Journal of Asian Economics最新文献

{"title":"Flattening of government hierarchies and growth of farmers’ income","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101836","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101836","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Continuously raising farmers’ income is important for poverty reduction. In a multilevel government system, institutional arrangements can influence the role of grassroots governments in economic and social development. Based on the rural statistical data of 743 townships in Province A in central China from 2001 to 2012, we use the difference-in-differences (DID) approach to investigate the effect of the reform of flattening governmental hierarchy at the township level on increasing farmers’ income. We find that the reform of grassroots flattening hierarchies significantly promotes the growth of farmers’ income. Specifically, in the face of economic-assessment pressure from the higher-level government and the incentives of fiscal excess revenue in the reform, the township government will make full use of the greater administrative power and resources endowed by the reform to vigorously attract investment to increase the number of enterprises and provide farmers with more non-agricultural employment opportunities, thus raising their wage income. Moreover, this reform’s income-increasing effect is more obvious in townships that are closer to the county seat and have more convenient transportation, a higher level of human capital, and a stronger ability to exercise administrative power.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142578165","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":"How to guide venture capital to startups? Evidence from China's Science and Technology Innovation Board","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101834","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101834","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Venture capital (VC) plays a vital role in supporting startups. However, in many developing economies, venture capitalists' tendency to prioritize later-stage over early-stage investments constrains their capacity to fund startups. China's recent Science and Technology Innovation Board (STAR) market establishment, with its focus on innovation ability over profitability, enables high-tech startups to list at early stages. This improves exit prospects for VCs investing to the early-stage startups. Employing a regression discontinuity design, our empirical analysis demonstrates that the STAR market establishment attracts additional capital to the VC market and guides VCs toward earlier-stage startups. Mechanism analysis indicates these effects stem from improved VC exit returns rather than heightened exit activities. Our findings underscore the efficacy of specialized stock markets for startups in channeling venture capital towards small and early-stage enterprises. These findings provide valuable insights for developing countries seeking to leverage VC for startup growth.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142573304","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":"The power of speed: High-speed railways and scientific research competitiveness in China","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101833","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101833","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the impact opening of high-speed railways (HSR) on scientific research competitiveness using data from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) research grants. We employ a difference-in-differences framework to estimate the causal effects of the treatment universities located in cities connected by HSR. Our results indicate that the treatment universities experience significant improvements in their scientific research competitiveness. To understand the underlying mechanisms, we reveal the extensive positive effects of HSR on human capital accumulation, government funding, and information resources. These findings shed light on the microscopic mechanisms that facilitate positive spillover of knowledge creation and innovation resources from large cities to small cities through transportation infrastructure.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142561218","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":"An aging population and sustainable government debt: The case of Korea","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101831","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101831","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although we have recently seen fiscal stress rising in many countries due to an increase in government spending and a rapidly aging population, there has been little research into fiscal sustainability while explicitly taking into account the fiscal stress caused by population aging. In this paper, we follow the same methodology as seen in Bi (2012) and examine the fiscal space of Korea, which has one of the fastest aging populations. This analysis shows that ignoring population aging leads to an over-estimation of fiscal space as large as 130% of GDP. Both increasing social security spending and supporting the National Pension significantly affect fiscal space. Finally, it is shown that fiscal sustainability and National Pension reform are closely related.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142533790","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":"Tax incentives and corporate digital transformation: Evidence from China’s accelerated depreciation policy","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101832","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101832","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Corporate digital transformation is a significant path for industrial upgrading and sustainable development. This study employs China’s accelerated depreciation (AD) policy as a quasi-natural experiment to explore the impacts of tax incentives on the digital transformation of enterprises. Using panel data of China’s listed companies from 2010 to 2019, we find that AD policy significantly promotes firms to engage in digitization practices through the channels of firm investment and firm innovation. We also find that the policy effects are more pronounced for firms with a higher level of digitization, firms with stronger financial constraints, non-state-owned enterprises, and firms located in East China. Moreover, we also present a positive relationship betweendigital transformation and firm performance. Our study supplements the literature on the determinants of digital transformation and provides insights into how tax policy shapes firms’ incentives to be more digitized.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142533789","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 heterogenous capabilities on export performance amid the digital transformation","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101829","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101829","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate the effects of adopting digital technology on export performance of Korean manufacturing firms amidst the digital transformation. We recognize firm-level capabilities should be closely associated with adoption of rapidly progressing digital technology but also with export performance. And our data indicates that the most common purpose of digital technology adoption is to launch new products to the market. Hence, we consider that technology adoption is a strategic and purposeful decision to gain competitive edge mostly by producing new product, and treating technology adoption exogenous can be misleading. Due to the endogeneity and selection issues in technology adoption, the endogenous switching regression is applied to this study as Coad et al. (2020). On technology adoption decision, we find external innovative resources from strategic alliance in addition to internal innovative capabilities stand out. Given technology adoption decision, internal capabilities like patent rights and international affiliation are complementary factors to export growth. The treatment effect analysis has implications as follows: the result on contribution of technology adoption to export growth for actually adopting firms is rather small, and shows heterogenous innovation, organizational, and external capabilities are still critical factors as much as new products embedding high-end digital technology; the result on non-adopting firms indicates potential of advanced digital technology to improve export performance by helping to produce such new products if they were actually capable to do it. In sum, our findings provide another evidence that structurally positive interaction between innovative activities and export performance as Aw et al. (2011), since adoption of digital technology to products itself is innovative in the digital transformation. Furthermore, the result is consistent with the capability theory in that heterogenous innovative and complementary capabilities determine strategic technology adoption and export performance simultaneously. Finally, our findings indicate that the digital transformation might be still at the early stage. The fact that Korean firms have adopted advanced digital technology mainly for new products can be interpreted as an indicator of early development stage of transformation, since firms concentrate on product innovation than process innovation to gain competitive edge at the early stage (Utterback and Abernathy, 1975). Thus, we expect that further evolution of digital transformation can facilitate process innovation, then contribute to firm performance by improving cost efficiency that should be tackled in the upcoming study.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142433224","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":"The productivity spillover effect of foreign divestment: Evidence from Chinese industrial enterprises","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101824","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101824","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Foreign divestment in China is garnering increasing social attention. This study investigates the productivity spillover effects of foreign divestment based on Chinese industrial enterprise data from 2000 to 2007. Our findings indicate that foreign divestment negatively impacts the total factor productivity (TFP) of incumbent enterprises, especially through backward linkages. We examine potential mechanisms based on the characteristics of divested and incumbent enterprises. The closure of foreign-invested enterprise disrupts industrial connections, whereas the sale of foreign equity to domestic shareholders strengthens local industrial linkages, thus presenting an opposite effect. Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan (HMT)-invested enterprises tend to local sourcing, leading to divestment effects through backward linkages. Conversely, non-HMT enterprises, with a higher capability to provide differentiated intermediate goods, primarily exhibit forward linkage effects. Further analysis reveals that incumbent enterprises with lower technological capabilities are more dependent on their foreign suppliers and customers. Domestic non-state-owned enterprises and those in regions with lower economic development or marketization levels also have less stable input-output relationships. As a result, these enterprises are more susceptible to the vertical spillover effects of foreign divestment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142444965","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":"Reducing farmland abandonment by raising women’s education levels: Evidence from China","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101825","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101825","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>With the rapid industrialization and the growing demand for male labor in urban industries, agricultural production in many developing countries presents obvious feminization features. Accordingly, improving the education level of rural women is the key to increasing farmland return and reducing farmland abandonment. Using data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), this study examines the effect of rural women’s education on farmland abandonment. The results reveal that for each increase in the education level of a hostess in a rural household, the abandoned farmland of that household decreases by 40 m². The increase in women’s education level can promote the use of the Internet, help households access credit, and better control the costs of agricultural production, thus curbing farmland abandonment. In addition, women’s education can play a stronger role in reducing farmland abandonment for rural areas where the land rental market is well developed, as well as for families whose male hosts go out to join non-farm work.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142444967","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":"Does increasing robot density exacerbate wealth inequality?","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101830","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101830","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article expands the economic consequences of applying automation technology beyond the labor market to encompass wealth distribution. It empirically investigates the effects of changes in robot density on household wealth inequality and potential mechanisms. By using three-digit industry codes provided by the China Census 1 % sampling data in 2015, this paper achieves a more accurate matching of industrial robot data with individual data and employs instrumental variables to alleviate potential endogeneity bias. This paper finds that increasing robot density exacerbates the inequality of family wealth, and this effect has a particularly significant impact on young labor force and workers with low education. Its impact mechanism may come from the inequality of employment difficulty and the increase of the non-transferability of human capital. This study is of great importance to deeper understand the economic consequences of the accelerated use of automation technology and accurately formulate public policies to narrow the wealth gap.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142533822","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":"Cost of escaping air pollution: A way to prevent excessive expansion of industrial areas","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101823","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101823","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To pursue economic growth, many emerging markets prioritize providing land and resources to industries rather than people, resulting in people being forced to relocate. This paper uses Taiwan’s largest industrial city (Kaohsiung) as an example to discuss the negative spillover effect brought about by its most polluted industrial area (the Kaohsiung Linhai Industrial Park, KLIP). This study finds that the proximity between residences and the pollution sources and air pollution severity both cause housing prices to decrease. The results also show that among different air pollution indicators, SO₂ concentration exerts the largest influence on housing prices. This may be because the SO₂ emitted by large coal-fired power plants and oil refineries in the KLIP is linked to pollution-based haze and creates a visible atmospheric brown haze. By discussing the industrial park’s air pollution problem, this paper illustrates the harm of the overdevelopment of an industrial park. To prevent people’s relocation events resulting from the overdevelopment of an industrial park occurring in the future, we must regularly estimate the shadow price that residents living near the industrial park are required to pay to escape air pollution. This paper also puts forward suggestions that contribute to the sustainable development of industrial parks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142433316","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}