Impact of Hinterland Manufacturing on the Development of Container Ports: Evidence from the Pearl River Delta, China

Container ports and hinterland manufacturing are two important forces of the local participation in economic globalization.This study,taking the Pearl River Delta(PRD),China with an export-oriented economy as an example,applies Huff and panel regres-sion models to evaluate the impact of hinterland manufacturing on the development of container ports during the period of 1993–2019.The results show that 1)the spatial patterns of hinterlands for hub ports help to determine the distribution range and scale of economic variables that affect port throughput;2)the hinterland’s gross manufacturing output has universally positive influence on port through-put,wherein export-oriented processing and the entire manufacturing industry have significantly positive impact on port throughput in 1993–2011 and 2001–2019,respectively;3)the two internal structural factors related to an export-oriented economy,labor-intensive sectors and foreign-funded terminals,have positively moderate the direct influence of hinterland manufacturing on port throughput.Our results highlight the importance of local context in understanding port-manufacturing relationship in developing economies.Based on our findings,policy implications are further proposed to enhance port network organization in PRD.

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.

Spatiotemporal Differentiation and the Factors Influencing Eco-efficiency in China

Economic development,resource utilization,and environmental protection have always presented clear dilemmas for many countries at the national level.It is clear that the related concepts of eco-efficiency and the evaluation index can help in evaluating these associated issues.Thus,based on the use of undesirable output super Slacks-Based Measure models,this study evaluated the eco-efficiency of 30 Chinese provinces during the period between 2005 and 2016.This evaluation was conducted by analyzing the spatiotemporal dynamics and key factors influencing these changes using a panel regression model.The results of this analysis reveal that eco-efficiency gradually increased over the course of the study period,peaking at different levels among the regions.We used the conventional CV evolutionary method to show that inequalities in eco-efficiency gradually decreased at the national level.Indeed,our estimations of the factors affecting this variable suggest that industrial structure,degree of openness,urbanization,technical innovation,and environmental governance all exert significant positive influences,while energy consumption and traffic exert negative effects.The extent of the impacts of these factors on eco-efficiency varied between the different regions.

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.

Energy Consumption, Economic Development and Temperature in China： Evidence from PSTR Model

Since the 1980s, the Chinese economy has developed rapidly, with an av- erage annual growth rate around 10%. Energy consumption in China has greatly in- creased as well. This paper investigates the relationship between energy consumption, economic development and temperature in China by adopting provincial panel data from 1990 to 2011. Different from existing studies, in this paper, we use a panel smooth transition regression （PSTR） model to estimate the non-linearity relationship. Four different threshold variables including two lagged endogenous variables and two important exogenous variables have been considered. We find that energy intensity and the ratio of gross capital formation are suitable for the non-linearity model. The estimated elasticities of time dynamic indicate that energy consumption is income in- elastic and temperature inelastic. Elasticities of real income at first increase and then decrease, however, elasticities of temperature gradually increase after the year 1993. Last of all, we propose some policy implications.