Will Market-Oriented Reforms Propel Technology Progress?Empirical Evidence from China’s High-Tech Sectors

This paper aims to explore the effects of market-oriented reforms on industrial technology progress.Based on a theoretical analysis,we performed an empirical study with a marketization index and panel data of high-tech sectors in China.We found that market-oriented reforms had significantly propelled technology progress in China’s high-tech sectors,and the effects became more evident after China’s WTO entry.Market-oriented reforms induced technology progress by increasing capital allocation efficiency,R&D input,and technology diffusion.Among various aspects of market-oriented reforms,the institutional environment exerted the most significant effects,followed by the economy’s non-state sector,product market development,and factor market development;the government-market relationship index influenced technology’s progress the least.The effects are heterogeneous across sectors with different technology attributes and more significant for technology-intensive sectors.Our findings offer policy implications for China’s ongoing market-oriented reforms and policy design for technology progress in high-tech sectors.

Market-Oriented Interest Rates

China＇s central bank cut interest rates for deposits and loans and adjusted their floating ranges on June 8.Yi Xianrong,a research fellow with the Institute of Finance and Bankingunder the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, shared his views on the impact of the cut with Shanghai Securities News. Edited excerpts follow：

Supply-Side Structural Reforms and China's Potential Economic Growth Rate

This paper examines the effect of supply-side structural reforms on China＇s potential economic growth rate in the coming decade according to the data the authors have gathered. Under the rapid growth scenario with the implementation of supply-side structural reforms, China＇s potential economic growth rate will reach an average of 6.5% and 5.8% respectively in the 13th Five-year Plan （2016-2020） and 14th Five-year Plan （2021-2025） periods. These rates are 0.2 and 0.3 percentage points higher, respectively, than that under the baseline scenario with the inertia of historic trends. In implementing supply-side structural reforms, China must transform governmental functions, break monopolies, create a comprehensive competitive market environment, foster the creation of pro-innovation mechanisms, refocus on quality and efficiency, and raise capital utilization and labor productivity.

Transition from Demographic Dividend to Reform Dividend:——Simulation of China's Potential Growth Rate

Due to diminishing demographic dividend characterized by a falling workingage population and rising dependency ratio, China's long-term potential growth rates will keep declining, likely to be a mere 6.6% during the 13 th Five-Year Plan period(2016-2020). China's economic growth sustainability hinges upon its transition from the previous dependence on demographic dividend to the future reform dividend. In the growth accounting equation, we have simulated various reform initiatives and arrived at the following findings. First, although both the labor participation rate and TFP can increase China's potential growth rate, the former will only achieve a short-term growth effect, which will diminish in the long run. By contrast, the growth effect of TFP demonstrates the tendency of continuous increase. This further indicates that China's economic growth will increasingly rely on TFP improvement instead of traditional factor input. Second, different from the diminishing growth effect of enrolment rate, training may play a pivotal role in human capital development to significantly enhance potential growth rates. Third, if all reform initiatives can achieve their expected effects, integrated reform dividends may reach one or two percentage points of China's potential growth rate.

Exchange rate reform:progress,challenges and prospects

For three decades China has followed an incremental approach in renminbi exchange rate reform.During this period,the exchange rate system has gone through five stages of evolution:i) a"basket peg"exchange rate regime;ii) a dual-track system;Hi) exchange rate convergence;iv) a"unitary pegged"exchange rate regime;and v) a managed floating exchange rate regime based on market supply and demand with reference to a basket of currencies. Reforming the exchange rate formation mechanism is a complex engineering project influenced by numerous factors such as the economic development mode,industrial structure,basic economic system,market system condition,financial and macroeconomic policy system as well as the new advantages arising from opening-up initiatives.Since 2005,China has achieved substantial success in reforming the exchange rate formation mechanism but still faces a plethora of issues.To address these issues,China should strengthen the role of the market in the exchange rate formation process and gradually push for the free convertibility of the renminbi under the capital account.Amidst the raging global financial crisis,China should further adapt to the diversification of the international monetary system and aggressively proceed with renminbi regionalization and internationalization.

To Accomplish the Unaccomplished Reform： Lessons and Options of RMB Exchange Rate Reform

The exchange rate reform initiated on August 11,2015 is an important attempt by the PBoC to transform China's exchange rate regime from the "crawl-like arrangement" to a floating regime.However,after a three-day experiment,the PBoC abandoned the original goal of the reform.Since then,the central bank has implemented a new exchange rate-setting mechanism.Under this mechanism,the central parity of the renminbi(RMB) against the US dollar is decided by the arithmetic average of the RMB exchange rate that keeps the index of a currency basket unchanged over the past 24 hours and the previous day's closing price of USD/CNY.Due to the introduction of the index of a currency basket,additional uncertainty has been introduced into the determination of the RMB exchange rate,because of the uncertainty of the dollar index(USDX).As a result,to a certain extent,the one-way bet on the RMB expectations is weakened.However,the current exchange rate formation mechanism cannot reverse the trend of devaluation of the RMB,nor can it eliminate depreciation expectations.Meanwhile,it hinders the effectiveness of central bank's independent monetary policy based on the domestic economic fundamentals.And also,the "two-way float" created by the new price-setting mechanism is artificial and has led to significant losses of foreign exchange reserve.The paper explains how the new price-setting mechanism works,and identifies the important features of the mechanism and its pros and cons.The paper argues that despite some advantages,the new exchange rate regime as a soft peg regime is not sustainable and the PBoC should stop foreign exchange market intervention as soon as possible.We hope that the PBoC can learn the lessons from the failure of the "August 11 reform" and accomplish the unaccomplished reform in an urgent manner.

Foreign Exchange Rate Reform

China must expand opening up and develop foreign trade and economic cooperation to make the Chinese and international economies complementary and speed up the modernization drive. The most basic needs are to intensify restructuring of the foreign trade system, set up rules and regulations in line with the

Setting China’s Growth Target Based on the Potential Growth Rate

Different from other methodologies for the forecasting of China＇s economic growth rate, this paper forecast of future potential growth rates from the end of China＇s demographic dividends, and then identified it as a growth target. Official promulgation of non-binding targets will guide social expectation, assist in government policy-making, boost confidence in consumers, and provide guidance for producers and investors. Based on our estimation results, we suggest that during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, a GDP growth target between 6. 5% and 7% would be appropriate.

A Study on the Kinetics of the Catalytic Reforming Reaction of CH4 with CO2: Determination of the Reaction Order

The kinetics of the catalytic reforming reaction of methane with carbondioxide to produce synthesis gas on a Ni/α-Al_2O_3 and a HSD-2 type commercial catalyst has beenstudied. The results indicate that the reaction orders are one and zero for methane and carbondioxide, respectively, when the carbon dioxide partial pressure was about 12.5-30.0 kPa and thetemperature was at 1123-1173 K. However, when the carbon dioxide partial pressure was changed to30.0-45.0 kPa under the same temperature range of 1123-1173 K, the reaction orders of methane andcarbon dioxide are one. Furthermore, average rate constants at different temperatures weredetermined.

Research on effectiveness of coal mine safety supervision system reform on three types of collieries in China

Coal mine safety supervision system plays an important role in the coal mine safety management in China.However,the current supervision system is established on the basis of learning the advanced experience from other developed countries.It needs to be further improved according to national conditions.Therefore,the effectiveness of coal mine safety supervision system reform on three types of collieries are assessed by using time series analysis method based on comparative analysis of the supervision system before and after the reform in this paper.The regression results show that the structural reform is not conductive to the improvement of coal mine safety situation in the short term,but conductive significantly in the long term.Specifically,the effects in township coal mines are more significant than stateowned key coal mines in the long run,but negative effects also exist in the short term.The negative effects in state-owned key coal mines are non-significant compared with township coal mines.Moreover,the regression results are analyzed from the aspects of the closure policy of illegal small township coal mines at the end of 1998 and shortage of the new supervision system.Finally,the suggestions on improving the new supervision system are put forward based on the above analysis.

Commercial Application of Polymetallic Reforming Catalysts PRT

The commercial application results showed that the polymetallic reforming catalysts PRT exhibited high activity, good selectivity and stability. The performance of said catalysts could be restored completely through regeneration. After long period of operation, the activity of said catalysts still exhibited good sensitivity to temperature rise. Compared with the PR series catalysts, the PRT series catalysts had obviously better stability and lower coking rate.

Effect of cooling rate on evolution of superconducting phases during decomposition and recrystallization of (Bi,Pb)-2223 core in Ag-sheathed tape

The reformation of (Bi,Pb)-2223 from the liquid or melt is very important for a melting process of (Bi,Pb)-2223 tape. By combination of quenching experiment with X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, the effect of cooling rate on the evolution of three superconducting phases in the (Bi,Pb)-2223 core of Ag-sheathed tape was investigated. The results show that (Bi,Pb)-2223 reformation from the melt seems to experience different routes during slowly cooling at different rates. One is that (Bi,Pb)-2223 phase reformed directly from the melt, and no Bi-2212 participate in this process. The other is that (Bi,Pb)-2223 is converted from the intermediate product, Bi-2212, which formed from the melt during the first cooling stage. Due to the inherent sluggish formation kinetics of (Bi,Pb)-2223 from Bi-2212, only partial (Bi,Pb)-2223 can finally be reformed with the second route.

Kinetic model on coke oven gas with steam reforming

The effects of factors such as the molar ratio of H2O to CH4 (n(H2O)/n(CH4)), methane conversion temperature and time on methane conversion rate were investigated to build kinetic model for reforming of coke-oven gas with steam. The results of experiments show that the optimal conditions for methane conversion are that the molar ratio of H2O to CH4 varies from 1.1 to 1.3 and the conversion temperature varies from 1 223 to 1 273 K. The methane conversion rate is more than 95% when the molar ratio of H2O to CH4 is 1.2, the conversion temperature is above 1 223 K and the conversion time is longer than 0.75 s. Kinetic model of methane conversion was proposed. All results demonstrate that the calculated values by the kinetic model accord with the experimental data well, and the error is less than 1.5%.

Measuring China’s Interest Rate Liberalization Compared with Developed Countries

Financial repression does not suit the needs of economic and financial development in the long run, and interest rate liberalization is a natural choice for the development of China＇s financial markets＇. Based on a comparative analysis of interest rate liberalization processes between some developed countries and China and value assignment to key milestones in interest rate markets, the authors have measured the level of China＇s interest rate liberalization to be 80.64%, i.e., a complete liberalization has been initially achieved in China with the notable exception of the deposit interest rate market. Deposit interest rate liberalization is poised to be the last step in China＇s interest rate liberalization process.

Dynamic Model Study and Analysis of DME Auto-Thermal Steam Reforming Reaction

Through the study of the kinetics of dimethyl ether steam reforming reaction, a two-dimensional model of the reactor is established. At the same time, rate equations of simplified elementary reactions of DME steam reforming reaction are deduced by the mechanism of Langmuir-Hinshel-wood, and the rate constants are obtained by correcting the pre-exponential factor of Arrhenius equation. Finally, the analog data of DME steam reforming reaction under a variety of conditions are obtained, and making a simulation diagram. The two-dimensional model is substantially correct because of the analog data more in line with a variety of knowledge.

Modeling the kinetics of methane conversion in steam reforming process of coke-oven gas based on experimental data

Steam-reforming is an effective approach for upgrading methane and hydrocarbon of coke-oven gas into CO and HE, but the kinetic behavior needs more study. We investigated the conversion of methane in coke-oven gas by steam reforming process in an electric tubular flow at 14 kPa with temperature varying from .500 ℃ to 9.50 ℃, and developed a kenetic model for, ignoring the effects of adsorption and diffusion. The optimal dynamic conditions for methane conversion 14 kPa are as follows： the ratio of the amount of water to the amount of methane is from 1.1 to 1.3; the reaction temperature is from 1 223 K to 1 273 K. The methane conversion rate is larger than 95% when the ratio of the amount of water to the amount of methane is 1.2 at a temperature above 1 223 K with the residence time up to 0.75 s.

Optimization of Pension Asset Portfolio in Nigeria with Contributors’ Specified Return Rate

This work focuses on the optimization of investment contributions of pension asset with a view to improving contributors’ participation in achieving better return on investment (RoI) of their funds. We viewed some new regulations on Nigeria’s Contributory Pension Scheme” (CPS) from amended legislation of 2014, some of which are yet to be implemented when their regulations are approved. A mathematical model involving 5 variables, 5 inequality constraints covering regulatory limitations and limitation on scarce resource known as Asset Under Management (AUM), suggested and mathematically shown to be possible through “maximization of return irrespective of risk” while obeying all regulatory controls as our constraints optimized. Optimized portfolio using MatLab shows that the portfolio representing AES 2013 portfolio with a deficit growth of 15.75 m representing 3.27% less than the portfolio’s full growth potential within defined assumptions would have been averted if contributors actually set their targets and investment managers optimize from forecasts of future prices using trend analysis.

Analysis on RMB Exchange Rate Policy

Based on this global environment, this essay will first present basic concepts of RMB exchange rate policy and its evolutionhistory, then discuss some important challenges from the global perspective that the Chinese government meets in terms of the increasinglyundervalued exchange rate, thirdly argue that China cannot take a substantial appreciation, Finally discuss whether China should take a gradualappreciation by comparing its advantages and disadvantages.

Research on the impact of pension income and expenditure patterns on the pension replacement rate of public institutions

Currently in China, to study the replacement rate of pension reform in public institutions and to find out the key problems, which is of practical significance for the reform of the pension insurance system. In this paper, the impact of pension income and expenditure patterns on the substitution rate is analyzed, and the factors that affect the level of substitution rate are analyzed, and the corresponding policy recommendations are put forward.