Macro Debt Burden and Consumption Expansion:An Analysis Based on Panel Model and Panel Quantile Regression Model

As the level of social credit burden rises,to ease the liquidity constraint for residents is currently an important way to boost the domestic demand in China.This paper uses the panel data of Chinese provincial-level administrative units in 2007−2017 and adopts the panel regression model and panel quantile regression model to empirically analyze the relationship between debt burden level and average propensity to consume(APC).The result shows that increase in the level of macro debt burden can significantly improve the APC of residents;the marginal promoting effect of macro debt burden for the APC is in a V-shaped structure;such marginal influence differs evidently in different areas,with the marginal promoting effect turning out most prominent in the northeast of China.Accordingly,it’s suggested for government to keep refining the credit market,increase residents’income in multiple means,guide supply of liquidity towards the real economy and promote equalization of basic public services,so as to realize the expansion and upgrade of consumption.

粤港澳大湾区生态系统服务价值的时空演化及其影响机制

Ecosystem services are the media and channels through which ecological elements, structures, functions, and products benefit human society. Regulating the utilization intensity and protection methods of society on the ecosystem according to the ecosystem service value(ESV) and its influencing mechanism is of great significance for achieving the sustainable development goals. This paper takes the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area(GBA) as the research object and describes the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of ESV in the GBA from 2000 to 2015. Panel quantile regression is also implemented to increase the understanding of the influencing mechanism of ESV. The main results are as follows:(1) From 2000 to 2015, the total ESV declined with a decreasing rate. The areas of decline were mainly distributed in the central part of the GBA and areas along the Pearl River Estuary.(2) Elasticity index, indicating response of ESV to land use change, reached its peak(1.08). The spatial distribution of elasticity index showed that land use changes brought about more intense ESV variations at the junction of cities.(3) In areas with different ESV levels, the influencing factors have different effects. Land use integrity can only promote ecosystem service capabilities in low-ESV areas. The positive effect of temperature on ecosystem service capacity increases with the increase of ESV, which reflects the self-reinforcement of the ecosystem. Moreover, the negative effect of economic density on ecosystem service capacity decreases with the increase of ESV, which reflects the self-protection of the ecosystem. The combination of such self-reinforcement and self-protection will lead to an ESV gap between the high-and low-ESV areas, and induce the “natural Matthew effect.”

Estimating the effect of minimum wage on firm profitability in China

Using the firm-level panel datasets and hand-collected data on county level minimum wage,this paper estimates the effect of minimum wage on firm profitability.As firms may take time to adjust in response to changes in minimum wage,this paper estimates a dynamic panel model with lagged minimum wage.To capture the heterogeneous effect of minimum wage on profitability,this paper further estimates quantile regression dynamic panel model.The estimation results suggest that the effect on firm profitability of minimum wage in the current year is negative across the whole conditional distribution of profitability and it exhibits an inverted-U shape across conditional quantiles.The effect on profitability of lagged minimum wage is positive at the 5th,10th,15th quantiles,negative at the 90th and 95th quantiles,and not significant at other quantiles.Turning to the overall effect on profitability of minimum wage,we find that minimum wage exerts significantly negative effect on profitability at the 5th quantile and quantiles higher than 40th and the absolute value of the effect of minimum wage increases with these quantiles.For other quantiles,the overall effect of minimum wage on profitability is negligible.