Public Investments in Education and Children’s Academic Achievements

While the benefits of additional schooling in the developing world are widely recognised, the best use of scarce resources to improve academic achievement remains unclear. We compare public investments in school infrastructure, school improvement grants, teacher qualifications, and attendance incentives on independently-gathered measures of academic skills as well as grade progression for 8–11 year olds in India. We match a rich household survey containing a skills-assessment module, the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), with detailed measures of each district’s education resources from the District Information Survey on Education (DISE). We also include border-pair fixed effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity. We find that incentives for children to attend school were associated with arithmetic, reading and writing skills, and grade progression. Investment in teachers were associated with greater probability a child could write and do more advanced math. Small improvement grants to schools were associated with better reading skills and writing ability. Investments in school infrastructure were only associated with improved writing ability.     

The Effect of Sibling Size on Children’s Health and Education: Is there a Quantity-Quality Trade-off?

The quantity-quality trade-off is one important motivation for the family planning policies in many developing countries. In this paper, we examine the effect of number of siblings on children’s health and education in China. We find evidence of quantity-quality trade-off in children’s health but not in children’s education. Our study has three contributions. First, we focus not only on children’s education but also on children’s health, which has received rather little attention in the literature. Secondly, we use a new source of exogenous variation in fertility – variations of the strictness of the One-Child policy across localities in China – to construct instrumental variable's (IV's). Finally, we empirically explore the underlying mechanism of the quantity-quality trade-off, and find supporting evidence for the resource dilution hypothesis.     

The Reform of International Financial System and China’s Policy Options

The reform of international financial system is focused on the following aspects: international monetary system, international financial institutions (IFIs), and international financial regulatory system. The US, European Union, Japan, and the Emerging Market Countries all have different stances concerning the reforms in these fields. There is also an obvious deviation in the interests and demands of Emerging Powers and the US and EU. In addition, the G20 has become the major forum for economic coordination...     

The Strategic Re-view of China’s Territorial Sovereignty

This paper re-examines the status quo of China’s territorial sovereignty security from a strategic perspective.Territory is the most basic physical where-about for a country to express national sovereignty.It is the territory that the national sovereignty derives its physical basis from.In the context of globalization,however, the traditional national territorial sovereignty space is continually squeezed and constrained,but the national territorial sovereignty is still the cornerstone of the international relations.And the inviolability of national territorial sovereignty is still the most important principle of modern international law.In this regard,the primary goal of Chinese national security today remains as a goal to safeguard the unification,integrity and security of China’s territorial sovereignty.At present,the integrity,unification and security of Chinese national territorial sovereignty have yet to be achieved on the strategic level.As one of China’s basic national conditions,it should be taken seriously and paid adequate strategic attentions.     

The Institutional Foundations of China’s Unbalanced Economy

China has become a fast-growing economy with an unbalanced economic structure. Economic policies, especially fiscal and financial policies, contribute to the current growth model by depressing household disposable income and reducing the social services provided by the government. Laws that have been used by the government to subsidise investment and production by distorting factor markets are also to blame. Finally, rebalancing China’s growth pattern has proven to be extremely difficult due to political obstacles, including pressure from interest groups, gridlock caused by factional politics, and ideological discrimination against private entrepreneurs.     

The BRICS and global governance: China’s contradictory role

The impact of rising powers generally and the BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - in particular on the existing global order has become controversial and contested. Donald Trump’s nationalist foreign policy agenda has raised questions about the BRICS willingness and capacity to provide leadership in place on an American administration that is increasingly inward looking. As a result, the rise of BRICS poses potential normative and structural challenges to the existing liberal international order. Given its geoeconomic significance, China also poses a potential problem for the other BRICS, as well as the governance of the existing order more generally. Consequently, we argue that it will be difficult for the BRICS to maintain a unified position amongst themselves, let alone play a constructive role in preserving the foundations of ‘global governance’.     

The Cost of Empowerment: Multiple Sources of Women’s Debt in Rural India

Abstract

Poor women borrow from multiple sources. This study examines whether the source of debt matters for women’s role in household financial decisions. Drawing on a household survey from rural Tamil Nadu, we categorise women’s loans along the lines of accessibility and formality into ‘planned loans’ and ‘instant loans’. We find that ‘instant loans’ support women’s bargaining power in various types of household financial decisions, whereas ‘planned loans’ have no impact. This surprising result is better understood when the nature of ‘instant loans’ is examined – these are frequently usurious, involve coercive enforcement methods and are considered socially debasing. Hence women who use them perform a convenient role for their households and in return gain some negotiating power.     

China’s Public Relations and Soft-power

China’s foreign strategy and foreign policy have changed tremendously. China began to build up soft-power of national culture and embark on public diplomacy, which aimed at: 1, increasingly exposing China to the world in terms of the state of affairs, policies and values, 2, creating a more objective and amicable milieu of opinions and 3, enhancing China’s international image. The author offers her personal perspectives on how to handle relations between pursuing public relations and building up national soft-power, how to advance national soft-power by public relations and the need to obviate ideological barriers.     

Africa and the export of China’s clean energy revolution

The spectacular scale and speed of China’s domestic renewable energy capacity development and technology catch-up has in recent years been followed by the ‘go out’ of Chinese clean energy technology firms seeking new markets and opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores the growing involvement of China in the development and transfer of renewable energy technologies in Africa and examines the key drivers and obstacles shaping Chinese renewable energy investments and exports. Far from there being some kind of grand or harmonious strategy directed by a single monolithic state, we argue that fragmented and decentralised state apparatuses and quasi-market actors in China are increasingly pursuing their own independent interests and agendas around renewable energy in Africa in ways often marked by conflict, inconsistency and incoherence. Moving beyond the state-centric analysis common in much of the research on contemporary China–Africa relations, we examine the motivations of a range of non-state and quasi-state actors, as well their different perceptions and constructions of risk, policy environments and political stability in recipient countries. The paper explores the case study example of South Africa, where Chinese firms have become increasingly significant in the diffusion of renewable energy technology.     

The Gender Gap and Cybercrime: An Examination of College Students’ Online Offending

Abstract

As computer and Internet technologies have continued to advance over the last few decades, a considerable amount of research has been dedicated to exploring online behavior. Criminologists, in particular, have been interested in examining cybercrime and online deviance. Contributing to this growing body of scholarship, the current research investigated the effects of gender on cybercrime and whether socialization can account for the gender gap in online offending. Data were collected from a sample of 522 college students and three cybercrime categories were examined: digital piracy, cyberharassment, and hacking offenses. The findings revealed that men were more likely to engage in online offending and that this gender gap was fairly persistent across the socialization variables of self-control and immersion into the cyberenvironment. Specifically, only three gender-invariant findings emerged: men and women commit statistically similar rates of digital piracy when self-control levels are low, and they also engage in similar rates of digital piracy and hacking offenses when Internet use is high. Detailed results, implications for theory and policy, study limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Does the ICDS Improve Children’s Diets? Some Evidence from Rural Bihar

Although there are several studies documenting the impact of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) – the largest preschool intervention – in India, few have documented to what extent it improves the quantity and quality of food consumed by young children. This paper attempts to provide causal estimates of the impact of the ICDS on calories, protein, iron, and Vitamin A intakes of children. Using matching techniques to define an appropriate counterfactual, and a primary survey in four villages in rural Bihar, our results suggest that: (a) for older children three to six years who benefit from cooked meals, the ICDS did result in higher intakes of calories, protein, and iron, and no substantive evidence that as a consequence there was substitution away from food at home. However, there was no impact on vitamin A intake; (b) for younger children whose mothers are given take-home rations, there is no evidence the ICDS improved intakes of calories or any other nutrients. Thus, even though the monetary value of the transfer was the same across both age groups, there is evidence to suggest the mode of transfer does seem to matter to ICDS effectiveness, consistent with other literature.     

Anti-Corruption Policy: China’s Tiger Hunt and India’s Demonetization

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the different styles of anti-corruption strategy, particularly at the local level in China and India. In China there has been a central push with a role of anti-corruption agencies that have law-enforcement power. In India there has been a focus on institutional building together with a visible role of the civil society. China has had a top-down approach while India has more of a bottom-up approach combined with top-down initiatives such as demonetization. Interviews with 44 mid-career and senior officials investigate the two approaches and the impacts of anti-corruption measures in China and India. Interviewees support the approaches adopted by China and India but doubt their effectiveness and sustainability. The way forward, they suggest, is to reduce the influence of political parties especially in India and to enhance e-governance in both countries. Experiences of the two countries have significant implications especially on capacity building, institutional development, and law enforcement.     

The Effect of Having Children on Women’s Marital Status: Evidence From Vietnam

In developing societies, women living without a husband face significant social-economic hardship. Previous evidence suggests that teenagers in Kenya are willing to get pregnant in hopes of marrying the father of their children. In this paper, we study the relationship between having children and women’s marriage outcomes more generally. Using the 2009 Vietnam Census data and twins as an instrument, we find that having more children reduces the probability of staying unmarried and divorced. Intriguingly, those with more children are also less likely to report widow status, perhaps suggesting that among widows, children increase the likelihood of getting remarried.     

The Determinants of Women’s Empowerment in Bangladesh: The Role of Partner’s Attitudes and Participation in Microcredit Programmes

This paper employs data from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (2004) to explore how women’s empowerment is related to partner’s attitudes, participation in microcredit programmes and a set of other socio-economic factors. We use a structural equation model with categorical observed variables. We get that participation in microcredit programmes has a positive impact on both the empowerment’s dimensions considered, while partner’s attitudes effect is weaker, proving that gender community norms are likely to be rooted in women’s minds regardless of the partners’ perceptions of women’s status.     

Migrant Network and Immigrants’ Occupational Mismatch

This article defines new measures of horizontal and vertical occupational mismatch based on the difference between the skill content of occupations in which individuals have a self-assessed productive advantage, and that of their actual job. It then investigates the impact of network use to find a job on occupational mismatch in the case of immigrants, using original survey data collected among Senegalese immigrants in four host countries. Estimation results show that migrants who obtained their job through the migrant network have a lower probability of negative vertical mismatch. By contrast, network use is not found to significantly affect horizontal mismatch.