Journal of Asian Economics最新文献

{"title":"Off-farm employment, farmland transfer and agricultural investment behavior: A study of joint decision-making among North China Plain farmers","authors":"Mingjun Xu ,&nbsp;Changling Chen ,&nbsp;Jinhua Xie","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101839","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101839","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Improving farmers’ ability to make joint decisions on multi-factors is crucial for efficient resource allocation in agriculture, promoting sustainable land use, and fostering rural revitalization. Using survey data from 1780 households in the North China Plain, this study used the Conditional Mixed Process (CMP) joint estimation to address potential endogeneity issues and investigate the interaction of off-farm employment, farmland transfer, and agricultural capital investment. First, the results reveal a significant relationship between the three factors in farmers’ decision-making. Particular, there is a positive relationship between off-farm employment and farmland outflow (ρ = 0.163, P &lt; 0.05), while a negative correlation is observed between farmland outflow and capital investment (ρ = − 0.476, P &lt; 0.01). Secondly, there is heterogeneity in the correlation of joint decision-making regarding off-farm employment types and agricultural capital input types. For risk-averse farmers and farmers with low capital liquidity, off-farm employment is not significantly correlated with farmland outflow, while farmers with land-poor farmers have the strongest positive correlation between farmland inflow and capital input. Third, even if increasing farmland outflow can facilitate the expansion of large-scale land operations, the investment effect of off-farm employment remains unrealized. Finally, the lag of the farmland transfer market relative to the labor transfer market and the rural capital market hinders the growth of optimal-scale agricultural management.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 101839"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142656337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A tale of two markets—would housing appreciation prompt insurance participation? Evidence from China’s urban elderly","authors":"Jiajun Han","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101838","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101838","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates how housing wealth affects urban elderly’s commercial health insurance participation by using the discontinuity along housing size formed by China’s housing policies. The empirical results reveal a positive effect of housing wealth on urbanites’ enrolment in commercial health insurance, with elderly previously or currently working in non-public sectors, only having one child, and not having a son exhibiting higher responsiveness to unexpected gains in housing wealth. Moreover, the bumper housing wealth-induced insurance purchasing only takes effect for urban elderly having full homeownership, whereas those with partial ownership and tenants hardly react to housing policies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 101838"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142656403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transport development performance with hazard-inducing variables: A frontier-based shadow pricing approach","authors":"Ruoyu He ,&nbsp;Ruxue Dong ,&nbsp;Ruiqi Zhu ,&nbsp;Z.Y. Shen ,&nbsp;Tomas Baležentis ,&nbsp;Lixin Cui","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101837","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101837","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While economic growth in a country can be spurred by the expansion of the transportation sector, traffic accidents resulting from an increase in vehicle numbers negatively impact social wellbeing. To integrate both the beneftis and costs in evaluating the transportation sector, this study incorporates traffic accidents as a risk factor (undesirable output) in analyzing the performance of road transportation across Chinese provinces. We propose a shadow price model to estimate the revenue generated and the losses incurred from the addition of each vehicle. The potential improvements in desirable outputs (freight and passenger traffic) and the possible reduction in risks (traffic accident losses) are assessed using a nonparametric approach. Our findings indicate that the overall performance of the Chinese transportation sector improved between 2001 and 2018. During this period, the shadow revenue of vehicles increased, while the shadow loss from traffic accidents showed a declining trend, attributed to enhanced transportation infrastructure and effective government regulations. However, we observe regional disparities in performance and offer targeted policy recommendations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 101837"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142656404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From ancient philosophy to modern governance: Confucian culture shaping low-carbon corporate transformation in China’s listed companies","authors":"Li Wang ,&nbsp;Siyan Chen ,&nbsp;Yanan Wang ,&nbsp;Yuhan Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101835","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101835","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Considering the goal of green development, this study examines the role of Confucian culture in low-carbon corporate transformation. This study shows that Confucian culture can effectively promote the low-carbon transformation of companies. The greater the influence of Confucianism on a company, the higher its level of low-carbon transformation is. Confucian culture takes effect in three ways: by improving corporate environmental awareness, by promoting social responsibility, and by strengthening corporate governance. Heterogeneity research shows that state-owned and low-capital-intensity companies, low-competition and high-attention industries, non-low-carbon pilot programs, and low-marketization areas all increase the extent of influence. The findings shed light on the influence of Confucians on low-carbon transformation at the firm level and enrich the ideas surrounding Confucian culture and corporate development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 101835"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142656405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Industrial policy and resident health: Historical evidence from China’s Third Front construction","authors":"Chao Wang ,&nbsp;Chen Feng ,&nbsp;Caiquan Bai","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101668","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101668","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Understanding the impact of industrial policies on residents’ health is of great significance. This study uses the large-scale national defense industry policy entitled the Third Front construction, which was implemented before China’s reform and opening up, as a quasi-natural experiment to empirically examine its long-term impact on residents’ health. The relevant findings are fourfold. (1) The policy significantly improves local residents’ health in the long term. (2) This improvement effect primarily operated through two channels of increasing residents’ income and improving medical security. (3) The effect is obviously heterogeneous for different genders and hukou, with a greater effect on men than women and significant health improvement effects for residents with agricultural hukou. (4) The findings demonstrate that local residents’ lifestyles and mental health were significantly improved due to Third Front construction.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 101668"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49753971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Impact of subsidized distribution on follow-up uptake of vision health services for rural students: A field experiment in China","authors":"Hongyu Guan ,&nbsp;Jin Zhao ,&nbsp;Wenting Liu ,&nbsp;Yaojiang Shi","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101669","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101669","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Despite rising economic growth, low-income countries continue to exhibit a relatively low uptake of healthcare services and products. Short-term healthcare subsidies are commonly administered in low-income countries to promote long-term uptake of healthcare. To evaluate the impact of follow-up healthcare subsidies, we examined the effects of a one-time subsidy of providing free eyeglasses to school children in rural China. We contribute to the field by using a unique and rare 27-month, two-phase experiment that surveyed 4658 primary and secondary school students from Gansu and Shaanxi provinces in rural northwestern China. The sample was divided into an intervention group that received free eyeglasses for uncorrected refractive errors and a control group that received only prescription information. The impact of one-time subsidized eyeglasses on rural students’ long-term uptake of vision health care vision health was assessed using an instrumental variables (IV) approach. 90.0% of students from the intervention group that received one-time subsidized eyeglasses sought appropriate long-term healthcare, which was significantly higher (P &lt; 0.001) than the control group at 61.3%. Multivariate logistic regression models (OR = 28.315, 95% CI = 10.972–73.074, P &lt; 0.001) revealed that this one-time subsidy of free eyeglasses significantly predicted long-term uptake in related healthcare products and services. IV analysis suggested that wearing eyeglasses may increase the likelihood of students’ long-term uptake by 78.7% in the intervention samples compared to control schools; the magnitude of this coefficient provides evidence that wearing eyeglasses leads to a marginal improvement in long-term uptake within the sample. This result passed a series of robustness tests. Learning by doing and social learning are crucial pathways through which short-term, targeted subsidies might affect long-term adoption, at least for some classes of preventative health items. The provision of short-term, one-off healthcare subsidies can be an efficient and cost-effective strategy for boosting both short-term and long-term healthcare-seeking behavior. Providing a useful reference for promoting long-term health-seeking behavior in rural or other less developed regions in China and elsewhere in the world.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 101669"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49766304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Parental non-cognitive abilities and child mental health","authors":"Yao Wang ,&nbsp;Chunchao Wang ,&nbsp;Rui Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101667","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Parents play a crucial role in the mental health and development of their children. This study investigates the impact of parental non-cognitive abilities on the mental health of their children. Our findings show that parental non-cognitive abilities, especially conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism, positively influence child mental health. This effect varies based on the child’s gender and place of residence. Moreover, disparities in non-cognitive abilities between the father and mother yield a significant negative effect on child mental health. These effects can be ascribed to three primary channels: the influence of parental non-cognitive abilities on the child’s sense of happiness, confidence in the future, and the level of interpersonal communication skills. Furthermore, our findings suggest that cognitive abilities of parents can moderate the influence of their non-cognitive abilities on the mental health of their children.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 101667"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49766300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Trade with innovation benefits: A re-appraisal using micro data from China","authors":"Meng Cai,&nbsp;Riming Cui ,&nbsp;Dan Li","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101664","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101664","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In recent years, the impact of international trade on firm innovation has received increasing attention. Some scholars argue that knowledge spillovers from trade are beneficial to innovation, while others argue that the intense competition from trade leads to a reduction in innovative activity, based on the Schumpeterian effect. To address this issue, we creatively construct a dataset of Chinese listed firms from 2000 to 2014 and conduct empirical tests using propensity score matching to investigate the impact of firms' intermediate goods import behavior on innovation performance at the micro level. We construct models of firms' decisions under closed market conditions and of the impact of intermediate goods imports on firms' innovation activities under open market conditions. Our study shows that firms that import intermediate goods are more innovative, and we validate the robustness of this result. We further discuss the potential mechanisms of how exposure to international markets affects innovation, and we find that firms' import behavior affects innovation through scale effect, technology effect, and profit effect. In short, importing intermediate goods enhances firm-level innovation in developing countries. Our study provides significant evidence on the impact of imports on firm-level innovation performance, and our findings provide a rationale for promoting the co-development of trade and firm innovation. This paper also has important policy implications that governments should continue to reduce trade barriers, promote trade openness, and enhance technology transfer and cooperation in order to reap more innovation benefits from trade.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 101664"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49754307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Climbing the economic ladder: Earnings inequality and intragenerational mobility among Thai formal workers","authors":"Athiphat Muthitacharoen ,&nbsp;Trongwut Burong","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101665","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101665","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper investigates inequality and intragenerational economic mobility among formal workers in a developing country with large inequality. Understanding economic mobility is important because it shapes our perception of inequality. Despite its significance, evidence on intragenerational mobility, especially that based on administrative data, is relatively limited in developing countries. Using Thailand’s tax return data, we study the evolution of earnings inequality, estimate medium-term earnings mobility, and examine the heterogeneity of mobility across age, gender and employment arrangement. Our analysis yields three main findings. First, annual earnings inequality rises during the 2009–2018 period. We find that the inequality is largely permanent, and its increase is primarily driven by top-earnings workers. Second, medium-term mobility tends to be limited at both ends of the earnings distribution, with particularly pronounced persistence observed at the top decile. Our suggestive comparison indicates that Thailand’s earnings mobility is among the lowest in the pool of evidence from both developed and developing countries. Third, there is a considerable heterogeneity in mobility regarding employment arrangement. Workers in less-formal jobs have much lower upward mobility than those in more-formal employment. Our findings also indicate significant heterogeneity in mobility with respect to gender and age.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 101665"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49754320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Preventing a new baby: Impact of air pollution on fertility intention","authors":"Guanglai Zhang ,&nbsp;Yanni Yu","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101666","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101666","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study is the first to investigate the causal link between air pollution and fertility intentions in China, using data from the 2016 China Labor-Force Dynamic Survey to assess the fertility intentions of different sexes for differentiated groups of respondents. The findings show significant negative effects of air pollution on immediate fertility intentions. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the daily Air Quality Index in the past three months decreased the immediate fertility intention of interviewees by 0.7527 standard deviations. Moreover, the study reveals that young women who live in more polluted areas show a higher reduction in fertility intention than their counterparts. The results illustrate that air pollution is a key contributor to the son preference and that there is still a marked preference for sons over daughters in China.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 101666"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49759738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}