Jian Chai

Structural Analysis and Total Coal Demand Forecast in China

Considering the speedy growth of industrialization and urbanization in China and the continued rise of coal consumption, this paper identifies factors that have impacted coal consumption in 1985–2011. After extracting the core factors, the Bayesian vector autoregressive forecast model is constructed, with variables that include coal consumption, the gross value of industrial output, and the downstream industry output (cement, crude steel, and thermal power). The impulse response function and variance decomposition are applied to portray the dynamic correlations between coal consumption and economic variables. Then for analyzing structural changes of coal consumption, the exponential smoothing model is also established, based on division of seven sectors. The results show that the structure of coal consumption underwent significant changes during the past 30 years. Consumption of both household sector and transport, storage, and post sectors continues to decline; consumption of wholesale and retail trade and hotels and catering services sectors presents a fluctuating and improving trend; and consumption of industry sector is still high. The gross value of industrial output and the downstream industry output have been promoting coal consumption growth for a long time. In 2015 and 2020, total coal demand is expected to reach 2746.27 and 4041.68 million tons of standard coal in China.

Does Medical Insurance Improve Household Consumption in China?—A Re-analysis Based on Meta Regression Analysis@@@Does Medical Insurance Improve Household Consumption in China?—A Re-analysis Based on Meta Regression Analysis

Abstract In recent years, it has been a hot pot to explore the effectiveness of basic medical insurance. However, due to different sample characteristics, time series length, models and so on used by authors, there exists big difference among relevant papers. In this paper, we try to apply meta regression analysis (MRA, a prevalent statistic literature review method) to explore its influence on family expenditure, and 90 sample observations were extracted from 49 important literatures. We find: 1) All the index construction, sample characteristic, model selection, control factors will influence the conclusions of medical insurance effectiveness; 2) The implement of basic medical insurance will increase household consumption other than the new rural cooperative systems; 3) The implement of basic health insurance has not really reduce family’s medical expense. Thus, we induce that adverse selection exists in China’s medical insurance.