law draft represents positive progress on the vertical unbundling and the price mechanism with respect to the competitive and natural monopoly segments of the power sector, it still does not provide adequate support for most other elements. The enacted Energy Law needs to make more explicit provision on horizontal restructuring, incentive regulation, privatization and independent regulation, while the 1995 Electricity Law should also be updated to include reference to the spot market and efficient allocation of transmission capacity as secondary legislation. |
| Keywords: | No.9 Document, Energy Law, power market reform |
| JEL: | K32 |
| Date: | 2020–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:2091&r=all |
| By: | Natalia A. Sadovnikova; Olga A. Zolotareva |
| Abstract: | The article presents the results of multivariate classification of Russian regions by the indicators characterizing the population income and their concentration. The clusterization was performed upon an author approach to selecting the characteristics which determines the academic novelty in the evaluation of regional differentiation by population income and the interconnected characteristics. The performed analysis was aimed at the evaluation of the real scale of disproportions in spatial development of the country territories by the considered characteristics. The clusterization results allowed to formulate the condition of a relatively "strong" position of a group of high-income regions (the changes in the array of regions constituting it is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future). Additionally there has been revealed a group of Russian regions that the population is struggling to live on quite low income. These so-called "poor" regions, within the crisis conditions caused by Covid-19 are in need of additional public support, without which their population will impoverish. |
| Date: | 2020–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2010.07403&r=all |
| By: | Gatien Bon; Gong Cheng |
| Abstract: | This paper explores a novel database of 140 cases of debt restructurings that China conducted between 2000 and 2019 in 65 debtor countries. It uncovers a number of salient features of the restructuring terms that China has offered and the ways in which China has interacted with other creditors and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The majority of debt relief operations have been executed through debt forgiveness rather than debt rescheduling through maturity extension or/and interest rate reduction. Interestingly, a large number of Chinese debt relief operations took place within a two-year timeframe of debt relief agreements with Paris Club or private sector creditors and in the context of financial assistance from the IMF. Using local projections, this paper sheds light on the negative impact of China’s debt relief operations on growth and development prospects in debtor countries, especially when China provides debt rescheduling and does not treat the stock of nominal debt. Subdued domestic fixed capital investment and fiscal policy tightening seem to be the main drag on economic growth in debtor countries after a restructuring. |
| Keywords: | China, Paris Club, Sovereign debt, Restructuring, Development, Africa |
| JEL: | F33 F34 H63 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2020-27&r=all |
| By: | Iwasaki, Ichiro; Ma, Xinxin |
| Abstract: | This paper performs a meta-analysis of 1472 estimates extracted from 199 previous studies to investigate the gender wage gap in China. The results show that, although the gender wage gap in China during the transition period has an impact that statistically significant and economically meaningful, it remains at a low level. It is also revealed that the wage gap between men and women is more severe in rural regions and the private sector than those in urban regions and the public sector. Furthermore, we found that, in China, the gender wage gap has been increasing rapidly in recent years. |
| Keywords: | gender wage gap, meta-synthesis, meta-regression analysis, publication selection bias, China |
| JEL: | D63 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:ceirps:2020-5&r=all |