Since the 9th Five Year Plan (FYP) period (1996-2000), the Chinese central government began to adopt the total emissions control (TEC) policy, a target-based environmental regulation which set emission reduction targets for designated pollutants. The policy became highly binding for local...

It has long been hypothesized that democracy benefits the poor; however, the hypothesis still lacks solid empirical evidence. This paper contributes to providing new worldwide evidence on the poverty reduction effect of democracy which we refer to as the Amartya Sen hypothesis. The...

This paper tests the impact of managerial entrenchment on diversifying acquisition and the governance effect of ownership structure by Chinese A-share listed companies. We developed an entrenchment index based on three categories: human capital characteristics, the incentives of companies, and...

This paper investigates the selective public goods provision behavior of China’s local government and its effects. Theoretic models of dominative local officials are constructed to understand public goods provision, which is compared with the residents’ as well as sectors’ demand for...

This paper uses a unique firm-level data set from China’s two most developed regions, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and the Pearl River Delta (PRD), to examine the innovation impacts of environmental regulations. Air and water pollution reduction plans under the total emissions control policy...

Do historical celebrities have an effect on city tourism today? We test this by tracing the places of residence of Su Shi, one of the greatest Chinese cultural celebrities in the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127), and estimating the effect on city tourism between 2001 and 2015. Our estimation...

This paper uses a unique large-size data set from China's most developed areas to examine the innovation impacts of environmental regulations. Reduction mandates on designated pollutants between the 10th and the 12th Five-Year Plans (2001–2015) are explored to construct spatial and temporal...

Urban bias has long been China’s dominant economic policy. The persistent urban bias leads to a severe rural-urban income gap and diverts physical as well as an effect of diverting the rural resource out of agricultural sector, and thus is detrimental to agricultural growth. This paper...

Based on micro-firm data of development zones in Jiangsu Province along the Yangtze River, the effects of local factors special to development zones and of technology promotion on firm’s performance are tested, from which we try to illustrate the nature and dynamics of industrial clusters...

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the effect of rural-urban income gap on agricultural growth in China and its dynamics over time and across regions since reform and opening up. Design/methodology/approach – Two types of indices are constructed to measure the rural-urban income gap:...