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This paper empirically investigates whether zombie firms affect healthy firms' exporting. Using the 1998–2007 Chinese firm‐level dataset, we provide strong evidence that zombie firms significantly decrease exports of healthy firms in each city‐industry cluster, that is, both whether to export and export values are affected by zombie firms. Specifically, non‐stated‐owned enterprises (non‐SOEs) are more vulnerable to the effect than their SOE counterparts. In addition, we also identify government subsidies, financial resources and total factor productivity as the sources of the effect, and the heterogeneous export performances of different types of firms are due to the variation in these sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of relative performance evaluation (RPE) on skilled‐unskilled wage inequality. We find that in an economy with full employment, skilled‐unskilled wage inequality will be expanded when the strength of RPE increases. However, when the urban sector is under the minimum wage restriction, the impact of RPE on skilled‐unskilled wage inequality depends on the substitution elasticity between land and unskilled labor in the rural sector. If this substitution elasticity is sufficiently large (resp. small), skilled‐unskilled wage inequality will be expanded (resp. narrowed down) when the strength of RPE rises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how pollution control in the recipient developing country affects the flow of multinational capital owned by multinational firms in the source developed country. We find that when pollution control in a developing country becomes stricter, then the amount of multinational capital flowing into the developing country will certainly or conditionally decrease. Through further welfare analysis, we hope to provide some policy suggestions that will allow the government to guarantee the welfare of the labor force while it implements stricter pollution control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impacts exerted by the residents’ environmental preference on privatization in a mixed differentiated duopoly. We assume that the production will generate environmental pollution, which causes an extra cost that the private firm does not bear but residents with the environmental preference have to tolerate. The government pursues to maximize social welfare. We find that the residents’ environmental preference has significant impacts on privatization. When residents pay more attention to environmental pollution, privatization cannot induce more social welfare, and thus the government will choose not to privatize the public firm. The degree of substitution of products will affect the results when the value of the residents’ environmental preference is given, but the order of the firms’ moves will not change the results.

This paper analyzes the impacts of product differentiation in general oligopolistic equilibrium with trade. With constant wages, when product differentiation increases, the extensive margins of home and foreign exports decrease, and the domestic and foreign scopes of variety in each industry increase unambiguously. However, the impact of product differentiation on the labor requirement of each firm is mixed. In general equilibrium, an increment of product differentiation increases the wage rate unambiguously if the total variety of goods is large enough in all industry. However, if all firms are single-product ones, an increment of product differentiation increases the wage rate unambiguously in general equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds general equilibrium models to explore the relationship among appropriation, rural–urban migration, the minimum wage and unemployment. We find that the proportion of appropriated capital plays a key role in the effects of appropriation on unemployment and rural–urban migration. When the proportion of appropriated capital is large, a stronger control on appropriation by the government results in a lower unemployment rate and more rural–urban migrants, and vice versa. In the extended models, the conclusion may be different when the plundered factor changes from capital to land. In the situation with the agricultural sector employing unskilled labour and capital, appropriation has no impact on unemployment, and the effect on migration remains the same. We also discuss the implications of the minimum wage, and find that under plausible conditions, the rise of the minimum wage can alleviate appropriation and reduce unemployment. The situation of migration is ambiguous due to the impacts of two opposite factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how financial globalization affects skilled‐unskilled wage inequality. We treat financial globalization as more regions being integrated into the global financial market. We find that a higher degree of financial globalization will decrease skilled‐unskilled wage inequality if it induces a small increase in the capital tax rate. However, a higher degree of financial globalization will increase skilled‐unskilled wage inequality if it induces a big increase in the capital tax rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper mainly discusses the choice of managerial compensation contracts in Chinese family firms. Relation or guanxi in Chinese language is an important factor that should be considered because it can bring the shirking cost to the relation-based manager and the caring cost to the owner under Chinese-style differential mode of association (“chaxu geju”). Our theoretical analysis shows that under some conditions it is optimal for the owner to choose the efficiency wage contract, and that under other conditions it is optimal for the owner to choose the share-based incentive contract.

This paper analyzes how search costs affect skilled-unskilled wage inequality. In the basic model, we find that an increase in skilled labor's search costs will decrease wage inequality if the skilled labor market and the unskilled labor market are separated. In the extended model, our findings are as follows: (i) Even if there exists free entry into the unskilled labor market or the endogenous provision of public goods, an increase of search costs in the skilled labor market will decrease wage inequality; and (ii) if skilled search costs are negatively related to the skilled wage, wage inequality will be increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how financial frictions affect skilled‐unskilled wage inequality. In both the cost constrained model and the quantity constrained model, we find that a decrease of financial frictions in the skilled (resp. unskilled) sector will increase (resp. decrease) wage inequality when there is a properly large elasticity of substitution between capital and skilled labor (resp. unskilled labor). In sum, the role of financial frictions is sector‐specific, which is largely neglected by the existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]