Does the Construction of a Water Ecological Civilization City Improve Green Total Factor Productivity? Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in China

Taking Water Ecological City Pilot (WECP) policy as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper adopts the PSM-DID method to investigate the impact of the WECP policy on the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of China’s prefecture-level cities. The results show that the implementation of the WECP policy significantly inhibits the improvement of GTFP. Furthermore, we find the implementation of the WECP policy has squeezed out government technological expenditures to some extent and aggravated the compliance cost of enterprises, which has not caused the “innovation compensation effect”, thus failing to improve GTFP. The heterogeneity analyses show that the policy effects vary with the imbalance of China’s regional development and resource endowments. Developed regions can better overcome the possible negative impact that comes with policy implementation. Governments need to formulate different policy strategies and plans from an overall macro perspective.

Analogic Perspective-Taking and Attitudes Toward Political Organizations: An Experiment with a Teachers’ Union

Attitudes toward social out-groups can be improved through “analogic perspective-taking,” whereby respondents are encouraged to use an analogy to take the perspective of the group. It is unclear, however, whether analogic perspective-taking can improve attitudes toward political organizations; how perspective-taking fares compared to the provision of narrative alone; and the limits of the attitude changes it creates. We report results from an experiment that tested analogic perspective-taking exercises about members of teachers’ unions. While perspective-taking improves attitudes toward unions, union members, and willingness to pay more in education taxes, it also increases support for some antiunion policies. A second study suggests that the bidirectional policy effects are attributable to subjects’ difficulty distinguishing pro- from antiunion policies. Analogic perspective-taking can improve attitudes toward social and political groups. But narrative exchange is not always superior to narrative provision, and both approaches may yield mixed effects on policy attitudes.

Multi-Regional Input–Output Tables for Macroeconomic Simulations in Poland’s Regions

The capacity of multi-regional input–output tables (MRIOTs) to investigate linkages across structures and subnational regions within a country makes them a useful and solid tool of various types of simulations. This study develops MRIOTs for the Polish regions that can be subsequently employed to macroeconomic simulations, including assessing internal policy impulse responses or testing the regional economic resilience to external shocks. For this purpose, we build three macro-regions, discuss how their structural features validate their use to study differentials in economic policy effects or regional economic resilience, and finally, describe the process of constructing the MRIOTs.

Quantifying the Supply Response of Private Schools to Public Policies

School policies that cause a large demand shift between public and private schooling may cause some private schools to enter or exit the market. We study how the policy effects differ under a fixed versus changing market structure in the context of a public school funding reform in New York City. We find evidence of a reduction in private schools in response to the reform. Using a model of demand for and supply of private schooling, we estimate that 20 percent of the reform’s effect on school enrollments came from increased private school exit and reduced private school entry. (JEL H75, I21, I22, I28)

New Round of Collective Forest Rights Reform, Forestland Transfer and Household Production Efficiency

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the influence mechanism of the new round of Collective Forest Rights Reform (CFRR) on farmers’ production efficiency from the perspective of forestland transfer. Based on the panel data of field investigation in Jiangxi Province, a panel logit model was used to verify whether the new round of CFRR has affected farmers’ forestland circulation behavior. The results showed that the new round of CFRR has played a significant role in promoting forestland circulation. Secondly, the non-parametric DEA method was used to estimate the technical, scale, and comprehensive efficiency of households. DID and panel quantile models were constructed to analyze the impact of forestland inflow policy and forestland outflow policy effects on rural household productivity. The regression results showed that the effect of forestland inflow has had a significantly positive impact on scale and comprehensive efficiency, but it only had a significant effect on technical efficiency in the 0.1 quartile. The effect of forestland outflow was not found to be significant for technical, scale, and comprehensive efficiency, but it was found to be negative for technical efficiency in the 0.75 quartile and negative for scale efficiency in the 0.5 and 0.75 quantiles.

Hypertension Prevalence Rates Among Urban and Rural Older Adults of China, 1991–2015: A Standardization and Decomposition Analysis

Objectives: The prevalence of hypertension (HTN) among older adults is becoming an important issue in public health in China as it is now stepping into the super-aged society with high pressure of a chronic disease burden. With urban–rural differences in population composition and health facilities, this study aimed to assess the gaps in the prevalence trends of HTN among older adults by considering demographic factors such as age, gender, education level, and regional differences during 1991–2015 in China.Methods: We adopted the consistent sampling design and measure of HTN of the cross-longitudinal surveys of the China Health and Nutrition survey, and we compared the HTN prevalence rates between urban and rural older adults by taking each wave of the survey as a cross-sectional sample of the Chinese population by the following and supplementary samples. The classic standardization and decomposition analysis method was utilized with four factor-specific rates, and contributions were calculated, i.e., age, gender, education, and region, which reflects the aspect of demographic and social development differences between urban and rural areas of China.Results: The prevalence rates of HTN of the whole of older adults were increasing in 1991–2015. However, the gaps of prevalence rates of HTN between urban and rural areas show different trends accompanied by the health policies launched by the government. Namely, the gap was narrowed during 1993–1997 and then enlarged during 1997–2011 and narrowing again. Those trends reflect the policy effects with the health resource allocation and utilization of health services for urban and rural older adults.Conclusions: With the four factors of decomposition analysis, the differences reflect the results of health policy effects, considering the urban–rural discrepancy on older adults with different demographic characteristics. Hence, the differentiated policies should be considered with the urban–rural population, such as HTN prevention and the population health promotion.