This Investment Boom Gives the Economy Running Room

In our age of information superhighway,there is an invis-ible boom in communications investment owing to the highquality and low price of the communications equipment.Interms of the price,the government reports a rise of some 7 percent since t989.However,Business Week estimates that thetrue price declines by about 35 per cent.In terms of invest-

A Measurement of the Contribution Made by Foreign Investment to Chinese Economy

The author uses the statistics from 1981 to 2002 to perform a logarithmic regression analysis on the contribution made by foreign investment to Chinese economy. The measurement shows that the following effects on Chinese economy are brought by large amount of foreign investment： 1） Foreign investment, as an important investment source, boosts the increase of the stock of production factors and improves the supplying potentials of Chinese economy. 2） The application of foreign investment speeds the rapid growth of the total production value and the increases the value of Chinese industry. 3） Foreign investment changes the employment structure of Chinese labor force. 4） The tax in China, to some extent, owes its growth to the adoption of foreign investment.

Investments in the Russian Agriculture Under the Economic, Political Volatility

The article states that the purpose of the agricultural industry of Russia is the creation of a market for innovation and investment to improve productivity and competitiveness in the context of growing economic, political, and natural climatic instability and volatility, both in Russia and abroad （membership in the WTO, industry globalization, etc.）. Foreign economic and political sanctions have a growing negative impact. It is very important for the agriculture industry to be supported by the Russian state budget and to have administrative support, the institutional structure of the state, quantitative and qualitative indicators of national support： federal, regional, and municipal. Positive development of the regional and city aspect is also important.

ECONOMY

Crowdfunding Example China’s largest dark horse movie this summer,Monkey King：Hero Is Back amassed 700 million yuan（$112.7 million）in ticket sales as of July 28,beating Kung Fu Panda 2 as the top-grossing animated film in Chinese cinemas.The film’s novel fundraising channel have impressed many Chinese moviegoers when Monkey King presented a long producer list that included 109 children,whose parents pooled their money to aid in the movie’s marketing.

Liberalize or Not？ Societal Conflict, Plural Political Competition, and the Political Economy of FDI Liberalization

While the existing literature suggests political liberalization enhances the freedom of foreign direct investment （FDI）, the observation that some countries with more liberal political regimes have more restrictive policies toward direct investment than others remains unexplained. With a theoretical model of plural political competition and empirical evidences gathered from panel data, I argue that the liberalizing effect of political liberty on foreign direct investment hinges on the local factor endowment of the country experiencing democratization. I develop a theory of investment policy formation that takes into account the strategic response from domestic societal actors to redistribution of political power and its impact on FDI liberalization. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, the empirical results show political liberalization is more likely to lead to liberalization of foreign direct investment when the capital-labor ratio in the economy is relatively low.