This paper aims to examine how subnational individualism-collectivism affect the outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) establishment mode in a host country, greenfield versus acquisition. We propose that firms locating in regions of high collectivism (individualism) tend to choose the acquisition (greenfield) over the greenfield (acquisition). This is because individualism highlights the control, autonomy and self-concept which can be achieved by the greenfield whereas collectivism promotes the cooperation at a sacrifice of self-concept for the benefits of the group benefits. Using China as an empirical context, we capture the subnational individualism-collectivism with the rice-wheat paddy distributions in China following a publication in Science and find support for our hypotheses. We also find that the positive effect of subnational collectivism on the choice of acquisition is stronger for SOEs than for non SOEs, weaker for firms with high technology than those without. Discussion and implications are provided.
Abstract Pancreatic cancer (PC) is a malignant tumor with a poor prognosis and high mortality. However, the biological role of miR-548t-5p in PC has not been reported. In this study, we found that miR-548t-5p expression was significantly decreased in PC tissues compared with adjacent tissues, and that low miR-548t-5p expression was associated with malignant PC behavior. In addition, high miR-548t-5p expression inhibited the proliferation, migration, and invasion of PC cell lines. Regarding the molecular mechanism, the luciferase reporter gene, chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), and functional recovery assays revealed that YY1 binds to the miR-548t-5p promoter and positively regulates the expression and function of miR-548t-5p. miR-548t-5p also directly regulates CXCL11 to inhibit its expression. A high level of CXCL11 was associated with worse Tumor Node Metastasis (TNM) staging in patients with PC, enhancing proliferation and metastasis in PC cells. Our study shows that the YY1/miR-548t-5p/CXCL11 axis plays an important role in PC and provides a new potential candidate for the treatment of PC.
Abstract Based on the patent data from China National Intellectual Property Administration, we attempt to examine the effect of gender diversity in inventor teams on patent quality. We argue that gender diversity in inventor teams can promote patent quality, especially the invention patents that are high quality and radically innovative. Moreover, we find that the positive effect will be enhanced in places where women are well educated and improved by reducing gender discrimination. We propose that the effect will be more significant when market competition or market uncertainty is high as well as when the enterprises are private and growing. Ultimately, our study advocates that governments and enterprises should pay more attention to female labor forces, especially in the area of science and innovation, which is beneficial to improve innovation in China and eliminate gender inequality in the labor market.
Abstract The inventor is a vital input in acquiring new technologies. Collaboration among inventors is an essential topic for scholars. Talhelm et al. proposed The Rice Theory, highlighting the cultural differences between rice and wheat regions. This paper explores the differences in inventor team size under rice and wheat cultures using invention patent data in China. The results of ordinary least square estimation and instrumental variable estimation indicate that the size of inventor teams under rice culture is significantly smaller than that under wheat culture by 0.558–0.721 persons. Using the Chinese Qinling–Huaihe line, this paper constructs a regression discontinuity (RD) design. The local average treatment effect estimation confirms the difference in rice and wheat cultures. Subsequently, we demonstrate the significant existence of this difference through lots of robustness checks. We try to explain the phenomenon from the perspective of “The Rice Theory” by arguing that inventors in rice regions may be more inclined to collaborate but with a smaller inventor team size. This paper demonstrates the cultural differences in the performance of inventor team size, informing our understanding of input in research and development (R&D) activities.
The reasonable division of intergovernmental environmental affairs is the institutional basis for solving environmental pollution problems. This paper conducts an empirical test using panel data from cities in China. We find that: (a) environmental decentralization significantly improves the supply efficiency of environmental public services (ESE). It's mainly because of the increased capacity for green technology innovation and urban environmental infrastructure development brought about by environmental decentralization. (b) Environmental decentralization will improve the ESE more effectively in regions with the central government acting as a binding force, high environmental preferences, governance capacity of local governments, and pollutant emission intensity. (c) Higher promotion incentives for officials may distort the pollution control effect of environmental decentralization and inhibit the ESE. Appropriate central government transfer payments can better utilize the positive role of environmental decentralization.
The evaluation of the short-term and long-term of disruptive peer effects in the primary education stage has become a hot topic in labor economics. Based on the latest Chinese Education Panel Survey（CEPS）data in 2014, this paper empirically examines the impact of disruptive peers on the student test scores. When studying the peer effects, there are two key problems to solve, reflection and self-selection. The so-called reflection” refers to the problem of mutual influences between peers. It is essentially a reverse causality problem that is often encountered in the setting of econometric models, because it is difficult to tell whether the disruptive students have an impact on other students or some students have a bad influence on the surrounding students, which leads to a biased and inconsistent estimator if researchers use the surrounding students’ performance to explain other students’. Self-selection mainly refers to the fact that families don’t choose schools and classes completely randomly. In order to overcome the estimation bias caused by the problem of reflection and self-selection, we define the class environment as the proportion of disruptive students in the class rather than the peer achievement used in the traditional literature, and we also control the cohort features. After controlling the individual and family factors, we find that students exposed to a disruptive environment have a significant lower education performance. This effect is more significant for the third grade students in the junior high school. One percent increase of the disruptive peers will result in about 0.2 decreasing in the average standardized test score. The result also shows that the acadamic performance of male students, students with poor family conditions and boarding students is more sensitive to class peers. The heterogeneity analysis of school types shows that peer effects are more obvious in schools with poor education and in township/rural schools. Furthermore, quantile regression results show that the negative effect of disruptive peers has a greater impact on poorly performing students. This paper is helpful to enrich the academic cognition of educational production function and provide a useful reference for future education policy. The underlying implication of our study is that if there are reasonable and feasible policies that can change students’ class environment or a more reasonable class division plan, it will effectively improve the educational achievements of students. In addition, the attention to students’ family environment should be strengthened, especially those students who perform poorly in school, and strengthening communication and psychological counseling will bring about significant spillovers.
This study aims to examine how informal financing, particularly interpersonal lending, affects small business social responsibility. Interpersonal lending, though a personal-level lending, is actually a main source of financing of small businesses in emerging economies where formal financial institutions fail to help. Drawing on the pay it forward perspective that “A helps B; B helps C”, we propose that, when small business owners obtain interpersonal lending to relieve the financial difficulty of firms, they are likely to be prosocial, such as helping the needy employees. The helping behavior is a response toward positive emotions and adherence to the reciprocity norms triggered by interpersonal lending in the small business context. With a unique dataset of Chinese small micro firms, we find strong evidence for our hypothesis. In addition, we corroborate that positive relationships will be weakened when female presence in the top management team increases but will be strengthened when employees are the key source of the competitive advantage of small businesses.
(1) Background: We aim to measure the urban-rural inequality of opportunity in healthcare in China based on the theory of Equality of Opportunity (EOp). (2) Methods: Following the compensation principle, we establish a decomposition strategy for the fairness gap, which we use for the measurement of the inequality of opportunity in urban-rural healthcare utilization. We then use China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data from 1997 to 2006 to calculate the fairness gap. (3) Results: Empirical analysis using CHNS data shows that the ratio of the fairness gap to the directly observed average urban-rural difference in healthcare was 1.167 for 1997–2000 and 1.744 for 2004–2006. The average urban-rural difference observed directly from original statistical data may have underestimated the degree of this essential inequity. (4) Conclusions: Our findings suggest that upgrading urban-rural reimbursement ratios may not be sufficient in eliminating the inequality of opportunity in healthcare utilization between urban and rural residents. Within the context of an urban-rural dualistic social structure and widening of the urban-rural income gap, a shift to a pro-disadvantaged policy will be a more effective approach in promoting equality of opportunity in healthcare.
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