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This research explores the impact of monetary policy on the growth rate of total factor productivity (TFPG) and innovation efficiency (IE) through panel data of 30 countries from 1983 to 2018 by the bias-corrected fixed-effect dynamic (BCFE) model. We find that tight monetary policy negatively impacts the growth rate of total factor productivity (TFPG) and innovation efficiency (IE), which is still valid after a series of robustness tests. We then perform sub-sample regressions, and the results show that countries with higher government efficiency, higher financial development, and stricter environmental policy can reduce the negative impact of tightening monetary policy on total factor productivity and innovation efficiency. Our research illustrates that a tightening monetary policy not only adversely impacts total factor productivity but also influences the main driving force of its growth-innovation efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green finance provides an important impetus to green innovation and sustainable development. This study investigates the connection between green finance and green innovation using cross-country panel data that cover 75 developing countries from 2000 to 2019. First, we find that green finance significantly boosts the number of green patent applications in developing countries, which is crucial for promoting green development. Second, we divide countries according to whether they are members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or the Belt and Road Initiative, and their environmental performance. Heterogeneity results show in countries with poor environmental performance, non-RCEP member countries, and non-BRI member countries that the contribution of green funding is more obvious and significant. Furthermore, we consider several cross-items to explore how green finance influences green innovation differently depending on the circumstance, such as the degree of corruption, political stability, and government effectiveness. Overall, our findings highlight the key role that green finance plays in advancing green innovation, particularly for emerging economies that urgently need a policy foundation for green innovation and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of government epidemic prevention policies on controlling COVID-19 is of great importance to health, politics, and development economics. This paper thus investigates the impacts of government responses on confirmed cases related to COVID-19 in Taiwan for the period January 1, 2020 to May 13, 2021 by employing ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation. Overall, our empirical results indicate that there is a significantly impact of government responses on COVID-19 pandemic spread in Taiwan. In addition, the speed of government responses would significantly affect confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Taiwan. The earlier government epidemic prevention responses led to fewer confirmed cases. After conducting a series of robustness checks, the above conclusions are still robust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study examined interrelationships among insomnia, stress, anxiety, and metabolic risk factors. Methods: A total of 124 college students were included in the analysis (age = 21 ± 1 years). Insomnia, stress of life events, and anxiety were assessed using self-reported questionnaires. Fasting blood samples were assayed for glucose, insulin, total cholesterol, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-cholesterol), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-cholesterol). Results: Insomnia was positively associated with stress of life events (β = 0.28, p <.001) and anxiety (β = 0.46, p <.001). Insomnia was related to elevated fasting insulin (β = 0.12, p =.04) and triglyceride level (β = 1.85, p <.001). An inverse association was found between insomnia and HDL-cholesterol (β = −0.45, p =.03). Sobel's test for mediation showed that stress of life events (p =.020) and anxiety (p =.013) mediated the relationship between insomnia and hypertriglyceridemia. Conclusions: Reducing stress and anxiety among college students with insomnia may influence subsequent cardiovascular health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facing with the enormous economic loss resulting from the unexpected outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic, central banks around the world began to show a great activeness and implement numerous monetary policies to help mitigate the negative shocks and recover the economy. This paper aims at investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the macroeconomy and whether central bank activeness have helped mitigate the negative shock of the COVID-19. Using the panel fixed effects model and monthly data of 38 countries from January 2020 to June 2021, this paper finds that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased inflation and unemployment apparently. More importantly, central bank activeness has a positive effect on reducing the growing pressure from the COVID-19 on inflation, while it cannot mitigate the shock of the COVID-19 on unemployment rate. Specially, government others measure, including containment and health, and stringency policies, have little effect in mitigating the negative impact of the pandemic on inflation and unemployment. Our findings suggest that the central bank activeness have heterogeneous effects on different macroeconomic indicators, and cannot mitigate the hurts of the COVID-19 pandemic for all macro indicators during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research empirically analyzes the impact of foreign exchange futures volatility on macroeconomic variables by using data of ten trading markets from 2011 to 2020.1 Our findings illustrate that the volatility of foreign exchange futures significantly affects various macroeconomic indicators. In particular, as the volatility of foreign exchange futures increases, it reduces government budget revenue, increases the inflation rate, and has a positive impact on net exports and total reserves. Moreover, this research conducted robustness tests by replacing independent variables and conducting a sub-sample regression to ensure the reliability of the regression results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on panel data of 31 provincial capital cities in the country from January 21 to November 20, 2020, this research empirically analyzes the impacts of daily newly confirmed cases and daily new deaths from COVID-19 on PM10, PM2.5, SO2, CO, and NO2 emissions form green energy consumption by using the method of System Generalized Moments (SYS-GMM). We conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic has an inhibitory effect on all types of emissions, in that a greater number of confirmed cases and deaths brings about more stringent anti-epidemic policies, fewer emissions, and better air quality in China. Moreover, we use the methods of sample segmentation, cross-sectional regression, and pollutant emissions of the top three cities in terms of GDP to test their robustness. Overall, our evidence advances the debate over air quality after COVID-19, and that evidence from China provides beneficial experiences that correlate to its provincial data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically investigates the effect of external financial market friction on restructuring activities, based on panel data of listed Chinese firms from 2004 to 2018. The results show that there is a positive correlation between financial market friction and the number of restructuring deals. We also find that high financial market friction increases preference for cash payments and the likelihood of mergers and acquisitions. These findings add to the restructuring literature by capturing heterogenous restructuring forms. They also deepen the understanding of the firm boundary theory, by suggesting that firms have incentives to increase their scopes when facing external market distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a typical deviation from profit-maximizing, the revenue-maximizing behavior has explained the strategy of firms in many industries. This research first looks into the Chinese non-life insurance market and finds evidence of revenue-maximizing behavior of the non-life insurers. We construct a model based on game theory to reflect the revenue-maximizing behavior and calculate the Nash equilibrium of the game. The research finds that revenue-maximizing players will incur operation loss in the game; the insurers with less competitive strength will suffer more loss. The theoretical results are hence applied tests by case study on Chinese auto insurance industry. The panel cointegration test and the regression results reveal that a more liberalized regulatory regime will result in a lower price, while large insurers tend to take advantage of their market power to price at a higher level than smaller insurers, this finding corresponding to the result of our theoretical model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the effect of the governments' responses to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic on the returns in the stock market index. Panel data of 20 countries are used spanning January 2 to July 21, 2020, for the dynamic panel model. The results indicate that the overall government response, containment and health, and stringency indices have a significantly positive effect on stock market returns. Specifically, government policy responses of shutting down workplaces, canceling public events, restricting public gatherings and international travel, providing income support, and implementing fiscal measures can increase stock market returns. Our evidence shows that the stock market does not react significantly to government interventions in the health system. We believe that our findings provide valuable information for policymakers and financial investors around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 epidemic has caused a severe impact on global financial markets. Considering that solar energy is an important basis for future energy development, it is particularly imperative to study the destructive effect of COVID-19 on solar energy development. This research thus explores the long-run relationship between COVID-19 and solar enterprises' stock prices in 24 countries from December 31, 2019 to June 4, 2020. We not only use the number of confirmed cases to measure the severity of the COVID-19 epidemic, but also introduce the government response stringency index to capture the severity of the epidemic. Overall, our evidence indicates a cointegration relation between COVID-19 confirmed cases and the stock prices of solar enterprises, as well as between government response stringency and their stock prices. We also confirm that the COVID-19 epidemic has depressed the stock prices of most solar energy sources according to the long-run parameter estimation, especially with the implementation of a government's prevention policy toward COVID-19. It is worth noting in the NON-OECD subsample that the negative impacts of the government response stringency index and confirmed cases on solar stock prices are not significant. Therefore, investors can adopt a hedging strategy to reduce losses caused by any fluctuation of these prices, while policymakers should take several measures such as tax deduction to reduce the negative impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the sustainable development of the solar energy sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We employ data of 6194 firm-year observations for 1058 listed companies in the period 2006-2013 to investigate the interaction between stock liquidity and enterprise innovation in China and confirm that an increase in stock liquidity raises the number of patents granted, R&D investment, and the innovation efficiency of state-owned enterprises, while it decreases innovation significantly in private firms. These findings are also supported by quasi-natural experiments under the split-share structure policy reform and the adjustment of the stamp duty rate using propensity score matching and difference-in-difference methods. We then identify two possible mechanisms through which liquidity increases innovation: the entry of long-term and strategic institutional investors and the gradual privatization of SOEs. Several policy implications are provided in accordance with our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relationship between the ratio of females in the population and the level of corruption in China using annual panel data from 29 provinces during the period 1995–2012. We find that the influences of women on corruption are ambiguous and vary across regions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates the relationship between environmental performance, corruption and economic growth using panel data of 87 countries covering the period from 2002 to 2012. The Environmental Performance Index is used for the first time to evaluate the environmental quality on economic growth. By employing both ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ panel models, we find that environmental performance is positively related to economic growth and is more significant in non-Organization for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) countries. Moreover, when corruption is incorporated, the empirical estimation results indicate that although lower corruption helps economic growth in non-OECD countries, the negative coefficients of the three interactive terms show that the positive effect of environment performance on economic growth will drop, while greater environmental performance combined with natural resource abundance inevitably leads to inefficient bureaucracies and hence disadvantageous economic growth. As a result, policymakers in non-OECD countries should carefully ensure better government quality when they exhibit strong environmental performance so as to avoid any disadvantageous impact upon economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars believe that higher social expenditures are usually linked with higher government debts, whereas higher debts reduce social expenditures. However, it is reasonable to speculate that higher government debt may contribute to higher social spending, while fiscal deficits occur during a recession, which commonly creates greater demand for social expenditure. For a deeper investigation, this paper revisits the dynamic relationship between social spending and public debts in the time-frequency domain, using the novel wavelet-coherency analysis as well as the phase-difference technique to derive the co-moved and causal relationships between social spending and public debts in 13 OECD countries. The evidence identifies a dynamic relationship between variables. While higher social expenditures increase government debts, the shocks from government debts to social expenditures are conversely uncertain. We discover that higher government debt does reduce social expenditures, but it may be linked to higher social spending. The robustness of partial coherency and phase-difference discovers the role of a political party in the decision over social welfare programmes in the sample countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We examine the impact of natural disasters on the likelihood that a government is removed from office using panel data for 156 countries over the period 1975–2010. Employing a conditional logit model, we find that the occurrence of natural disasters, the number of natural disasters and disaster-related losses increase the chances that a government will be replaced. The magnitudes of these effects differ widely across natural disaster types, but are robust to the inclusion of economic and political variables and to model specifications. Overall, these findings are consistent across our sample of OECD and non-OECD countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Unlike most previous works which commonly define globalization as a strict economic characteristic, using the overall globalization index and its three sub-dimensions – economic, social and political integrations to proxy openness, this paper examines the effect of globalization on economic growth associated with autocratic institutional in China, using the a two-step dynamic panel generalized method of moments technique in a panel of 30 provinces, municipalities and the autonomous regions over the period of 1970–2006. We find that different globalization indices have different impacts on regional economic growth. Also, autocracy may harm regional development, but these conclusions are very sensitive to different globalization variables specifications. Further, considering the interactive effects between globalization and economic growth, we show that in the period of higher global integration, the higher democracy (lower autocracy) may harm economic growth in the case of China. We emphasize that democracy is clearly not a necessary condition for the purpose of economic growth in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper specifies a dynamic model of voter turnout in Taiwan legislative elections using the generalized method of moments (GMM) model. We utilize data recorded over the 1998–2008 period, covering 23 counties of Taiwan. We find that previous levels of voter turnout are significantly associated with current levels of voter turnout. In particular, we provide strong evidence for a dynamic decline in voter turnout in Taiwan legislator elections. We also find that the perceived closeness of the election by the potential voters prior to the election, greater number of parties and densely populated areas, are significantly associated with higher voter turnout, whereas larger costs of voting, greater educational inequality and higher levels of education contribute to lower electoral participation. Further, population stability and disposable income have a limited impact on voter turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper adopts an advanced panel cointegration method which incorporates multiple structural breaks to examine the long-run relationship between real output (RGDP) and the Konjunkturforschungsstelle (KOF) index of globalization (overall and its three main sub-indices), employing annual data of G7 countries from 1970 to 2006. Our empirical findings provide strong evidence that overall globalization and its social dimension are cointegrated with RGDP, and most of the structural break points are discovered during the period of the oil crisis (the mid-1970s) and the process of European Union integration. In addition, in evaluating whether or not the structural breaks affect the RGDP through globalization, we discover that both the overall globalization index and the social globalization index have a directly positive impact on RGDP but indirectly exhibit negative impacts on real output via the channel of social globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore the role of globalization (the overall level as well as its three dimensions of economic, social, and political integration) in promoting economic growth and examine if the incumbent political party influences the relation between the two variables. We attempt to investigate the evidence of long-run equilibrium in terms of the relationship between globalization and economic growth in the period 1990-2006 while also considering the influences of the incumbent political party. In this paper we thus divide Europe into two groups based on political regime characteristics, using ten former communist countries (FCCs) and eighteen Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) members as the study samples. The results of our empirical test confirm our expectations that globalization contributes to economic growth, but it is also sensitive to specific institutional factors, like an incumbent political party. Globalization has a larger impact on real gross domestic product per capita in FCCs than in OECD countries. Although the FCCs and OECD countries are in geographic proximity, the difference in their level of economic development is very large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The secularization thesis is based on the idea that a country becomes more secular as it becomes richer and more industrialized. In order to investigate whether this hypothesis is valid, we examine the relationship between religion in Taiwan and economic development across 23 counties by adopting the panel data approach for the period 1998 to 2003. We select six religious activity proxy variables and five economic development variables in a cross-county panel data framework. The evidence indicates that the ratio of females to males has a significantly positive effect and that the literacy rate and population density each have a significantly negative effect on the religious variables. Finally, except for the Christian culture, the unemployment rate has a positive effect on the religious variables. Our findings thus support the view that the religious secularization hypothesis is valid in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While voters may punish governments for worsening economic conditions, they may not reward them symmetrically for improving conditions. We examine whether US macroeconomic conditions affect Presidential approval asymmetrically using quarterly data from 1961_I to 2009_II. The results suggest that the relationship between Presidential approval and economic aggregates is nonlinear. Long-run causality runs from the economic variables to Presidential support. The speed of adjustment towards long-run equilibrium relationship also differs when conditions worsen from when they improve. Finally, we explore the impact of other factors, such as war and Presidential scandal on Presidential approval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of zinc supplementation on radiation-induced mucositis in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and those with oral cancers (OC). A total of 100 patients with head and neck cancers engaged in a randomized double blind study. All participants were placed into two randomized groups (experimental and control). The experimental group received a standard dose of zinc supplements, and the control group was given a placebo. Subgroup analyses were performed between 40 NPC and 43 OC patients. It was found that patients with OC in the control group developed Grade 2 and Grade 3 mucositis sooner than those in the experimental group. However, the benefits were not found to extend to patients with NPC. The results indicated that zinc supplementation prescribed in conjunction with radiotherapy postponed the development of severe mucositis solely for patients with OC. The pretreatment oral mucosa condition and areca chewing habit might account for such discrepancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization is commonly defined as a strict economic path by most previous works, but it is really a fuzzy concept with unrestrained dimensions. While the ideological location of an incumbent political party is a powerful predictor of its policy position, the role of a political party in the globalization-growth nexus has never been fully empirically investigated. By applying Pedroni's panel cointegration technique instead of a time-series or traditional panel data approach, this paper aims to empirically re-examine the co-movement and the causal relationship among economic growth, the overall globalization index, and its three main dimensions—economic, social, as well as political integrations—by using panel data for 23 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries for 1970 to 2006. Certainly, the political party variable is taken into account as the advanced test is promoted, and we finally discover that all variables move together in the long run. Based on the results of the panel causality test, though the evidence of short-run causality is very weak, it does show long-run unidirectional causality running from the overall index of globalization, economic globalization, and social globalization to growth. Finally, the critical role of the political party is deeply discussed in relation with our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the stability between the government approval and macroeconomic series for Germany during 1977-2004 allowing structural breaks. We first execute traditional cointegration tests without breaks, and the results reveal weak evidence of a link between the political and economic variables. However, using Hansen's (1992) tests for parameter instability suggest that such a relationship between politics and economy may be unstable. After allowing for the structural breaks in the series and conducting Gregory and Hansen's (1996) cointegration test, we find that a clear cointegrated relationship undoubtedly exists between approval rates and macroeconomics; we discover that some events indeed affect the government's popularity. Overall, once we locate structural breakpoints, such as when the West German government was succeeded by Helmut Kohl in 1982, then we begin to distinguish the actual cointegrated relationships between the approval rate of government and macroeconomics before and after the structural breakpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine state income and government spending data to investigate the role of political parties and elections in state business cycles of the United States, and find strong support for the partisan political business cycles, both traditional and rational versions. The growth rate of per capita real income and government spending tend to be higher (lower) with a Democratic (Republican) governor as well as a Democratic (Republican) president. In case of economic growth, we find some evidence for opportunistic cycles induced by national level politics; meanwhile, both national and state governments seem to generate expansionary policy in election years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the importance of political expenditures as the primary determinants of vote shares for the Taiwan 2004 legislator campaigns with multi-member districts. Our main findings are as follows. First, advertising spending, candidates in the same party as the mayor, the education level of voters and the degree of race competition had a strong effect on the candidates' vote shares but not on economic performance. Second, the advertising spending of both incumbents and challengers had a significant effect on vote shares, but the effects were greater for challengers than for incumbents. Third, the two major political camps, that is, the Pan-Blue and Pan-Green, showed that spending exerts a corresponding influence on vote shares. Fourth, we also discovered that the spending coefficients for the winners were larger than those for the losers. Finally, the logit model demonstrates the result of the impact of advertising expenditures on the predicted probability of winning the election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article applies the LM univariate unit root test recently developed by Lee and Strazicich (2003, 2004) to re-examine the validity of trend stationary in the inflation rates of 11 OECD and Asian countries using a longer span of historical data. Our empirical findings are favourable to the trend stationary of the inflation rates when we control the structural breaks in series, and therefore they point to the absence of hyperinflation in the majority of the countries. The results indicate that shocks to inflation rates are temporary and soon converge, with the inflation rates being trend stationary. Hence, most structural breaks in the inflation rate occur around the Great Depression, World War I, World War II, and energy shock periods. For the convergence effect, we repeat the unit root tests utilized above for smaller sub-samples so as to provide a robust analysis. The outcomes show that by selecting a longer data span, we can catch more powerful convergent evidence. Overall, some policy implications are obtained in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically re-investigated whether carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions series were stationary in 21 OECD countries during the 1960-2000 period. A suite of test statistics were employed, proposed by Sen (2003), with a model that simultaneously allows for a break within the context of Perron's (1989) mixed intercept and slope (Model C). The distinction between this study and previous ones lies in its control for breaks. Compared with the results from traditional unit root tests, the empirical findings provide further evidence that relative per capita CO2 emissions were stationary and were stochastically converging. In addition, structural breaks are identified in each country, and some important policy implications emerge from the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on the nonlinearity of the money demand function focus only on short-run dynamics and assume that the long-run cointegrated relationship is linear, which, according to economic theory, need not be the case. Thus, this article focuses on the variables that make up the long-run money demand function in Taiwan and their determinants by using the cointegrating smoothing transition regression (CSTR) test developed by Choi and Saikkonen (2004). This model is more general than the previous STR model in that it may contain several transition functions and has more than a single transition variable. We demonstrate our empirical results for robustness and adopt two models to ascertain whether or not the stock price should be added as a determinant of the demand for money. Our empirical results show the existence of a stationary long-run relationship among real money demand functions for the period from 1976Q1 to 2005Q1 and the robustness test covers the 1980Q1-2005Q1 period in Taiwan. By comparing the two types of model, we find more evidences of a long-run nonlinear cointegrated relationship for the money demand function when we consider stock prices as one of its variables. Finally, the empirical results give rise to some critical policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using panel data unit root tests and panel cointegration tests, as well as estimation techniques appropriate for heterogeneous panels such as the full modified OLS, this paper re-examines the long-run co-movement and the causal relationship between GDP and social security expenditure in a bivariate model, employing data on 25 OECD countries from 1980 to 2001. Our cointegration test results show strong evidence in favour of the existence of a long-run equilibrium cointegrating relationship between GDP and social security expenditure after allowing for a heterogeneous country effect. Regarding the panel-based error correction model, we find that GDP and social security expenditure lack short-run causality, but reveal the existence of long-run bidirectional causality. This shows that, in the long run, economic growth must be based on a social welfare policy that should be carried out, and economic growth can facilitate contiguous development in a social welfare policy. Lastly, we also provide evidence to support that social security expenditure can affect growth through the savings and human capital accumulation in OECD countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]