Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Failed Policy As Seen In The Solar Trade War, Emma Weirich

Economics Theses

Increasing protectionist policies in the United States have attempted to protect solar manufacturing jobs; however, they have created negative repercussions for the majority of the industry. This paper aims to analyze the 2018 30% US tariff on all imported photovoltaic cells and modules and whether or not it has been an effective policy to protect and encourage the solar industry. To do so, the paper will analyze similar tariffs enacted in 2012 and 2014 by the United States to understand how the tariffs have been impacting the solar energy’s labor market and photovoltaic module and cell price fluctuations. By researching …

Trump’S Trade Policies Deflate The American Beer Industry, Megan E. Myscofski

Capstones

You can’t tell the story of the U.S. economy under President Trump without his trade policy being front and center. As a presidential candidate, he promised to shrink the trade gap. It has widened by $6 billion since his inauguration and was at $52.5 billion as of this past September.

Farmers and small business owners have been on the front lines of the trade war, and the beer industry, which is full of farmers and small business owners, the damage is evident.

Link: http://meganmyscofski.com/capstone/

China's Maritime Grand Strategy, Sarah Quan

Undergraduate Honors Theses

China’s goals in the South China Sea are twofold: to expand sovereignty while keeping the peace. I argue this is accomplished through rhetorical strategic ambiguity and military clarity, which have characterized China’s maritime grand strategy since 2010. Using confusion and clarity—two seemingly opposite strategies—allows China to simultaneously expand sovereignty and maintain peace. This paper first introduces the literature and theory behind grand strategy and strategic ambiguity. It then demonstrates how China’s intentions are made clear through military actions, then shows that China’s rhetoric is ambiguous to members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by weighing evidence that China is …

The Future Development Of Reits In China, Jia Sun

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) is a type of trust fund or corporation that pools the funds of a large number of investors by issuing a certificate of income and invest the raised funds in real estate projects that are managed by a specialized investment institution. The real estate investment risk is moderate, and the rent is stable, but the capital threshold is high, and it is difficult for small and medium investors to enter the market. The invention of REITs aims to solve this problem, through the collection of funds, so that small and medium investors can enter the …

For Ye Have The Poor Always With You: Exploring China's Latest War On Poverty, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

John Donaldson’s section discusses Xi Jinping’s ambitious pledge to end poverty in China by 2020, toward which the CCP has deployed a locally adaptable set of policies that have mobilized actors in the public and private sectors and tied officials’ performance to success in poverty reduction. The Party understands that poverty—a manifestation of a severe inability to provide a good life for the people—represents a concerning indictment of the regime’s legitimacy overall. This paper fills in an analytic gap among Western sources regarding these programs, which have to date seen well over fifty billion dollars of poverty alleviation funding disbursed …

Finance And Ideology: The Firm-Level Channels, Hao Liang, Rong Wang, Haikun Zhu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We provide firm-level evidence on how politicians’ ideologies affect economic outcomes and financial development by exploring a unique setting of ideological discontinuity in China from Maoism to Dengism around 1978. We find the ideological exposure during a politician’s early adulthood has an enduring effect on contemporary firm and city policies. Firms governed by “Mao’s mayors” have more stakeholder spending, lower pay inequality, and less internationalization than those governed by Deng’s. Further evidence suggests politicians’ ideology may affect economic activities through channels other than economic policy. Selection bias, endogenous matching and mayor age effect are unlikely to drive our results.

Essays On Agricultural Water Pollution And Human Health, Na Lu

Economics ETDs

This dissertation mainly focuses on agricultural policies, water pollution and human health. Chapter.2 examines the causal impact of agricultural water pollution on individual health outcomes. The findings suggest that agricultural water pollution worsens health outcomes and these adverse health effects appear to be largely due to contaminated drinking water. Chapter.3 explores both of the intended wealth effect and unintended pollution effect on human health caused by China’s agricultural support polices. I find that although the income effect dominates on reducing the overall sickness, the pollution effect is more substantial on the diarrhea incidence and adult BMI. Income affects slightly higher …

Precarious Moral Economy: Female Sex Workers In Post-Socialist China, Yeon Jung Yu

Anthropology Faculty and Staff Publications

This article examines what I describe as a “fleeting moral economy,” a system of culturally shared mores formed among migrant women who are engaging in illegal and stigmatized activities in urban areas. I suggest that the rationale or norm for the particular value of reciprocity varies not only by the complexity of a society or a culture, but also varies due to specific networks or communities depending on their particular circumstances, especially level of resource needs. This short communication is the product of my 27 months of ethnographic field work in post-reform southern China.

Information And Communication Technology, Uncertainty Reduction, And Dual Identification In Chinese Organizations, Ran Ju, Moyi Jia

Journal of International & Interdisciplinary Business Research

By employing Chinese sample, this study examined the relationship between organizational members’ use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and their identification with the immediate workgroup and the overall organization. Employees’ uncertainty level was proposed as a mediating factor in these relationships. Participants N=336 completed an online survey. Results indicated that workgroup identification (WID) was positively predicted by members’ use of organizational social media to seek work-related information, and organizational identification (OID) was positively predicted by organizational social media and intranet for the same purpose. These relationships were either partially or fully mediated by employee’s uncertainty level. Results contributed to …

Educating Strategic Lieutenants At West Point, Scott A. Silverstone

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article argues West Point responded to the changing strategic environment from the end of the Cold War through the post-9/11 period by innovating its curriculum. Over the past several decades, however, the academy’s educational model has remained remarkably stable, rooted in an enduring commitment to a rigorous liberal education as the best preparation for officers confronting the inherent uncertainties of future wars.

Class, Gender, And Mediated Labor Activism In Globalizing China, Siyuan Yin

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation analyzes the relationships between mediated labor activism and the formation of counter-hegemonic forces in contemporary China. As China becomes a seemingly ideal model to justify the normalization of global capitalism, this study seeks to demonstrate how resistance from disenfranchised groups can challenge hegemonic power. Rural-to-urban migrant workers, who have been among the most disadvantaged groups since China’s economic reform of the 1980s, suffer from institutionalized discrimination, economic exploitation, and social exclusion. Approaching the analysis from an intersectional feminist lens, I explore the politics and possibilities of working-class resistance in searching for a just and equal China. Based on …

The Shifting Dynamics Of International Reserve Currencies, Robert J. Righi

Undergraduate Economic Review

With the recognition by the IMF of the Chinese renminbi as an international reserve currency in 2015, it is important to understand the modern influence of reserve currencies. We use currency exchange rate data and apply modified workhorse regression models to assign each country’s gross domestic product at purchasing power parity to a reserve currency bloc in order to obtain a global sphere of influence for each reserve currency. We find that the United States retains its dominance but faces challenges from the renminbi and the euro in recent years as the international monetary system becomes tri-polar.

Panel 5 Paper 5.3 Rural Intangible Cultural Heritage And Ethnic Tourism: Experiences Of Yunnan, China, Junjie Su

ISCCL Scientific Symposia and Annual General Meetings // Symposiums scientifiques et assemblées générales annuelles de l'ISCCL // Simposios científicos yy las Asambleas Generales Anuales

China is an active player in the international arena of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). While China is transforming from an agricultural country to an industrial country, rural heritage, either tangible or intangible, is facing tremendous challenges and opportunities. Among Chinese provinces, Yunnan in Southwest of China can be regarded as the best case to investigate the issues of protection, use and transmission of rural heritage as Yunnan is a unique province of China because of its ethnic cultural diversity and geographic diversity. Based on literary studies and fieldworks, this paper illustrates history, cases, theories and practices in the protection and …

Panel 5 Rural Intangible Cultural Heritage, Junjie Su, Mohamed Badry Kamel Basuny Amer M.A., Xuanlin Liu

ISCCL Scientific Symposia and Annual General Meetings // Symposiums scientifiques et assemblées générales annuelles de l'ISCCL // Simposios científicos yy las Asambleas Generales Anuales

Rural areas is the place where rural intangible heritage is found rich and diverse, whereas vulnerable to fast social, cultural, political and economic transformations, in particular in developing and underdeveloped areas. Although the concept of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) has been established in UNESCO and accepted by many ICH Convention signatories, it has not been consistently adopted and implemented from international level to local level without divergencies. An analysis of rural ICH is to analyse how rural traditional culture, memories and past are used by different stakeholders for current society. (Re)defining rural ICH is a way to both rethink and …

Obstacles To Excellence: Academic Freedom And China's Quest For World-Class Universities, Chelsea Blackburn Cohen

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

China’s government has made significant investments to develop universities that already compete with the world’s best. Their progress has captured global attention over the years, with universities around the world forging partnerships with institutions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and scholars and students around the world flocking to study, teach, and research in the country. But while China continues to stoke its ambitions for developing more world-class universities, respect for academic freedom and other human rights essential to quality higher education lags behind, leaving scholars and students at risk, and the country’s goals in balance.

With the recent …

The Comparative Study Of Civilizations And Its Relation To China, David Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

Chinese scholars have recently expressed much interest in the comparative study of civilizations, lately carried on mostly in the West, but long open to, and increasingly of interest to, diverse perspectives. This essay is intended to suggest a road toward the development of comparative-civilizational studies centered on some questions of both historical and contemporary significance, with particular attention to one question concerning which the initial presuppositions of Western and Chinese scholars, in particular, may be at variance, but where there may be room for the development of agreed empirical-theoretical conclusions.

Chinese Household Saving And Dependent Children: Theory And Evidence, Steven Lugauer, Jinlan Ni, Zhichao Yin

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper examines the impact of family size on household saving. We first study a theoretical life-cycle model that includes finite lifetimes and saving for retirement and in which parents care about the consumption by their dependent children. The model implies a negative relationship between the number of dependent children in the family and the household saving rate. Then, we test the model's implications using new survey data on household finances in China. We use the differential enforcement of the one-child policy across counties to address the possible endogeneity between household saving and fertility decisions in a two-stage least squares …

Comparing The International Commercial Courts Of China With The Singapore International Commercial Court, Zhengxin Huo, Yip Man

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The article critically reviews the litigation framework of the Chinese International Commercial Court("CICC') using a comparative approach, taking as a benchmark the Singapore International Commercial Court ("SICC')--another Asian international commercial court situated within the Belt and Road Initiative ("BRI') geography. It argues that the CICC, despite being lauded as a visionary step toward an innovative, efficient and trustworthy dispute resolution system, does not live up to those grand claims on closer scrutiny. The discussion shows that the CICC is in many respects insular and conservative when compared with the SICC. The distinctions between the two litigation frameworks may be explained …

Understanding The Spatiotemporal Development Of Human Settlement In Hurricane-Prone Areas On The Us Atlantic And Gulf Coasts Using Nighttime Remote Sensing, Xiao Huang, Cuizhen Wang, Junyu Lu

Faculty Publications

Hurricanes, as one of the most devastating natural hazards, have posed a great threat to people in coastal areas. A better understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of human settlement in hurricane-prone areas largely benefits sustainable development. This study uses the nighttime light (NTL) data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS) to examine human settlement development in areas with different levels of hurricane proneness from 1992 to 2013. The DMSP/OLS NTL data from six satellites were intercalibrated and desaturated with the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) optical imagery to derive …

Fractured Lives, Newfound Freedoms? The Dialectics Of Religious Seekership Among Chinese Migrants In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper explores the negotiations involved in the process of Chinesemigrants converting to Christianity in Singapore. For many Chinesepeople, migration involves being exposed to religion for the first time,and for some, it involves them converting to Christianity. In Singapore,the conversion of Chinese migrants to Christianity occurs in a context of‘shared’ Chinese ethnicity, which can provide both bridges and barriersto the formation of Chinese Christian identities and communities. This‘shared’ ethnicity causes many Christian groups in Singapore to targetChinese migrants in their evangelisation efforts, which can result inmigrant and non-migrant Chinese communities being formed andfractured through religion. Drawing on qualitative data, four …

Central Bank Bilateral Currency Swap And Trade Flows : An Implication For Renminbi Internationalisation, Abdullahi Ahmed Mohammed

Lingnan Theses and Dissertations (MPhil & PhD)

The emerging economic prosperity of China and its increasing economic integration with the rest of the world as the second largest economy seems to give China an edge to amplify its global competitiveness. For example, the accession of China to World Trade Organization in the early 2001 has intensified its rapid GDP growth, growing trade and current account surpluses, financial inflows and growing stockpiles of reserves holdings. The global financial crisis of 2008 nearly put a halt to China’s export-led and current account surpluses trajectory, in 2007 China’s current account surplus fell from 10% of GDP to about 2% in …

Introduction: Understanding The Transformational Power Of China's Belt And Road Initiative, Yue Wah Chay, Thomas Menkhoff

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This book features several introductory readings about the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), a strategic development initiative launched by the Chinese Government under the leadership of President Xi Jinping in 2013 to jointly build an economic belt along the Silk Road. Some of the key objectives of BRI, previously known as One Belt, One Road (OBOR) or Silk Road Economic Belt, include promoting infrastructure development, trade and investments in Asia, Europe and Africa. BRI is a gigantic development initiative whose key components include the creation of several interconnected economic land corridors (=belts): China–Mongolia–Russia; China–Central Asia– West Asia, China–Pakistan, the China–Indochina …

Urban Complex Value Study Based On Management Practice Of China Central Place, Chao Fang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In recent years in China, with the rapid development of China’s economy, the acceleration of urbanization, the extension of city size and the rapid growth of urban population, living conditions, traffic and environment in the cities are getting worse and worse. Under this background, urban complex integrating a series of functions like “living, business, office, tourism, culture and entertainment etc” has become popular with the urban administrators and developers in many cities. According to relevant statistics, by the end of 2015, there had been more than 2000 urban complexes (including the ones which have been completed, the ones which are …

South-South Cooperation Or Core-Periphery Contention? Ghanaian And Zambian Perceptions Of Economic Relations With China, Colin Flint

Political Science Faculty Publications

The geopolitics of development are explored through an examination of development assistance to two African countries as a mechanism of competition between China and the US. The processes of competition include the actions and rhetoric of African leaders. We define a geopolitical context for the agency of political leaders and opinion-makers in Ghana and Zambia. The geopolitical context consists of the structure and dynamics of the world-economy; especially the competition to capture the newest round of innovations and the related need to establish supply chains of raw materials from peripheral countries. By analysing quotes from Ghanaian and Zambian elites we …

Living In This World: A Social History Of Buddhist Monks And Nuns In Nineteenth-Century Western China, Gilbert Zhe Chen

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation relies on about 600 legal cases from the Ba County Archive that survive from the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century to investigate the social life of ordinary Buddhist monks and nuns. Although they played a crucial in maintaining the survival and proper functioning of Buddhism at the local level, they have remained significantly understudied. This dissertation adopts a bottom-up approach to investigate ordinary monastics’ involvement in various socioeconomic activities. By shifting the analytical focus from elite monks to their more mundane counterparts, this study illuminates how deeply ordinary monastics were embedded in their communities. The shift also …

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2019 August, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

On balance, our overall interpretation of the multiyear Big5 survey results implies the following economy-at-risk scale (least to most): India, China, US, Japan and Euro Area (i.e., India’s economy appears to be the least at-risk, while the Euro Area might be the most at-risk). Broadly, survey participants expect the risks to GDP growth to be tilted to the downside in 2019 and 2020 followed by a more balanced growth environment in 2021. But participants seem to lean toward a more balanced risk assessment on headline inflation from 2019 through 2021, with the exception of the Euro Area, where a modest …

Business Cycle During Structural Change: Arthur Lewis' Theory From A Neoclassical Perspective, Kjetil Storesletten, Bo Zhao, Fabrizio Zilibotti

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We document that the nature of business cycles evolves over the process of development and structural change. In countries with large declining agricultural sectors, aggregate employment is uncorrelated with GDP. During booms, employment in agriculture declines while labor productivity increases in agriculture more than in other sectors. We construct a unified theory of business cycles and structural change consistent with the stylized facts. The focal point of the theory is the simultaneous decline and modernization of agriculture. As capital accumulates, agriculture becomes increasingly capital intensive as modern agriculture crowds out traditional agriculture. Structural change accelerates in booms and slows down …

Becoming A Superpower: China’S Rise And The Belt And Road Initiative In Latin America, Garrett Bullock

History Summer Fellows

Is China a Superpower? Will it become one? After half a century of establishing a strong international military presence, thriving economic growth, domestic/international political authority, and considerable cultural “soft power”, the PRC has emerged as a hegemon capable of competing in international geopolitics. Nevertheless, these questions remain unanswered. For this reason, this research explores what it means to be a superpower, whether China is or will be a superpower, and, importantly, what impact China’s rise has on the world. To do this, this research explores existing debates surrounding China’s current global status, the historical emergence of the PRC as a …

Cui Jian: Extolling Idealism Yet Advocating For Freedom Through Rock Music In China, Zhaoxi Liu

Zhaoxi Liu

Examining Cui Jian's songs as text, this study attempted to provide a reading of its political meaning that is different from many previous studies. Through a textual analysis of the revolutionary symbols in four of Cui's hits, this study found that the political meaning of Cui's songs is much more nuanced than a simple oppositional message, as he simultaneously endorses the Communist rule for its idealism and disavows it for its political suppression. Being China's first rocker, Cui Jian is politicized by the social discourse surrounding him as well as his own expressions, as he pursues his idealism and identity …

Big Tech Surveillance Could Damage Democracy, Chase Johnson

University Author Recognition Bibliography: 2019

Data is often called the oil of the 21st century.

The more tech companies know about their users, the more effectively they can direct them to goods and services that they are likely to buy. The more companies know about their users, the more competitive they are in the market.

Custom-tailored capitalism is what has made Google, Facebook, Amazon and others the richest companies in the world. This profit incentive has turned big tech into a competitive field of mass intelligence gathering. The better and more comprehensive the data, the higher profits will be.

But this business model – what …