We present cross-country evidence that a country's macroeconomic volatility, measured either by the standard deviation of output growth or the occurrence of trend-growth breaks, is significantly affected by the country's historical variables. In particular, countries with longer histories of...

The issue of the possible adverse effects of a reduction in pollution on the economy is a very real one for China, given its public commitment to substantial cuts in CO2 emissions by 2020. An important part of this issue is the regional dimension ¨C the pollution reduction is likely to have...

The extent and persistence of the inequality of regional output is an important policy issue in China and its sources have been the subject of considerable empirical research. Yet we have relatively little empirical knowledge of the effects on the regional distribution of output of shocks to...

China?s pension system is in need of comprehensive reform in that it is fragmented in its coverage and significantly under-funded. Attempts to improve the coverage will likely exacerbate the financial strains. Thus it is urgent to improve the financial sustainability of the system and one policy...

This paper aims to study the impacts of financial development, urbanization, and globalization on income inequality in the People's Republic of China. It applies the regression-based inequality decomposition approach on a panel dataset, which is aggregated from a unique database of financial...

​China's local government debt (LGD) has recently become the focus of economic policy debates. However, information about LGD and its impact on economic growth in the Chinese economy is scarce. This paper attempts to present an empirical investigation of the impact of China's LGD on economic...

A firm's top manager and a government official may be connected due to special circumstances. This social relationship or political connection may provide industrial polluters with protection or a "pollution shelter" which could lead to severe environmental deterioration. This paper aims to...

The emergence of production networks has changed the structure of international trade, which a large share of intra-regional trade flows and the rising value of intermediate goods trade or network trade between countries within the same region reflect. While a production network exists in both...

This study utilizes a time-varying parameter Bayesian vector autoregressive model to investigate the dynamic interactions between geopolitical risk (GPR) and renewable energy consumption growth (RECG). The identification strategy is flexible to accommodate cases both with and without sign...