Qihui Chen

Can social networks increase households’ contribution to public-good provision in rural China? : The case of small hydraulic facilities construction

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles social networks play in households’ contribution to the provision of small hydraulic facilities (SHFs) in rural China. Design/methodology/approach - – This paper adopts a sample-selection ordered probit model (Greene and Hensher, 2010) to estimate the impacts of overall social-network intensity, of the number of strong ties (relatives), and of the number of weak ties (friends), using data on 1,064 representative households collected from three provinces (Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Shandong). Findings - – The numbers of strong ties and weak ties both have significant impacts on households’ willingness to contribute to SHFs provision, but only the latter has a significant impact on their level of contribution. More specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the number of weak ties (i.e. friends) is associated with a 6.6 percent increase in households’ propensity of contributing more than 550 yuan and a 8.2 percent decrease in their propensity of contributing less than 100 yuan. Originality/value - – This paper is the first to examine the impacts of social networks on households’ contribution to SHFs provision in rural China. Its finding is of great policy relevance-fostering and maintaining social networks (e.g. through rural cooperatives) can significantly increase households’ contribution to public-good provision.

Endogenous schooling, school proximity and returns to rural schooling in Northwestern China

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to estimate the returns to rural schooling in China, addressing both endogeneity in rural individuals’ schooling and self-selection into off-farm work. Design/methodology/approach - This paper exploits geographical proximity to rural secondary schools to create instrumental variables (IV) for individuals’ years of schooling. It addresses both endogenous schooling and self-selection using the two-step procedure developed in Wooldridge (2002, p. 586). Findings - The preferred IV estimate of schooling returns, 7.6 percent, is considerably higher than most previous estimates found in rural China. Originality/value - This paper is among the few papers that examine returns to rural schooling in China while simultaneously addressing both endogeneity in individuals’ schooling and self-selection into off-farm work. Its findings suggest that rural education in China is potentially able to generate a respectable level of economic returns if policies are designed to provide greater school accessibility to rural individuals.

Incentive Matters!--The Benefit of Reminding Students about Their Academic Standing in Introductory Economics Courses.

In this article, the authors illustrate how incentives can improve student performance in introductory economics courses. They implemented a policy experiment in a large introductory economics class in which they reminded students who scored below an announced cutoff score on the midterm exam about the risk of failing the course. The authors employed a regression-discontinuity method to estimate the causal impact of their policy on students’ performance on the final exam. The results suggest that the policy had a significant impact on students’ performance on the final exam. In fact, the gain in test scores was sufficient to boost a students overall course grade by one letter grade.

Can product-information disclosure increase Chinese consumer’s willingness to pay for GM foods? The case of Fad-3 GM lamb

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine Chinese consumers’ level of perception of genetically modified (GM) foods and the determinants of their willingness to pay (WTP) for Fad-3 GM lamb, a newly developed GM product. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a randomized choice experiment involving 576 consumers in Beijing, the authors adopt a double-bounded contingent valuation method to estimate consumers’ WTP for Fad-3 GM lamb, as well as the causal impact of (randomized) product-information disclosure on it. Findings - The econometric result indicates that the randomly disclosed product information describing details about Fad-3 GM lamb, the potential risks associated with the consumption of it, and the related governmental regulation policies raised consumers’ WTP by 6.2 yuan per Jin (or US

Quasi-Experimental Evidence of Peer Effects in First-Year Economics Courses at a Chinese University

2/kilogram). Originality/value - This paper provides new experimental evidence of the effect of product-information disclosure on consumers’ WTP for a newly developed GM food product.

What is behind class attendance in college economics courses

The authors of this article implement a quasi-experimental strategy to estimate peer effects in economic education by exploiting the institutional setting in a large public university in China, where roommates are randomly assigned conditional on a students major and province of origin. They found significant impacts of peer academic quality, measured as roommates’ average scores on the national College Entrance Exam, on first-year economics students’ scores in first-year microeconomics, macroeconomics, and accounting courses. They also found nonlinearity in peer effects: Roommates’ academic ability has significant effects for academically weak students but not for academically strong students.

Hybrid marriages and phenotypic heterosis in offspring: Evidence from China

How class attendance influences students’ performance remains unclear. Specifically, do students learn more in class if they attend more classes, or does class attendance create incentives for students to study harder outside class? To better understand this relationship, we designed an attendance policy in an economics course that does not significantly change students’ attendance rates. Students who scored below a cut-off on the midterm exam were required to attend subsequent class lectures even though attendance had been implicitly made mandatory for all students, accounting for 10% of the course grade. Our regression discontinuity analysis suggests that our attendance policy significantly improved students’ performance on the final exam, even though it had minimal impacts on their attendance rates. We also found that the policy worked via inducing students to reallocate their time spent studying other courses outside class to economics.

Does household engagement in concurrent business affect the farm size-technical efficiency relationship in grain production?: Evidence from Northern China

&NA; In genetics, heterosis refers to the phenomenon that cross‐breeding within species leads to offspring that are genetically fitter than their parents and exhibit improved phenotypic characteristics. Based on the theory of heterosis and existing genetic evidence, offspring of “hybrid” marriages (spouses originating from different states/provinces/countries/areas), though relatively rare due to physical boundaries, may exhibit greater genetic fitness in terms of intelligence, height, or physical attractiveness (the “distance‐performance” hypothesis). This study explores whether heterosis is a contributing factor to offsprings educational attainment in China by applying a high‐dimensional fixed effects (HDFE) modelling framework to the unique 0.1% micro‐sample of the 2000 Chinese Population Census data. Concerning potential endogeneity of hybrid marriages, we conduct a series of robustness checks. Reassuringly, the estimated heterosis effect remains significantly positive across various measurements, after controlling for parental educational attainments/height, environmental influences, and over a thousand region and region‐by‐year fixed effects. The effects in male and higher‐educated offspring are found to be stronger. Results are replicated when analyzing body height using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey. Although endogeneity of “hybrid marriages” may not be completely ruled out, the current study sheds light on the potentially beneficial effects of interprovincial migration on population‐level human capital accumulation, and we hope that this paper can intrigue future studies that further address endogeneity. The implied heterosis effect could, therefore, be profound for Homo sapiens as a species from an evolutionary point of view. An additional important implication is that the overall genetic influences of parents on offsprings performance may be further decomposed into a conventional heredity effect and a heterosis effect that has been neglected previously. HighlightsThis paper uses the 1% sample of the 2000 Chinese population census data to test whether there is a heterosis effect in human populations.Offspring of genetically more diverse parents exhibit better biological/genetic fitness in educational attainment and body height.The estimated heterosis effect is stronger in males, likely resulting from sexual selection.Results are consistent with predictions of the “distance‐performance” hypothesis.

Ready for school? Impacts of delayed primary school enrollment on children's educational outcomes in rural China

The purpose of this paper is to examine how households’ engagement in concurrent business (CB), which is measured by the contribution of off-farm income to household income, affects the farm size–technical efficiency (TE) relationship in Northern China.,This paper applies a stochastic frontier analysis method to analyze data on 1,006 rural households collected from four major wheat-producing provinces in Northern China, adopting a translog specification for the underlying production function.,The analysis yields three findings. First, the farm size–TE relationship is inverted U-shaped for all CB engagement levels higher than 5 percent, and the most technically efficient farm size increases with the level of household CB engagement. Second, how TE varies with the level of CB engagement depends on farm size: an inverted-U relationship for relatively small farms ( 20μ). Finally, the overall TE score, 0.88, suggests that wheat output can be increased by 12 percent in Northern China if technical inefficiency were eliminated.,Unlike most previous studies that examine the impacts of farm size and households’ off-farm business involvement separately, this paper examines how these two factors interact with each other.