Ming-Hsuan Lee

Migration and Children's Welfare in China: The Schooling and Health of Children Left behind

Although the effect of the migration process on the family has been extensively studied, much less attention has been given to the impact of migration on children, especially those children who are left behind. Children whose parents have migrated are usually looked after by members of their extended family. In this paper, we compare the well-being of children who live in rural Chinese households in which the parents either have or have not migrated, and we then examine the extent to which parental migration affects childrens welfare (i.e., schooling and health conditions). Our findings show that, compared to children whose parents have migrated, children whose parents have not migrated were better off in terms of school enrollment and years of schooling. Meanwhile, children of migrant parents generally demanded more recognition from parents and peers and were more likely to develop a smoking habit. Regarding childrens health, this paper also identifies some negative impacts of parental migration on childrens receiving of health care and on the general quality of their health; however, the extent was not as substantial as in the case of schooling. Overall, our findings suggest that parental absence due to labor migration affected childrens mental and, to a lesser extent, physical well-being. The results also confirm the common observation that the care provided by the extended family is often limited to tangible help and rarely involves spiritual inspiration.

The impact of information and communication technology on public governance and corruption in China

A large number of studies have examined the impact of information and communication technology on governance and corruption. However, few studies have explored the situation in China. While the Chinese government is fully committed to the development of ICT, it has also invested a great amount of resources into controlling the dissemination of information. Therefore, it is worth exploring whether ICT has had a positive impact on governance and corruption in China as found in other countries in previous studies. We conducted empirical tests utilizing provincial data from 2004 to 2010 and a Dynamic Panel Data Model. The results showed that ICT had a positive impact on the governance of provincial governments in China. ICT had two different effects on corruption: ICT helped corruption cases come to light and ultimately helped reduce corruption.

Corruption costs lives: a cross-country study using an IV approach

This study quantitatively estimates the effects of corruption on five major health indicators by using recent cross-country panel data covering 119 countries for the period of 2005-2011. The corruption indicators provided by the World Bank and Transparency International are used, and both the two-way fixed effect and the two-stage least squares approaches are employed for our estimation. The estimation results show that, in general, corruption is negatively associated with a countrys health outcomes. A lower level of corruption or a better control of corruption in a country can lead to longer life expectancy, a lower infant mortality rate and a lower under-five mortality rate for citizens. However, our estimation finds no significant association between corruption and individual diseases including human immunodeficiency virus prevalence and tuberculosis incidence. The findings suggest that corruption reduction itself is an effective method to promote health. Copyright

Schooling and Industrialization in China: Gender Differences in School Enrollment

The rapid decrease in gender inequality in education over the past several decades in China has drawn significant attention in the existing literature. Several factors have been proposed or examined to explain this decrease. However, few studies have examined this topic from the perspective of the changing job structure and skill requirements in the labor market resulting from industrialization. This article examines the relationship between industrialization and school enrollments of both genders in China using province-level data between 1988 and 2008 and seeks to provide richer insights into the factors associating with the decrease in educational gender inequality in China. The results show that the changing labor market conditions linked to industrialization had significant associations with enrollment of both genders and can indeed help explain the decrease in educational gender inequality in China.

Can information and communication technology promote venture creation? A cross-country study using an instrument variable approach

This study employed cross-country data from the World Bank for the period from 2002 to 2014 and empirically examined the impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development on venture creation. The estimation strategies include a fixed effect model and an instrument variable specification. The estimation results show that the impact of ICT development on venture creation was negative among low/middle-income countries but was positive among middle/high-income countries. We attribute this result to the richer complementary inputs to ICT and fairer environments for business competition in high income countries.

CAN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IMPROVE STOCK MARKET EFFICIENCY? A CROSS-COUNTRY STUDY: Can Information and Communication Technology Improve Stock Market Efficiency?

The rapid advance of information and communication technology (ICT) has revolutionized the dissemination of stock market information. Based on the noise trading theory, this study discusses whether the changes brought by ICT have promoted the transparency of stock market information or instead flooded the stock market with misinformation. A cross‐country panel dataset of 71 countries from 2002 to 2014 was established. The empirical methodologies include panel unit root tests, panel variance ratio tests, and panel multiple regressions. The results of panel unit root tests and panel variance ratio tests show that stock markets in countries with high ICT diffusion are efficient while stock markets in countries with low or medium ICT diffusion are not all efficient. The results of panel regressions further show that the effect of ICT diffusion in reducing market noises was more significant than its effect in magnifying the noises.