This paper considers the estimation of panel data models with interactive fixed effects where the idiosyncratic errors are subject to conditional quantile restrictions. An easy-to-implement two-step estimator is proposed for the coefficients of the observed regressors. In the first step, the principal component analysis is applied to the cross-sectional averages of the regressors to estimate the latent factors. In the second step, the smoothed quantile regression is used to estimate the coefficients of the observed regressors and the factor loadings jointly. The consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator are established under large asymptotics. It is found that the asymptotic distribution of the estimator suffers from asymptotic biases, and this paper shows how to correct the biases using both analytical and split-panel jackknife bias corrections. Simulation studies confirm that the proposed estimator performs well with moderate sample sizes.

This paper studies social security reforms in a model with declining population growth and increasing life expectancy. Based on simulations using data on China, it is found that a switch from a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system to a notional defined contribution system favors the rich, causes the poor to work more, and may change the capital-effective labor ratio depending on the rate of return to personal accounts. A switch from the PAYG system to a modified PAYG system that saves part of the receipts, with the interest rate greater than the growth rate, increases labor supply and decreases the capital-effective labor ratio in period one; decreases labor supply and increases the capital-effective labor ratio after period one; and hurts the poor old more than the rich old while benefitting the poor in future generations more than the rich. If the interest rate is less than the growth rate, the accumulated funds are insufficient to balance the social security budget.

Using the positive shift in tone of Fox News coverage of macroeconomic news after the Republican Bush election in 2000, we investigate whether media slant influences the investment decisions of short sellers. We find that firms headquartered in Republican-leaning townships with Fox News availability experienced a relative decrease in short interest post the 2000 election. We further find that the relative decrease is more pronounced for firms that are more subject to investors' home bias. We interpret our findings to mean that short sellers, as sophisticated as they may be, are not immune to the slant in media coverage.

Scientists are increasingly expected to participate in public engagement around prominent science and technology issues. However, scientists remain concerned that public engagement takes time away from conducting research. Little is known about the relationship between scientists’ productivity and their willingness to participate in different types of public engagement. Using a census survey of scientists from 30 U.S. land-grant universities (N = 5,208), we find that productive scientists are slightly more willing to participate in public scholarship than less productive scientists. In addition, social science consideration, institutional incentives, and self-efficacy are associated with a greater willingness to participate in public scholarship and informal science education.

The photovoltaic (PV) industry experienced a drastic overcapacity, leading to heightened market competition in 2009. After the overcapacity, the EU and the USA initiated trade barriers targeting Chinese PV goods in 2011, stimulating China to seek alternative markets. In 2013, China announced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Although the BRI is a framework of international cooperation instead of a specific strategy that aims at PV industry, its role in helping Chinese PV firms deal with the trade sanction should be addressed. Based on the data from Chinese Custom Trade Statistics spanning 2009 to 2016, this paper precisely quantifies the extent of PV trade deflection from China to BRI markets that can be ascribed to the BRI effects. Employing spatial analysis, we manifest the trade deflection on maps. Moreover, we adopt the linear probability models and panel logit models to investigate the impact of BRI on China’s PV export expansion. The results show that BRI markets provide a buffer area for Chinese PV e

This study examines the role of crowd wisdom in misinformation correction. Going beyond fact-checking, we investigate the mechanisms underlying laypeople’s participation in misinformation correction. Drawing upon the Norm Activation Model (NAM), this study conceptualizes misinformation correction as a prosocial behavior and examines the impact of various media and social psychological factors on laypeople’s motivations to engage misinformation correction behavior.

This study examines the role of social capital in fostering beneficial managerial behaviour that serves the interests of shareholders. Specifically, this research focuses on the effects of social capital on managerial ownership and dividend payout policy. We document evidence demonstrating that firms with headquarters in high social capital regions are associated with higher managerial ownership and greater dividend payouts to shareholders. Our findings are consistent with the notion that social capital induces cooperative norms and alleviates agency frictions between managers and shareholders. Additional analysis indicates that managerial ownership increases after a firm moves its headquarters to a county with higher social capital, while dividend payouts do not exhibit a significant change after relocation. In further tests, we find that the association between social capital and managerial ownership weakens after SOX, but that the association between social capital and dividend payouts does not. Finally, w

Housing markets are often characterized by price bubbles, and governments have instituted policies to stabilize them. Under this circumstance, this study addresses the following questions. (1) Does policy tightening change expectations in housing prices, revealing a regime change? (2) If so, what determines the housing market’s reaction to policy tightening? To answer these questions, we examine the effects of policy tightening that occurred in 2016 on the Chinese housing market where a price boom persisted in the post-2000 period. Using a log-periodic power law model and employing a modified multi-population genetic algorithm for parameter estimation, we find that tightening policy in China did not cause a market crash; instead, shifting the Chinese housing market from faster-than-exponential growth to a soft landing. We attribute this regime shift to low sensitivity in the Chinese housing market to global perturbations. Our findings suggest that government policies can help stabilize housing prices and impr

Economic globalization in the 21st century has been characterized by the rise and spread of global value chains (GVCs). It faces significant challenges due to increasing domestic and international policy uncertainty in the context of emerging mega risks like geopolitical tensions and climate change. This paper begins by constructing a theoretical model for an open economy to study how risk-averse firms make decisions regarding the sourcing of intermediate inputs in an uncertain environment. Our model solution proposes that firms will source fewer intermediate inputs from countries with more economic uncertainty. An increase in domestic and foreign uncertainty will have opposite impacts on a country's position in GVCs. In this sense, we argue that a country tends to move downstream along GVCs if its own economic policies become more uncertain, and it tends to move upstream with an increase in the uncertainty of its trading partner countries. Our regression analyses, based on data including the World Input–Outp

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a growing use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for the purposes of labor control and surveillance. This trend significantly affects the knowledge workers who are deeply connected with ICT. However, there is a lack of studies tackling the perceptions of knowledge workers regarding surveillance, its impact on their work practices, and how they push back against it. Based on Scott’s concept of hidden transcripts, this article studies the workplace surveillance faced by Chinese knowledge workers and their responses and reveals the complex interplay between workplace control, the meaning of work, and hidden transcripts. Based on the findings of 13 in-depth interviews and the analysis of the content of 3,205 Weibo posts, 4 themes are identified in the discussions about the work of Chinese knowledge workers, the influence of their perceived meaning of work on their interpretation of surveillance, and the specific strategies of their hidden transcri