Numerous studies have explored the impact of family planning policies on income distribution, but the impact of policy relaxation remains largely unexplored. To address this gap, we investigate the effects of China's selective two-child policy, which was implemented in 2013, using provincial panel data from 2011 to 2016. Specifically, we employ a generalized difference-in-differences model to empirically analyze the impact and mechanism of the policy relaxation on residents' income distribution. Our findings are as follows. Firstly, the selective two-child policy has narrowed the income distribution gap. Secondly, male labor force participation, the urban-rural income gap, and disposable income serve as mechanisms through which the selective two-child policy affects income distribution. Thirdly, the robustness test confirms the robustness of our conclusions. Finally, we observe regional heterogeneity in the impact of the selective two-child policy on residents' income distribution. Specifically, the policy has had significant effects in the western and northeastern regions, but not in other regions. Overall, our results shed light on the impact of childbearing policies on income distribution, providing important insights for optimizing China's childbearing policies and promoting common prosperity.

How does democracy relate to the initial economic policy responses to Covid-19? Using a cross country analysis, we find that countries with a higher degree of democracy have stronger economic policy responses than their peers. However, when we separate monetary and financial policies from fiscal policy, democracy is not associated with the latter when we control for the income level of a country. Finally, for countries with lower levels of labor participation, high levels of income inequality are associated with weaker policy responses.

Based on provincial panel data in China, this study is the first to investigate whether industry-university-research collaborative innovation (IURCI) can help to improve factor misallocation. It is found that IURCI can significantly improve capital misallocation and labor misallocation, and the effect has regional differences, which shows that the improvement effect is obvious in areas with factor under-allocation, such as the central and western regions, but not obvious in areas with factor over-allocation, which conforms to the rule of diminishing marginal returns. A regulatory effect model is built to explore the impact of regional heterogeneity, through which we find that after considering three external environmental conditions, including economic development level, academic research level, and marketization degree, the improvement effect of IURCI on factor misallocation undergoes significant changes. The research results show that to deepen the marketization reform of factor allocation, we can start with IURCI. The government should form a sustainable and normalized industry-university-research collaborative innovation ecological mode through pilot cases and adopt measures according to local conditions to ensure the efficient use and reasonable distribution of capital and human resources of enterprises, universities, and scientific research institutions.

Influenced by traditional notions of solidarity, when a province’s planning can be highly aligned with that of the central government, the province is perceived to be more collective and thus able to receive financial or resource favors from the central government. This consistency, as is often the case, reflected in doing the same thing as the central government. This situation may lead governors to ignore local economic performance and thus reduce regional innovation efficiency, as in the case of China’s Great Leap Forward. Likewise, it is possible to get better resources (energy or capital) by demonstrating managerial submissiveness, thus improving the regional innovation efficiency. Therefore, to verify the relationship between imitative governance and regional innovation efficiency, we collected relevant data from 31 major provincial administrative units in China, calculated the degree of imitative governance between provincial government work reports and central government work reports through text similarity, as well as utilized the SBM-DEA model to evaluate regional innovation efficiency. Meanwhile, we provide a new explanation of the phenomenon from the perspective of resource inclination. Finally, the empirical results show that imitative governance promotes local innovation efficiency and is moderated by resource inclination.

The objective of this research is to investigate, using time series data ranging from 1992 to 2021, the effects of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth (GDP) in India. The stationarity of the data was examined by employing unit root tests, and an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique was used to investigate the link between the factors, taking both the long- and the short-run into consideration. According to the findings, an increase of one percent in both ICT and FDI will result in an increase of 0.56% and 0.71% in GDP over the long term, in addition to an increase of 0.11% and 0.29% over the short term. The findings of the investigation are of particular significance to policymakers because they can be utilized to establish sensible policymaking for long-term economic success, in addition to advancing the ICT sector and boosting FDI.

Understanding the economic trends and demographic dynamics of a country is crucial for policymakers and researchers to formulate effective strategies and policies. This study aims to examine the GDP trends and aging index dynamics in Portugal from 2011 to 2021, with a focus on regional disparities and their implications for demographic challenges. The findings highlight the relationship between regional GDP and the aging index, indicating that regions with higher GDP values tend to have a relatively younger population, while regions with lower GDP values have a relatively older population. The study contributes to the existing literature on population aging by providing insights into the demographic, economic, and social implications of an aging society. It provides valuable insights into the demographic, economic, and social implications of population aging in Portugal. The findings contribute to the existing literature and can inform policymakers and stakeholders in developing targeted strategies and policies to address the specific challenges faced by each region.

A high inflation period of seven years (1978-1985) in Israel, which turned into a hyperinflation, puzzled Israeli economists, who tried to understand its causes and mechanisms. As a result, they provided fourteen different explanations. Although all of the explanations were based on the same data, the researchers’ conclusions were either different or contradictory. This situation provides a virtual laboratory for the study of the ways and methods of economic thought; it is a classical Ceteris patribus situation. This laboratory further raises other subjects and questions. Are there principal differences between the economists' explanations? Is it possible to classify these differences? How do economic explanations for inflation differ from non-economic ones? In this article, I classified thirteen economic studies and one non-economic study into five clusters. This was the methodological tool used to inquire into the economic thought in this virtual laboratory.

This paper explores the transformative journey from traditional e-commerce to the emerging realm of virtual commerce (v-commerce) within the metaverse, a collective virtual shared space created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual reality. The metaverse, with its immersive and interactive capabilities, is reshaping the landscape of economic activities, creating a paradigm shift in the way consumers shop, sell, and buy goods and services. The study delves into the impact of virtual reality (VR) technologies on consumer behavior, business models, and the overall economy. It investigates how VR is revolutionizing the shopping experience by offering immersive, personalized, and interactive platforms, thereby influencing con-sumer decision-making processes. The paper further examines the implications of these changes for businesses, particularly in terms of strategy, operations, and customer engagement. Moreover, the paper discusses the challenges and opportunities presented by the metaverse economy, including issues related to privacy, security, digital divide, and regulatory frameworks. It also highlights the potential of v-commerce to drive economic growth, innovation, and sustainability in the digital age. The paper concludes with a discussion on the future directions of v-commerce and the potential strategies for businesses to thrive in this new economic landscape.

We offer an extensive analysis of the significance of information within the realm of Gaussian quadratic economies. We build upon the seminal papers of Morris and Shin (2002, 2007) and consider a signal game of incomplete information. Particularly, we question the suitability of partial transparency portrayed by fragmented information in addition to the private signal in terms of welfare effects. We can summarize our findings in two main points. First, fragmented information, in conjunction with a private signal, can reduce the reliance on public signals. Second, a conflicting effect arises between increasing full disclosure and increasing the precision of fragmented (semi-public) information when examining different complex scenarios, involving for example endogenous private information or imperfect correlated signals. For a critical threshold, an optimal communication strategy designed by fragmented information should be implemented whenever that kind of information is acquired at a high precision.

This study simultaneously tests Wagner’s law on one hand and Keynes proposition on the other hand related both government spending and output in Ivory Coast that experiencing long run economic growth and widened deficit. That challenges the country’s fiscal sustainability. With annual data from 1980 to 2020, results show that Wagner’s law holds, the elasticity of government spending to output is greater than one. There is bidirectional causality between government size and output validating Keynesian idea that public expenditure is an exogenous factor and a policy instrument for increasing national income. Wagner law and public deficit can justify Ivorian over-indebtedness.

The primary goal of this research is to examine how different types of energy are used in South Asian countries and how they affect the environment and economic growth. From 1990 through 2021, this research employed Panel Data from multiple sources covering the South Asian countries of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, and Afghanistan. The results are determined by using the Fixed Effect Regression (FEM) technique in both models. Several significant findings are supported by the data. First, while using renewable energy flattens carbon dioxide effusion, using non-renewable energy sources increases it. CO2 emissions are affected negatively by gross domestic product but positively by gross domestic product square. These results provide credence to the idea that South Asian countries do experience an Environment Kuznets Curve. Furthermore, foreign direct investment has a beneficial effect on CO2 emissions, lending credence to the Pollution Haven Hypothesis. Model 2 instead finds that both renewable and non-renewable energy consumption contributes to economic expansion. Gross Fixed Capital Formation and foreign direct investment also contribute to economic growth in this area. Finally, Inflation retards economic expansion.

Banks operating within a free economic environment and with constructive regulatory frameworks can function with enhanced efficiency, augmenting their profitability. This study aimed to examine the influence of economic freedom and financial restrictions on banks' profitability within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation member nations. The study used a sample of 1453 banks, collecting panel data spanning 13 years. The System-GMM methodology was justified based on the enduring characteristics of the data and the profitability metrics. The dependent variables, namely the Net Income Margin, Return on Average Assets, and Return on Average Equity were individually examined. The research findings indicate that most economic freedom indicators, except for investment freedom, harm bank profitability. The influence of the rule of law on profitability indicators is mostly adverse, although regulatory quality within the financial system has a comparatively favorable effect on profitability. Furthermore, bank-specific performance indicators had a negative impact on profitability, except for bank size. Moreover, country-specific variables substantially impact banks' profitability, including inflation, tax, and interest rates. The presence of Islamic banking has been shown to substantially impact the profitability performance of banks within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. OIC banks' profitability is adversely impacted by the ongoing health crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic.

Based on the empirical data of 6110 listed export companies in China from 2010 to 2019, this paper studies the impact of China's economic policy uncertainty (EPU) index on the profitability of listed companies from the specific perspective of export companies, and analyzes the moderating effects of different factors on this impact. The results show that China's EPU index has a significant negative impact on the profitability of listed export companies, and the increase in R&D investment and wage returns will aggravate this negative impact. In addition, listed export enterprises with different enterprise characteristics have different responses to EPU. State-owned enterprises and enterprises located in coastal areas are relatively less negatively affected by EPU.

The recent interest rate policy decisions of the South African Reserve Bank have been criticized significantly by left-leaning political parties and civic society organisations for being anti-poor, anti-labour, and pro-capital because of their implications for household debt. Existing literature has established that interest rates and house prices are insignificant determinants of household debt dynamics in South Africa. Taking advantage of additional data for the period 2013-2022, and contrary to the previous studies, the paper maintains that house prices and the central bank policy rate play a crucial role in household debt dynamics. Applying a Markov Switching regression to quarterly data for the period 1981Q1 to 2022Q1, the paper finds that house prices and the policy rate have a significant influence on household debt dynamics. It establishes the existence of a ‘house price boom, low policy rate burden’ regime and a ‘high policy rate burden, low house price’ regime. The coexistence of the ‘house price boom’ and the ‘low policy rate’ explains the debt euphoria characterised by significant household leveraging.

We study analytically the conflict of goals between stabilizing economic activity and public debt sustainability, for the fiscal authorities. In the short run, an active and expansionary fiscal policy, increasing public investment or reducing the labor taxation rate, is growth enhancing. However, as these short term fiscal policies also decrease government revenue and increase the public debt, budgetary and fiscal multipliers are reduced in the long run. In the framework of a potential ZLB constraint for monetary policy, an expansionary fiscal policy is thus appropriate only if long term labor and consumption taxation rates are small, and if the share of public expenditure in GDP is high. On the contrary, fiscal policy should be contractionary, in order to insure the sustainability of the long term public debt, if long term labor and consumption taxation rates are high. A contractionary fiscal policy is then also all the more appropriate as the sensitivity of government expenditure to the public debt is high, and as the labor share in the production function is high.

With the advancement of science and technology and the advent of the digital economy, the digital economy has become a new driving force for economic development, and the digital economy industry at home and abroad is facing new opportunities for survival and development. However, due to the special development model and profit mode of the digital economy industry, the traditional performance evaluation method is no longer applicable, so it is particularly important to improve the previous performance evaluation method. This paper first adjusts the customer value assessment (CLV) model according to the characteristics of the digital economy industry, and then analyzes the traditional EVA based on the adjusted user value assessment (ULV) model of the digital economy industry. The performance evaluation system is improved, and the representative enterprises of Alibaba, JD and Pinduoduo in the digital economy industry are selected for performance evaluation and analysis, and the user value performance evaluation model of the digital economy industry is integrated, innovated and standardized, in order to provide reference and reference for the follow-up research and practice of performance evaluation in the digital economy industry.

The digital economy industry plays a transformative role in reshaping the global production networks, the local division of production, and the integration and innovation of business forms. However, to what extent the industry enables the high-quality development and upgrading of urban economies is unclear. Based on the census data of digital economy enterprises in Hangzhou in 2008, 2013 and 2018, this paper verifies the characteristics of the digital economy industry and its enabling mechanism for high-quality urban economic development. It is found that: firstly, the digital economy industry has three main forms for the economy, namely, the sharing, scale and scope economy. Secondly, the industry has four major mechanisms to improve the quality of urban economies. That is, it can restructure the global industrial division of labor and value chains, promote the transformation of scale economy from the supply side to the demand side, enable the softening and servitization of industrial structure, and generate the scale of economies. This paper thus contributes to understanding the evolution of enterprise organizational structure and industrial competitiveness and the endogenous technological change under the digital economy.

This paper presents an analytical framework to assess the probability of achieving nationally determined contributions (NDC). The prediction model based on the Kaya identity is used to simulate the pathway of carbon emission until the target year. Applying the modified STIRPAT framework (named CO-STIRPAT) to data observed in South Korea shows that the probability that the predicted pathway with existing climate technology will stay above the NDC target pathway is significantly high. The result suggests that it is necessary to design a climate policy to improve energy intensity and carbon intensity by accelerating the advance in climate technology.

Based on provincial panel data from 1998-2018, this paper estimates research and development (R&D) factors, and a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) model is constructed to examine the effects of R&D factors on regional total factor productivity (TFP). The results show that both R&D capital stock and R&D personnel can significantly promote regional TFP, but the productivity-enhancing effect of R&D factors is different between regions. Specifically, R&D capital and R&D personnel can promote TFP in eastern and central provinces, and the promotion effect is not significant in western provinces. In addition, compared with investment-driven regions, innovation-driven regions are more likely to enhance TFP by R&D factors.

Occupying a preeminent position as the globe’s most extensive economic corridor, the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) serves as a crucial aquifer for 800 million individuals and harbors almost 50% of the country's paramount water-intensive contaminant producers. The ecological efficiency of these producers within the belt has increasingly come under scholarly scrutiny. Leveraging data from 2004-2012 encompassing 725 such manufacturers and employing the DEA-Malmquist index methodology, this research delineates the eco-efficiency trajectories of these water-centric pollutant producers, shedding light on their spatial-temporal dynamics across the expansive Yangtze Economic Belt. The results are as follows: (1) there’s a discernible enhancement in the eco-efficiency (ML) of these manufacturers situated within the YREB, predominantly propelled by technological change (TC) and shifts in technical efficiency change (TEC); (2) From a spatial perspective, notable disparities emerge in both technological change (TC) and technical efficiency change (TEC) among the belt’s upper, middle, and lower tiers. Intriguingly, the hierarchy for TC and TEC descends as follows: Lower > Upper > Middle; (3) Examining the spatial evolution nuances, 2004 witnessed eco-efficiency distributions ranking from Upper > Middle > Lower. Fast forward to 2012, a marked reconfiguration appears with a distribution pattern of Middle > Lower > Upper.