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Employing data of one belt one road (OBOR) countries from 2002 to 2013, this study compares the contagious corruption difference between geographic border and distance through the dynamic spatial econometric model. The empirical results not only confirm that corruption in OBOR countries exists under various contagious channels, but also indicate that border effects, serving as contagious channels for corruption, are better than distance effects. The empirical implication is that OBOR countries with a common border tend to possess contagious corruption due to the hosts’ demonstration effect and the convenience of transferring illegal assets. We advise that those OBOR countries should enhance the supervision of cash flow, look for any opportunity of kicking back a portion of the stolen money, and establish a specific task force on corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As is well known, Chinese central government has full authority to determine the provincial and local officials’ turnover. However, China has not in detail interpreted the standards of officials’ promotions so far. In this paper, the latest database of city-level leaders for the period between 2002 and 2013 is utilized to investigate the influences of economic performance on party secretaries’ odds of being promoted. The estimation results by a panel multinomial logit method indicate that municipal annual GDP per capita is significantly positively associated with leaders’ chances of promotion. Specifically, the average GDP growth rates during leaders’ tenures have much higher effects. Moreover, some important factors of leaders’ personal characteristics also affect the political turnover. For instance, party secretaries’ connection with China’s Communist Youth League, political experience, educational level and professional expertise all have positive impacts on their chances of obtaining a promotion. In contrast, leaders’ ages and tenures are found to be negatively related to their promotion possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate whether the ratio of female population is related with lower corruption, utilizing a multinational panel data with 80 countries for the period 2000-2012 and employing the Generalized Method of Moments as well as the ordered probit regression methods. This is the first study on the impacts of different female groups on corruption. Overall speaking, the estimation results are pluralistic. Higher female ratios in the legislative branch and in the labor force are significantly associated with a lower level of corruption, while the female ratio in secondary enrollment is positively related with corruption; however, the female ratio of the whole population has insignificant impacts on corruption. The policy implications are that a simple enhanced female ratio and educational level are not the effective way to inhibit corruption in our sample countries, whereas improvements of the female ratio in the legislative branch and the labor force contribute to controlling corruption. These results are basically robust for the two estimation methods and for the two subsamples of developed and developing countries. As a result, the estimation results on the relationship between corruption and gender might vary remarkably when different indicators for the female groups are utilized, which should some light on future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the long-run co-movement between venture capital and technological innovation for 28 provinces (including autonomous regions) in China, using the panel cointegration and panel-based error correction model over the 2001-2012 period. Our results confirm that venture capital and innovation have long-run cointegrated relationships as well as bidirectional causality for the whole country. Analysis of sub-samples again discovers similar results in both the eastern and central regions, but not in the western region. The policy implication shows that China's development of innovations should be based on more venture capital input and that the government should establish a long-run innovation policy to accelerate the development of venture capital. We also offer several constructive suggestions for governments in the western provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical studies suggest that there is a close association between fiscal decentralization and economic growth. However, whether this linkage holds in China or not is a matter of ongoing debate in recent empirical studies. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the 1994 tax sharing system on economic growth in China. Using a panel dataset for 29 provinces in China over the 1995-2014 period in a simultaneous equations system that controls for the simultaneity of fiscal decentralization, physical capital accumulation and economic growth, the influence of decentralization on economic growth is estimated. The estimation results indicate that there is an inverted-U shaped relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth. Because the optimal level of fiscal decentralization that maximizes economic growth is higher than the data for most provinces, further decentralization is in general helpful to China's economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]