Strategic Interaction in Spending on Environmental Protection:Spatial Evidence from Chinese Cities

In China, the responsibilitY of protecting the environment lies largely with local governments. Within the framework of spatial econometrics, we investigate empirically the consequence of such an institutional setting. Using city-level data for China, the present study finds that city governments behave strategically in making spending decisions regarding environmental protection. This paper finds that a city government appears to cut its own spending as a response to the rise in environmental protection spending by its neighbors. Hence, environmental protection tends to be underprovided. As a result, we suggest that centralizing the environmental protection responsibility to a higher level of government would be beneficial in terms of controlling pollution in China.

Absorptive capacity and R&D strategy of labor-managed firms

Taking absorptive capacity effects on research spillovers into consideration, this paper focuses on the R＆D investment decisions and the output decisions of labor-managed firms. Based on the general model of the cost-reducing R＆D, the strategic interactions of output and R＆D investment between labor-managed firms in a duopoly are analyzed. Moreover, the impact of absorptive capacity effects on optimal output in the production stage is discussed. In the R＆D stage, the impacts of absorptive capacity effects on the equilibrium R＆D investment in cooperative and non-cooperative R＆D are analyzed. Finally, the R＆D strategy of labor-managed firms is compared with the behavior of profit-maximizing firms. The results show that equilibrium R＆D investment is always higher than that in the exogenous spillover rate, which is similar to the behavior of the profit-maximizing firms. However, unlike the profit-maximizing firms, the impact of the absorptive capacity that affects the relationship between the optimal output and its own（rival＇ s）R＆D is shown to be dependent upon a return-to-scale of the production.

Voluntary Disclosure and the Type of Product Market Competition： Capacity vs. Price

This paper investigates empirically the effect of different types of product market competition on levels of voluntary disclosure of proprietary information in financial markets. The author proposes that there are two types of strategic interaction settings relevant to disclosure： capacity competition and price competition. Capacity competition drives firms to disclose more information to attain financial market valuation-related benefits, while price competition drives them to disclose less to protect long-term product market advantages. The author finds that the type of product market competition affects the level of voluntary disclosure over and above the finn＇s external financing needs documented in the previous literature. That is, firms engaged in capacity competition disclose relatively more information than those in price competition. Further analysis shows that capacity competition firms disclose more information than no-strategic-interaction benchmark firms but that price competition firms do not disclose less information than the benchmark firms.

Strategic Guidance Effect of Large-Scale Construction Enterprise Growth to Programme Contracting

In the case of single project management standing the major place, the management on the organizational level and project level is separated from each other in large-scale construction enterprises, and it is not long before program management theories applied to construction industry. Under the new situation of construction project clustering, how to choose projects has been the strategic decision for construction enterprises. Therefore,with the theory of program management and strategic management, this paper analyzes the relationship between the strategic growth of large-scale construction enterprises and program contracting, and attempts to provide meaningful ideas for enterprises to choose program from the strategic level.

The Determinants of China's Minimum Wage Rates

We use a highly disaggregated panel of macro data and minimum wages at the county level to investigate the processes behind minimum wage adjustments in China.Relying on random effects models,spatial econometrics techniques,and multilevel analyses,we document that a comparatively small number of economic variables-including the local price level and GDP per capita-are important determinants of minimum wage rates.Interactions between adjacent counties and counties of the same administrative type,and centralized mechanisms,particularly at the provincial level,also play an important role in explaining the variance in minimum wage rates across counties.Finally,we show that China's provinces are the key players for setting minimum wage rates and that,when they do so,they are not uniform in the way they weigh different economic variables.