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This article investigates the effect of China's college expansion policy on firms' exporting behavior. Taking advantage of this policy‐induced exogenous surge in skilled labor starting in 2002, our difference‐in‐differences estimates indicate that firms in more human‐capital‐intensive industries have been able to export more since 2002. We further show that this result is robust to a battery of sensitivity tests and controlling for other contemporaneous changes in economic environment. Turning to channels, we find that after 2002, the affected firms experienced greater improvements in product quality and exported relatively more to richer countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past six years the authors have been working together on a major study of early childhood education in China, Japan, and the United States. This study, "Continuity and Change in Preschools in Three Cultures," is a sequel to "Preschools in Three Cultures," a book by Joseph Tobin, David Wu, and Dana Davidson that was published in 1989. In the new study, as in the original one, the authors have found major differences in how these three countries approach the education and care of young children. In this paper, the authors present examples of preschool practices from China and Japan that they suggest can be used to improve early childhood education in the US. They call these examples lessons for the US, but they are not suggesting that American early childhood educators should copy these approaches. Instead, they are hoping that American teachers who have read this paper and had the opportunity to reflect on the logic of the Chinese and Japanese approaches will find that they have a new way of thinking about their practice.

Resting upon an extensive data set on foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) in China, we investigate the role of institutional difference in determining the locational choice of foreign direct investment (FDI). Estimation results using firm‐level discrete choice model suggest that FIEs from source countries that are more remote institutionally from the Chinese mainland exhibit a higher degree of sensitivity to regional economic institutions in their choice of FDI location. Furthermore, we find that FIEs coming from countries with better institutions than China are more sensitive to the institutional difference. Interestingly, we find that the deterrent effect of institutional distance on FDI entry is mitigated for FIEs coming from countries with more ethnic Chinese individuals in their overall populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the employment relationship, organizational factors are the main factors that affect employee behavior. Especially for knowledge-based workers, it is even more crucial for organizations to give enough attention to their individual needs. Based on Existence, Relatedness, and Growth (ERG) theory, this study constructs a moderated mediating model to explore how the impact of the employee–organization relationship (EOR) on work engagement (WE) and work well-being (WWB) of knowledge-based employees. In this study, existence–relatedness–growth need satisfaction (GNS) is used as a mediator and the perceived symbiotic relationship is used as a moderator. Data collected from 791 knowledge-based employees in higher education institutions from more than 20 provinces and cities in China are used to test the model. The results show that (1) EOR has significant positive effects on WE and WWB. (2) Need satisfaction for relatedness partially mediates the effects of EOR on WE and WWB. (3) Need satisfaction for growth mediates the effect of EOR on WE while the mediating role of need satisfaction for growth between EOR and WWB is unsupported. (4) The mediating role of need satisfaction for the existence of EOR on both WE and WWB is unsupported. (5) The perceived symbiotic relationship moderates the relationship between EOR and WE and WWB. The findings are of theoretical significance in expanding the research field of EOR and providing a basis for organizations to implement EOR strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) caused by hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has become less and less due to the use of direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs). Although it may be common to assume that eradication of the virus should improve the survival of HCC patients, large-scale randomized clinical data to support the correlation between viral load and prognosis are still lacking in China. The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of antiviral therapy for HCC patients with active HCV infection. Patients and Methods: We retrospectively enrolled 80 HCC patients with active HCV infection. Active HCV infection was defined as positive for HCV antibody with detectable HCV RNA by polymerase chain reaction. Results: Forty-four patients (55.0%) received interferon combined with ribavirin treatment and 23 patients achieved sustained virological response (SVR). The 1-year survival rate in patients who achieved SVR was the highest, followed by those with non-SVR after antiviral treatment, and those without antiviral therapy (1-year survival rate were 91.3%, 88.4%, and 73.1%, respectively, P = 0.012). In the univariate analysis, alcohol intake and alpha-fetoprotein > 20 ng/mL were associated with lower overall survival (OS) (P = 0.025 and P = 0.044, respectively), while SVR after antiviral treatment was associated with longer OS (P = 0.016). In the multivariate analysis, only SVR after antiviral treatment was significantly associated with OS (P = 0.014). Conclusion: Our results ensured that the elimination of HCV substantially improved OS in HCC patients with active HCV infection, and the prognosis of those patients without antiviral therapy was poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Urothelial cancer (UC) includes carcinomas of the bladder, ureters, and renal pelvis. New treatments and biomarkers of UC emerged in this decade. To identify the key information in a vast amount of literature can be challenging. In this study, we use text mining to explore UC publications to identify important information that may lead to new research directions.Method: We used topic modeling to analyze the titles and abstracts of 29,883 articles of UC from Pubmed, Web of Science, and Embase in Mar 2020. We applied latent Dirichlet allocation modeling to extract 15 topics and conducted trend analysis. Gene ontology term enrichment analysis and Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes pathway analysis were performed to identify UC related pathways.Results: There was a growing trend regarding UC treatment especially immune checkpoint therapy but not the staging of UC. The risk factors of UC carried in different countries such as cigarette smoking in the United State and aristolochic acid in Taiwan and China. GMCSF, IL-5, Syndecan-1, ErbB receptor, integrin, c-Met, and TRAIL signaling pathways are the most relevant biological pathway associated with UC.Conclusions: The risk factors of UC may be dependent on the countries and GMCSF, IL-5, Syndecan-1, ErbB receptor, integrin, c-Met, and TRAIL signaling pathways are the most relevant biological pathway associated with UC. These findings may provide further UC research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing openness contributes to economic growth in developing countries, but the endogeneity problem impedes drawing this conclusion. This paper uses the constructed trade share to circumvent the effects of endogeneity according to a method proposed by Frankel and Romer. The results demonstrate that increasing openness has a positive impact on provinces' GDP and GDP per capita. In addition, an increase in lagged openness is beneficial for present economic growth, and even openness gained many years ago, which is measured by the number of treaty ports, makes a difference in present economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of farmers' preference, transaction cost and household productivity on land reallocation in rural China. Empirical results from a sample of 2102 households show that farmers' preference has no effect on land reallocation. The transaction cost has negative effects on partial‐scale land reallocation but has no effect on full‐scale land reallocation. Interestingly, highly productive and unproductive households receive more partial‐scale land reallocation than households with a median level of productivity, supporting the efficiency hypothesis (Brandt et al., 2004). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical relations between countries bring important explanatory power for foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions, yet little is known on whether a home-host country relation exhibits heterogeneous effects on FDI across the country’s subnational regions. In this study, we examine the long-term impact of historical conflict on FDI location choices and performance. Using a sample of 8,646 Japanese FDI in China, we show that civilian casualties in different provinces of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War exert deterring effects on Japanese FDI location choices. Furthermore, we demonstrate that civilian casualties negatively affect Japanese FDI performance and political capital accumulation strategies, in the forms of excessive tax payment and local employment, can reduce this negative effect. This study contributes to the discussion on how within-country differences of historical factors affect FDI location decisions and performance. The findings on firms’ political capital accumulation strategies also provide important implications for FDI operation in an environment characterized by historical animosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We exploit a policy‐induced exogenous surge in China's college‐educated workforce that started in 2003 to identify the impact of human capital on productivity. Using a difference‐in‐differences estimation strategy, we find that industries using more human‐capital intensive technologies experienced a larger gain in total factor productivity after 2003 than they did in prior years. Exploring the pathways from human capital increases to TFP growth, we find that these industries also accelerated new technology adoption, as reflected in the importation of advanced capital goods, R&D expenditure and capital intensity, as well as employment of more highly skilled individuals. The productivity gains were weaker for domestic private firms than for foreign‐owned firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature on firm survival focuses almost exclusively on firm- and industry-level determinants. What is generally overlooked, albeit extremely important for firm survival in developing countries, is the impact of institutional quality. Using data from manufacturing firms in China for the 1998-2005 period, we find that institutional quality has a significant and positive impact on the survival of private enterprises. Specifically, a one-standard-deviation increase in the security of property rights protection leads to an 8.8 percent decrease in the hazard rate of private enterprises. Our results are robust to the inclusion of control variables and to various checks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine key determinants of farm labor market development in rural China. Design/methodology/approach – Probit, Logit, and IV-Probit model are used to provide pertinent empirical analysis. Findings – Analysis of survey data establishes three facts about the farm labor market in rural China: first, households with high farm endowment are more likely to hire farm labor; second, because of the mismatch between farm ability and land size created by egalitarian land reallocation, households with more land reallocations are more likely to participate in farm labor market to adjust such mismatch; third, land rental market and farm labor market seem to be complementary. These results are robust to alternative model specifications, subsamples, alternative dependent variables, and additional controls. Welfare analysis demonstrates that the farm labor market is conducive to agricultural output. Originality/value – The main contribution of this study is to lay out stylized facts in terms of the development of farm labor market using a unique survey data set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of multinationals and economic institutions on the economic growth of cities in China. Consistent with previous findings, the empirical results suggest that property rights institutions are significantly more important than contracting institutions in promoting economic growth. The direct effect of multinationals on economic growth is generally insignificant statistically. However, a statistically significant and robust interaction effect exists between property rights institutions and multinationals on economic growth, whereas no such effect is observed between contracting institutions and multinationals. The results are attributable to the fact that multinationals can rely on reputation or personal connections to enforce contracts when contracting institutions are weak. However, it is difficult for multinationals to operate when the state expropriates their profits (i.e. property rights institutions are weak). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to identify and classify the ecological risks in land consolidation, and to develop a framework of the theory and method to assess the change of ecological risk degree before and after land consolidation. Environmental impacts and ecological risks of land consolidation have recently drawn much attention, and there are two opposing viewpoints to assess these impacts and risks in the academia of China. Both viewpoints result from the bias of assessment anticipation. Land consolidation includes four main engineering aspects in China, and ecological succession from start of land consolidation to ecosystem stabilization should pass three phases. Different ecological impacts and risks of land consolidation rise from different phases of ecological successions. According to the climax theory of ecology, we developed a framework of the ecological risk assessment based on the anticipation of ecosystem stabilization (ERABAES) for land consolidation. We applied analytical hierarchical processing (AHP) method to the data resources from the land consolidation project in Southern China to allocate weightings to the indices of ecological risk (ER), and to set up an integrated index system for the ecological risk identification. This integrated index system encompasses the ecological risks with three factors (water, soil and biology) and 14 indices. The results of the project show: (1) The ER is reduced from 58.02 to 28.8 after land consolidation and the degree of ecological risk is down from Degree III to Degree IV. (2) According to the element analysis, the water ER is reduced from 21.53 to 6.16, its contribution to reduce the ecological risk is 53%; the reduced ERs of soil and biology are respectively 12.79 and 1.06, their contribution of ecological risk reduce is lower than water. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: This study investigates the determinants of medical impoverishment among China's rural near-poor, aiming to enhance public health services and establish preventative and monitoring systems., Methods: Using China Family Panel Studies and World Bank methods, we categorized rural populations and calculated their 2020 Poverty Incidence (PI) and Poverty Gap (PG), with impoverishing health expenditures (IHE) as the primary indicator. We analyzed the data from 2016 to 2020 using a conditional fixed-effects multinomial logit model and 2020 logistic regression to identify factors influencing medical impoverishment risk., Results: (1) In 2020, the near-poor in China faced a PI of 16.65% post-health expenditures, 8.63 times greater than the non-poor's PI of 1.93%. The near-poor's Average Poverty Gap (APG) was CNY 1,920.67, notably surpassing the non-poor's figure of CNY 485.58. Health expenses disproportionately affected low-income groups, with the near-poor more prone to medical impoverishment. (2) Disparities in medical impoverishment between different economic household statuses were significant ( P < 0.001), with the near-poor being particularly vulnerable. (3) For rural near-poor households in China, those with over six members faced a lower risk of medical impoverishment compared to those with three or fewer. Unmarried individuals had a 7.1% reduced risk of medical impoverishment relative to married/cohabiting counterparts. Unemployment was associated with a 9% increased risk. A better self-rated health status was linked to a lower probability of IHE, with the "very healthy" reporting a 25.8% lower risk than those "unhealthy." Chronic disease sufferers in the near-poor and non-poor categories were at an increased risk of 12 and 1.4%, respectively. Other surveyed factors, including migrant status, age, insurance type, gender, educational level, and recent smoking or drinking, were not statistically significant ( P > 0.05)., Conclusion: Rural near-poor in China are much more susceptible to medical impoverishment, influenced by specific socio-economic factors. The findings advocate for policy enhancements and health system reforms to mitigate health poverty. Further research should extend to urban areas for comprehensive health poverty strategy development., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Feng, Che, Yi, Wang, Chen and Xia.)

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) can be an ideal treatment in cirrhotic patients with ascites and chronic kidney disease stage 5 (CKD 5D) who require dialysis. The survival of cirrhotic patients with CKD 5D on PD, however, is not clear. We compared the survival of cirrhotic patients with CKD 5D on PD and the survival of those on HD. Two datasets including a cohort study of China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) from 2004 to 2013 and the Longitudinal National Health Insurance Database for Catastrophic Illness Patients (LHID-CIP) of Taiwan from 1996 to 2011 were analyzed. The survival of cirrhotic patients on PD and the propensity score matched cirrhotic patients on HD were analyzed using Cox proportional hazards regression. In CMUH cohort of 85 PD and 340 HD patients, the all-cause mortality was lower in PD patients compared to it in HD patients (hazard ratio [HR]: 0.48, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.31-0.74, P < 0.01) after adjustments for confounders. The severity of liver cirrhosis defined by Child-Turcotte-Pugh (CTP) class (P < 0.01) was independently associated with all-cause mortality. The model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) score, however, was not associated with all-cause mortality. In the LHID-CIP cohort of 285 PD and 1140 HD patients, the HR of all-cause mortality in PD patients was 0.61 (95% CI: 0.47 - 0.79, P < 0.01), as compared with HD patients. PD in cirrhotic patients who need dialysis is associated with lower all-cause mortality than HD is. This association is independent of patients' comorbidity, severity of liver cirrhosis, and serum albumin levels., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the land use intensity and land use change type at the basin scale in the middle and lower reaches of the Hanjiang River Basin (in Hubei Province, China) by combining the Landsat TM images in 1995 and 2000 with the land use database (in scale 1:10,000) and relative data. In this study, the basic data is acquired from the interpretation of remote sensing (RS) images. The intensity of land use and the rate of change in double-directions of land use dynamics are calculated with the support of software ARC/INFO. The intensity of land use is indicated by the intensity coefficient of land use, and the transition of land use types is quantified as the rate of change in double-direction of land use types and also expressed as the transition matrix of land use types. The results are expressed in space by Geographic Information System (GIS) software. Results of this study show that (1) the intensity of land use is high in the study region, the intensity coefficients of land use in 1995 and 2000 are 260.025 and 290.526, respectively, and the intensity of development and utilization of land is trend to increscent; and (2) the rate of land use change in double directions in the whole study region is 0.52 with great spatial variation and the differentiation of land use types. In the differentiation of land use types, the unutilized land (with the rate to 4.391) is developed fast, the grassland (with 2.836) and water area (with 1.664) are disturbed severely, and these changes will influence the eco-environment in the Hanjiang River Basin and all the Yangtze Basin. The rates of the farmland and the woodland are 0.424 and 0.344, respectively, meaning that the fundamentals of regional human-environmental system are relative stable. With this study, we can conclude that (1) the patterns of land use are increasingly changing in the study region, the environmental impacts are escalated on this stage, and the further outcomes are destined to change the stability of the regional human-environmental system; and (2) the most useful method to study the present land use and its change is through the use of the RS/GIS with the land use database (in scale 1:10,000).