We investigate the impact of the academic environment on directed technical change and economic growth. We develop a heterogeneous Schumpeterian growth model in which innovation is categorized into radical and incremental types. A supportive environment for academic exploration enhances scientists' autonomy utility in basic research, thereby motivating basic research and reducing the R&D difficulty of radical innovations through knowledge spillovers. We identify two major effects of the academic environment on economic growth: a positive directed technical change effect fostering growth through radical innovation, and a negative applied research crowding-out effect. Numerical analysis based on Chinese data reveals a negative autonomy utility (-0.37), indicating insufficient autonomy in basic research exploration. Promoting economic growth necessitates institutional reforms. The optimal autonomy utility for maximizing growth is 0.80. Welfare analysis further shows that the optimal autonomy utility is 0.87 for basic research labor and 0.75 for non-basic research labor.

This paper measures the green innovation of Chinese firms from 1998 to 2007 according to the OECD classification of environment-related technologies. We utilize an environmental regulation policy targeting Chinese cities as a quasi-natural experiment and propose a difference-in-differences (DID) model with different intensities to investigate the level effects of environmental regulation on firms' green innovation. We mainly obtain three findings. First, after the treatment, compared with firms in the control group, the number of green patents of firms increases by approximately 13.9% for a one standard deviation increase in environmental regulation stringency in the treated cities. Second, environmental regulation induces firms to make technical changes, shifting firms from conducting non-green innovation to green innovation. Finally, environmental regulation has a more pronounced impact on green innovation for firms with high pollution emission intensity.

This paper investigates how transportation infrastructure expansion shapes domestic value-added ratios in exports by exploiting China's rapid highway network development. Combining a heterogeneous firm with firm-level data, we demonstrate that improved market access significantly increases firms' DVAR. To address endogeneity and potential historical persistence, we employ an instrumental variable strategy based on Ming Dynasty courier stations and implement a Heckman two-step correction to account for selection bias. Heterogeneity analyses reveal stronger effects for processing trade firms, non-state-owned enterprises, and firms in Eastern China. Crucially, we find that the stronger effects in Eastern China stem from the region's concentration of private and processing firms. Mechanism analyses identify two distinct channels: (i) a direct substitution effect, whereby highway expansion fosters domestic supply chain linkages; and (ii) the alleviation of information frictions, evidenced by the greater responsiveness of firms relying on standardised inputs. Furthermore, we show that supply chain adjustments are rapid and that improved connectivity induces a structural transformation, encouraging firms to transition from import-dependent processing trade towards ordinary trade activities. These results highlight that domestic market integration is a critical pathway for industrial upgrading and reducing external dependency in global value chains.

This paper investigates the impact of basic research on innovation by constructing measures to gauge provincial basic research intensity and firm-level innovation performance in China. To address the endogeneity issue, this paper proposes an instrumental variable for basic research by utilizing the independent recruitment policy in China as a quasi-natural experiment. The empirical analysis obtains four main findings. First, basic research improves the quantity and quality of innovation. Second, except for incremental innovation, basic research catalyzes the output of breakthrough innovation. Third, the positive effects of basic research on innovation are more prominent for state-owned enterprises, high-tech firms, and firms located in regions with more college students. Fourth, training more innovative talent for local firms and changing the direction of firm innovation serve as the mechanisms.

This study introduces public childcare policies in an overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility for the first time, combining child-rearing and education subsidy policies to examine how these policies impact fertility rates and human capital and influence long-term economic growth rate. Findings reveal that public childcare and child-rearing subsidy policies increase the fertility rate but reduce human capital, whereas education subsidies enhance human capital without increasing the fertility rate. Furthermore, a selective combination of these three types of policies can achieve the highest economic growth. Calibration using Chinese data demonstrates that strengthening these three policies can all increase economic growth rate. The policy combination that achieves the highest economic growth requires increasing public childcare time by 5.11 times and education subsidies by 38.47 times the current levels, while not implementing child-rearing subsidy policies.

We use a simple model to investigate how policy-makers invest resources in a combination of coercion and buying off between two social groups, i.e. elite and mass, so as to maximize loyalty generation from them to secure the regime survival. The model elite are politically powerful, but the masses are more economically efficient. We show that, regardless of economic efficiency, as long as the regime survival counts more on buying the allegiance of the inefficient elite than that of the efficient mass group, a considerable misallocation will be inevitable. The model also reveals how the government's strategy toward one will also be affected by changes in the parameters regarding the other group. In contrast to the popular view that efficiency-enhancing policies and institutions are hard to implement due to the resistance from interest groups, our analysis suggests that bad policies can be intentionally adopted by decision-makers, even if they result in misallocations.

We develop a simple two-sector neoclassical growth model in which the upstream sector produces intermediate goods, and the downstream sector produces final goods with outputs from the upstream. While the downstream sector features perfect competition, firms in the upstream sector engage in Cournot competition and charge a markup. We show that the deregulation and the introduction of competition in the upstream goods sector not only increases the productivity in the sector but also has a substantial spillover effect on the productivity of the downstream sector and factor prices. We calibrate the model to the Chinese economy and use the calibrated model to quantitatively evaluate the extent to which the deregulation in the upstream market in China from 1998 to 2006 can account for the rapid economic growth and the high and rising returns to capital in China over the same period. Our quantitative experiments show that the deregulation in the upstream sector can account for a significant share of economic growth in China during the study period. In addition, our model delivers implications that are consistent with several other relevant observations in China during the same period.

本文构建一个同时包含基础研究与应用研究的内生经济增长模型,探讨了 自由探索式研究影响经济增长的机制,并在此基础上利用数值模拟量化了 自由探索式研究对中国经济增长的影响.自由探索式研究程度的提高可以吸引科学家向基础研究部门流动,推动基础研究发展,进而通过基础研究对应用研究的"溢出效应"促进经济增长,但这又会减少应用研究部门科学家的数量,进而产生"挤出效应",不利于经济增长.自由探索式研究能否促进经济增长取决于产学研融合程度的高低.当产学研融合程度较高时,"溢出效应"更强且"挤出效应"更弱,自由探索式研究促进经济增长.基于中国数据的模拟分析显示,提高1％的自由探索式研究程度,经济增长率上升约0.13％;提高1％的产学研融合程度,经济增长率上升约0.66％;同时提高1％的自由探索式研究和产学研融合程度,经济增长率上升约0.79％.

The super-deduction of research and development (R & D) expenses is at the core of the policy to stimulate enterprise innovation in China. This paper identifies whether firms are supported by the super-deduction policies for R & D expenses and uses the difference-in-differences method to investigate the impact of the policies on R & D investment. The results show that changes in policy in 2013 significantly increased the R & D investment of firms engaging in key state-supported technologies. Policy changes in 2016 significantly increased the R & D investment of firms engaging in non-key-state-supported technologies. Enterprises not only invested all their tax incentives in R & D activities but also increased their investment in self-raised funds. The super-deduction policy had different impacts on different industries, firms with different boards, and firms with different ownership. The policy significantly affected the manufacturing and construction industries, the Small and Medium Enterprise Board, and non-state-owned enterprises. Through a mechanism analysis, we found that the policy significantly reduced the user cost of R & D and increased the net cash flow of enterprises, which could raise a firm's R & D investment. It is necessary to increase policy support, expand the scope of super-deductible expenses, and increase the super-deduction rate based on industry classification according to the sensitivity of different industries to the policy.

全国"两会"把今年的经济增长率目标设定为5％左右,是科学的、稳妥的.当然,实现这个目标也存在一定压力和挑战,估计上半年的经济增长将可能低于5％,具体原因是两方面: 一方面,投资调整需要一定的成本,不可能一步到位,所以经济恢复需要一定的时间.去年我国的经济增长率为3％,从3％到5％是一个不小的提高,这要求企业家和消费者改变相对悲观的预期,企业增加较多的投资,居民增加较多的消费.经济学理论告诉我们,投资调整成本不容忽视;预期调整需要时间,预期改变更是困难.

本文把机器人视为一种生产要素,在新古典经济增长模型框架下研究了机器人应用对区域经济收敛的影响.在此基础上,本文以2011—2018年中国228个地级市作为研究对象,对模型的理论预测进行实证检验.研究表明:第一,中国区域经济存在收敛情况;第二,机器人的应用促进区域经济加速收敛,有利于缩小区域间收入差距,实现共同富裕;第三,机器人应用对中国中西部地区经济收敛的促进作用更为显著.本文还提出对企业购置工业机器人给予财政补助、对工业机器人采用加速折旧或对工业机器人折旧采用加计扣除税收优惠、着力推动中西部地区工业机器人应用等政策建议.

区域经济学研究的核心问题是资源配置活动对地理空间的依赖和两者的相互影响及相应的区域经济空间形成和变化.本文在马克思主义政治经济学的指导下,坚持理论、历史与实践逻辑统一的研究思路,提出了区域经济学研究中自然、技术与制度三者互动的研究主线及相应的研究框架,结合中国区域经济发展的丰富实践,借鉴现代区域经济学的理论,聚焦社会主义市场经济中有效市场与有为政府的互动,探讨区域经济发展中具有中国特色的自然、技术与制度三者互动的内在机理,探索中国区域经济学的理论创新与理论体系建设.

In recent years, online short videos have become more popular, especially as an online advertising intermediary. To better understand their effects as advertisements, it is essential to analyze the causal relations of online short videos on consumer behaviors. Our study is based on fine-grained consumer behavior data from a world-leading e-commerce platform, i.e., Taobao.com. We first decompose the total causal effects into informative effects and persuasive effects following a common practice in the economic literature. Moreover, we extract the subjectivity scores of short videos through a dictionary-based subjectivity analysis model and evaluate the correlation between the subjectivity scores and each causal effect. The findings of this paper are as follows: First, both causal effects (i.e., informative and persuasive effects) are significant. Second, these effects have a strong correlation with the short videos' subjectivity scores. Third, the signs of these correlations vary with the prices of the products. Our results not only shed light on the research of how short videos exert influence on online consumers, but also give sellers advice on better video design and recommendation.

This paper studies the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on regional innovation, which is measured by patent applications and patent citations, based on city-level data in China from 1995 to 2015. Using an instrumental variable approach, this paper demonstrates that FDI not only promotes the quantity of regional innovation, but also improves the quality of regional innovation in China. The findings are robust to various specifications of the empirical model and measurements. In addition, we highlight the channel of improving local absorptive capacity and market competition through which FDI exerts positive influence on regional innovation, and show that FDI acts as a substitute for local financial development to raise regional innovation.

This paper studies how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects innovation in the host country, using matched firm-level patent data of Chinese firms. The data contain multidimensional in-formation about patent counts and citations, which, together with an identification strategy based on Lu et al. (2017), allows us to measure innovation comprehensively and to uncover the causal relationship. Our empirical analysis shows that FDI has positive intra-industry effects on the quantity and quality of innovation, as well as radical innovation, by Chinese firms. We show that these positive effects are driven by increases in competition, rather than by knowledge spillovers from FDI which is measured by patent citations between domestic firms and foreign invested enterprises (FIEs). We further investigate the inter-industry effects of FDI and find that FDI has positive vertical effects on innovation in upstream sectors through backward knowledge spillovers.

当前,民营经济受制于结构性、体制性、周期性问题,正在经历总量的阶段性震荡与趋势性收缩,结构的横向竞争加剧与纵向升级受阻,创新的质量下降与转型动能不足等三重压力;也在社会主要矛盾新变化、国际竞争新形势、数字经济新技术的影响下,面临发展方式、比较优势、转型动力重构的三重挑战与机遇.对此,本文提出新时代推进民营经济高质量发展的基本思路,强调推进方式由"立"向"破"、政策导向由"大"向"小"、工作机制由"管"向"统"的三大转变,明确了推动实现民营经济高质量发展的效率、质量、动力三大变革路径.最后,本文从阶段性、区域性、差异性3个维度,给出了新时代推进民营经济高质量发展的针对性、可落地举措建议.

To measure the effects of air pollution on human activities, this study applies statistical/econometric modeling to hourly data of 9 million mobile phone users from six cities in China's Zhejiang Province from December 18 to 21, 2013. Under a change in air quality from "Good" (Air Quality Index, or AQI, between 51 and 100) to "Heavily Polluted" (AQI between 201 to 300), the following effects are demonstrated. (i) Consistent with the literature, for every one million people, 1, 482 fewer individuals are observed at parks, 95% confidence interval or CI (-2, 229, -735), which represents a 15% decrease. (ii) The number of individuals at shopping malls has no statistically significant change. (iii) Home is the most important location under worsening air quality, and for every one million people, 63, 088 more individuals are observed at home, 95% CI (47, 815, 78, 361), which represents a 19% increase. (iv) Individuals are on average 633 meters closer to their home, 95% CI (529, 737); as a benchmark, the median distance from home ranges from 300 to 1900 meters across the cities in our sample. These effects are not due to weather or government regulations. We also provided provisional evidence that individuals engage in inter-temporal activity substitutions within a day, which leads to mitigated (but not nullified) effects of air pollution on daily activities.

This study examines the consequences of relaxing birth quotas by exploiting an exogenous two-child policy adopted by local Chinese governments on different dates. Using China's 2015 population census combined with a difference-in-differences framework, we find that the adoption of a two-child policy substantially increases the number of second-child births. The impact of the policy is more pronounced among couples who have higher fertility preferences and who are less sensitive to child-rearing costs. At the same time, this policy substantially decreases the number of first-child births. Child-rearing costs are a likely underlying mechanism for this decrease. All of these findings are in line with an extended Barro-Becker model.

Sustainable economic development is tightly connected to substantial innovation which can be improved by reducing low-quality innovation. This paper constructs a theoretical framework to present the ultimate relationship between administrative approval and sustainability. In order to verify the research hypotheses, we define the dormant patents whose patent rights are terminated due to non-payment of renewal fees to measure the low-quality innovation of Chinese manufacturing firms. By using the merged firm-level data between 1998 and 2007 and collected information on whether a city establishes the administrative approval center (AAC), and employing a difference-in-difference (DID) approach, we identify the impacts of administrative approval and firms' low-quality innovation. First, the results reveal that administrative approval reduces the firms' low-quality innovation. Second, administrative approval has a smaller impact on the low-quality innovation for state-owned enterprises (SOE). Third, three mechanisms are uncovered through which administrative approval impedes low-quality innovation: enhancing market competition, changing the direction of innovation, and optimizing research and development (R&D) investment strategy.