ABSTRACT This study examines the effects of China's low‐carbon city policy (LCCP) on wage inequality between executives and rank‐and‐file employees. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach with data from A‐share listed firms (2007–2023), we find that the LCCP reduces wage inequality mainly by increasing rank‐and‐file wages. The mechanism evidence is consistent with workforce restructuring, marked by more skilled and fewer unskilled workers. Additional results indicate that the policy stimulates green investment and raises compliance costs, which are consistent with increased demand for skilled labor. The impacts vary across firms and cities.
Tran and Vo analysed English-language-based geopolitical risk (GPR) indices and argued that local GPR dominates global GPR in explaining military spending worldwide. We revisit this claim by addressing limitations in their empirical design and measurement. After methodological corrections, panel and country-specific VAR estimates show no statistically significant effects of either local or global GPR on military spending, except for the U.S., possibly because the current GPR index predominantly reflects U.S.-centric perspectives. Indeed, local-language GPR indices for Germany, Russia, and Ukraine yield significant effects or at least reduce standard errors in VAR estimates. These findings highlight the importance of context-specific risk measurement.
The ability of the U.S. partisan conflict index to predict the U.S. stock market's return and volatility is checked in this paper. For this purpose, we have adopted quantile Granger Causality tests. The findings show that there is no linear causal link between the partisan conflict index and stock market returns and volatility. However, it is noted that there is robust linear causality between the lower and upper quantiles. Also, through Conditional Autoregressive Value at Risk (CAViaR) models, it is proven that non-linear causality is also present between the partisan conflict index and stock market return and volatility, especially in the lower as well as upper quantiles. It is advised that policymakers consider employing recommended models for assessing the non-linear pattern between economic indicators and stock market dynamics.
Using several data sets for the UK we track rising perceptions of mental well-being among the working-age population in the UK. The trend is apparent among all age groups and for men and women, but it is most pronounced among the young, and especially young women aged under 25. Young men's mental well-being began to fall markedly from 2008 whereas young women's mental ill-health began to deteriorate a few years later. The age profile of mental well-being shifts to the right over time such that the nadir of mental well-being shifts from mid-life, when people are in their late 40s and early 50s, around the time of the Great Recession, to ones early- to mid-20s in 2023.
