Number of results to display per page
Search Results
402. Financial Development, Growth, and Regional Disparity in Post-Reform China
- Author:
- Zhicheng Liang
- Publication Date:
- 08-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Deepening financial development and rapid economic growth in China have been accompanied by widening income disparity between the coastal and inland regions. In this paper, by employing panel dataset for 29 Chinese provinces over the period of 1990-2001 and applying the generalized method of moment (GMM) techniques, we examine the impacts of financial development on China's growth performance. Our empirical results show that financial development significantly promotes economic growth in coastal regions but not in the inland regions; the weak finance-growth nexus in inland provinces may aggravate China's regional disparities.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Development, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
403. Spatial Convergence in China: 1952-99
- Author:
- Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, Dong Guo, and Patricio Aroca
- Publication Date:
- 08-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- The purpose of this paper is to examine the convergence process in China by taking into account the spatial interaction between factors. The paper shows that there has been a dramatic increase in the spatial dependence of China's per capita GDP in the last 20 years. The consequence of space plays an important role, which is reflected in the influence of a neighbour's condition on the mobility of a province's income distribution from one category to another. The dynamics of the process showed evidence that China's distribution has gone from one of convergence to stratification, and from stratification to polarization.
- Topic:
- Demographics, Development, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
404. Financial Sector Development and Growth: The Chinese Experience
- Author:
- Mingming Zhou and Iftekhar Hasan
- Publication Date:
- 08-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper documents the financial and institutional developments of China during the past two decades, when China was successfully transformed from a rigid centralplanning economy to a dynamic market economy following its unique path. We empirically examine the relationship between financial development and economic growth in China by employing a panel sample covering 31 Chinese provinces during the important transition period 1986-2002. Our evidence suggests that the development of financial markets, institutions, and instruments have been robustly associated with economic growth in China.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
405. Rethinking Import-substituting Industrialization: Development Strategies and Institutions in Taiwan and China
- Author:
- Tianbiao Zhu
- Publication Date:
- 07-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Conventional explanations of Taiwan and China's economic success point to the shift from an import-substituting industrialization (ISI) strategy to an export-oriented industrialization (EOI) strategy. This paper argues that the development strategies in Taiwan and China have always been a combination of ISI and EOI strategies during their entire miracle-creating period; far from the shift from ISI to EOI strategies, export promotion was used in both cases to sustain ISI, which has always been the central focus of development. Behind this strategy there is a set of institutions in both Taiwan and China, which has played a key role in supporting ISI, in particular, the government, the bank sector, public enterprises, and their relationship.
- Topic:
- Development and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- China, Israel, Taiwan, East Asia, and Asia
406. Development of Financial Intermediation and the Dynamics of Rural-Urban Inequality: China, 1978-98
- Author:
- Qi Zhang, Mingxing Liu, and Yiu Por Chen
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Using China as a test case, this paper empirically investigates how the development of financial intermediation affects rural-urban income disparity (RUID). Using 20-year province level panel data, we find that the level of financial development is positively correlated with RUID. Examining two subperiods, 1978-88 and 1989-98, we test several competing hypotheses that may affect RUID. We find that the increase of RUID may be explained by fiscal policy during the first period and financial intermediates during the second period. In addition, we show that the direction of the Kuznets effect on RUID is sensitive to changes in government development policies. The rural development policies during the first period may have enhanced the rural development and reduced RUID. However, the financial intermediary policy during the second period focused on urban development and increased both urban growth and intra-urban inequalities, thus leading to an increase in RUID. Finally, we show that RUID is insensitive to the provincial industrial structure (the share of primary industry in GDP). These results are consistent with the traditional urban-bias hypothesis and are robust to the inclusion of controls for endogeneity issues. This study adds to the economic inequality literature by clarifying the effects of government policies on the underlying dynamics on convergent and divergent effects on rural-urban inequality.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Government
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
407. How Should We Measure Global Poverty in a Changing World?
- Author:
- Kuan Xu and Lars Osberg
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Before effective anti-poverty policy can be designed and implemented, the extent, trend and distribution of poverty must be identified. In this sense, poverty measurement is a crucial intermediate step in public policymaking and development planning. This paper asks whether the estimated proportion of the world's population with income below US$1 (adjusted according to purchasing power parity) per day is a good measure of trends in global poverty. We argue that the answer depends on two important issues in the measurement of poverty—the definition of the poverty line, and how best to summarize the level of poverty In this paper, we survey the literature on poverty measurement, demonstrate the importance of considering poverty incidence, depth and inequality jointly, present a simple but powerful graphical representation of the Sen and SST indices of poverty intensity (the poverty box) which is the FGT index of order 1 and extend our empirical work to China using the commonly accepted international poverty line definition of one half median equivalent income.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
408. Poverty Accounting by Factor Components: With an Empirical Illustration Using Chinese Data
- Author:
- Guanghua Wan
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- The purpose of this paper is to develop two poverty decomposition frameworks and to illustrate their applicability. A given level of poverty is broadly decomposed into an overall inequality component and an overall endowment component in terms of income or consumption determinants or input factors. These components are further decomposed into finer components associated with individual inputs. Also, a change in poverty is decomposed into components attributable to the growth and redistributions of factor inputs. An empirical illustration using Chinese data highlights the importance of factor redistributions in determining poverty levels and poverty changes in rural China.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
409. Development Strategy, Viability, and Economic Institutions: The Case of China
- Author:
- Mingxing Liu, Pengfei Zhang, Shiyuan Pan, and Justin Yifu Lin
- Publication Date:
- 05-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper explores the politically determined development objectives and the intrinsic logic of government intervention policies in east developed countries. It is argued that the distorted institutional structure in China and in many least developed countries, after the Second World War, can be largely explained by government adoption of inappropriate development strategies. Motivated by nation building, most least-developed countries, including the socialist countries, adopted a comparative advantage defying strategy to accelerate the growth of capital-intensive, advanced sectors in their countries. In the paper we also statistically measure the evolution of government development strategies and the economic institutions in China from 1950s to 1980s to show the co-existence and coevolution of government adoption of comparative advantage defying strategy and the trinity system.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Government
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
410. Economic Development Strategy, Openness and Rural Poverty: A Framework and China's Experiences
- Author:
- Justin Yifu Lin and Peilin Liu
- Publication Date:
- 04-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper argues that both openness and poverty in a country are endogenously determined by the country's long-term economic development strategy. Development strategies can be broadly divided into two mutually exclusive groups: (i) the comparative advantage-defying (CAD) strategy, which attempts to encourage firms to deviate from the economy's existing comparative advantages in their entry into an industry or choice of technology; and (ii) the comparative advantage-following (CAF) strategy, which attempts to facilitate the firms' entry into an industry or choice of technology according to the economy's existing comparative advantages.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia