Suchergebnisse

Since the initiation of market reforms in 1978, the central government has used the principles of gradualism and experimentation to develop a labor market with Chinese characteristics. We show how these principles have manifested themselves in the development of an unemployment indicator. We find that top leaders of the party state make broad compromises that middle level officials seek to carry out given their inherited situation. Government agencies sometimes vary in their willingness to break with the status quo. In the quest to define and measure unemployment, the National Bureau of Statistics has championed straightforwardness and market transparency.

This paper opens by explaining the political processes that lie behind the definition and measurement of China's urban unemployment. Thereafter, it uses publicly available sources to replicate the inscrutable official urban unemployment estimate for the year 1997. Scholars widely critique the official estimate as under-counting the number of unemployed people, though it is less appreciated that official statistics also under-estimate the number of employed urban people. This paper addresses both deficiencies, unofficially calculating that urban unemployment for the year 1997 was at the rate of 4.5%, higher than the officially stated rate of 3.1%, but closer to the official rate than is often assumed. The authors conclude by proposing additional research that would enable more precise estimates of China's urban unemployment rate. (J Contemp China/DÜI)

AbstractIn this article, we examine the risk–return relation under the impact of investors' price reference points in international markets. We calculate capital gain overhang (CGO) to measure the psychological evaluation of past returns. Using a double‐sorting methodology, we find that a negative risk–return trade‐off generally exists in international markets when CGO is low; results using the Fama–MacBeth procedure confirm our findings. The CGO effect is more prominent in less developed, less transparent, and less legally protected markets. It is stronger in markets with collectivistic, higher power‐distanced, and feminine cultures. The evidence also indicates that the price reference effect is more pronounced when the market is in crisis. Finally, the CGO effect on the risk–return relation reverses as the holding period becomes longer.

As a primary pioneering region in China's ongoing urbanization process, the Yangtze River Economic Belt's (YREB's) urbanization process is itself continually accelerating, causing increasing pressure on the area's water ecosystem. It is necessary to examine the coordination relationship between the urbanization system and the water ecosystem in the YREB for realizing sustainable urban development. To this purpose, we use two comprehensive index systems, along with an improved coupling coordination degree (CCD) model. This method is used to analyze the coordination between urbanization and the water ecosystem across spatial gradients and temporal scales in the YREB, from 2008 to 2017. The factors acting as obstacles were diagnosed by utilizing the obstacle degree model. The results show that: (1) the coordination state of each region gradually improved during the 2008–2017 period. In terms of spatial distribution, the coordination state between two systems gradually increased from east to west. Moreover, the spatial differences across the 11 analyzed regions gradually narrowed with the passage of time. (2) The coordination between the two systems, from 2008 to 2017, evolved from a state of serious imbalance to a state of good coordination. The two systems passed from an initial period of imbalance or antagonism, coupled with rapid growth (2008–2011), through a period of basic coordination with steady growth (2011–2014), and finally toward a period of good coordination with slow growth (2014–2017). (3) Spatial urbanization and pressures on subsystems are the key factors acting as obstacles in the urbanization system and water ecosystem, respectively. Facing the process of rapid urbanization in China, the coupling analysis of the coordination between urbanization and the water ecosystem can help the government to formulate a reasonable new-type urban development strategy. This strategy will play an important role in China's sustainable urban development and water environmental protection. The findings of this study ...