2023, Chen, George S, Manu, Emmanuel Kwaku, Asante, Dennis

We investigate the causal impact of the development of financial institutions on environmental sustainability in Africa. Drawing on a distinctive panel data set encompassing 34 countries from 1980 to 2017, with carbon emissions serving as an indicator of environmental sustainability, we discover that enhanced development of financial institutions leads to increased carbon emissions, especially in relation to the depth of these institutions. Furthermore, our study reveals support for the environmental Kuznets curve, heterogenous slopes, and shifts over time in the finance–emissions nexus. Our results remain robust to different model specifications. The conclusions we reach indicate that the development of financial institutions and the implementation of pro-growth policies are essential for attaining environmental sustainability on the African continent.

2021-12-15, Harrison, Scott, Villano, Renato, Lynch, Grace, Chen, George

Early alert systems (EAS) are an important technological tool to help manage and improve student retention. Data spanning 16,091 students over 156 weeks was collected from a regionally based university in Australia to explore various microeconometric approaches that establish links between EAS and student retention outcomes. Controlling for numerous confounding variables, significant relationships between the EAS and student retention were identified. Capturing dynamic relationships between the explanatory variables and the hazard of discontinuing provides new insight into understanding student retention factors. We concluded that survival models are the best methods of understanding student retention when temporal data is available.

2022-06, Manu, Emmanuel Kwaku, Chen, George S, Asante, Dennis

We critically evaluate the absorptive capacity of renewable energy deployment in Africa. Using data for the 1980-2017 period and dividing the 20 countries into West Africa and East Africa, we find significant regional heterogeneities in the absorptive capacity of renewable energy deployment. Specially, we show that West Africa has a stronger capacity to embrace the adaptation of renewable energy than East Africa. Moreover, we find that renewable energy deployment exhibits path dependency in both regions. In general, our findings suggest that there are significant potentials for both regions to benefit from renewable energy deployment. However, without the financial backing by policymakers, renewable energy deployment is likely to be delayed in implementation, exposing these regions to economic and environmental vulnerabilities in the long run.

2017, Hoang, Hien Thanh, Chen, George, Siriwardana, Mahinda

This thesis examines the determinants and effects of foreign presence in 60 Vietnamese provinces for the period 2000–2010. Unlike its predecessors, this thesis formulates its research questions on foreign presence in Vietnam through the lens of new economic geography (NEG). These questions include: (i) what are the provincial determinants of foreign presence; (ii) does foreign presence contribute to provincial wage disparity; and (iii) can foreign presence explain changes in provincial productivity? In the extant literature, this thesis represents the first systematic inquiry into foreign presence across the Vietnamese provinces since the turn of this century. This thesis begins with an interpretative survey of the main aspects of NEG and related literature on the determinants and effects of foreign presence in its host economy. This survey provides the investigative context for choosing Vietnam as the case study in this thesis. It is then followed by an in-depth discussion on key reforms in the Vietnamese economy, with explicit emphasis on those that are pertinent to the research questions addressed in the later part of this thesis. The next three chapters form the analytical core of this thesis, each corresponding to a specific research question. In order to maintain consistency of the empirical results, these chapters make use of provincial data collected and compiled by the Vietnamese General Statistical Office (GSO). The final chapter summarises the key findings and provides recommendations to policy makers in Vietnam. This thesis reaches three major conclusions. Firstly, similar to other studies on Vietnam, it reports that foreign presence is positively associated with market access and industrial linkages, but negatively associated with trade costs. However, it finds no discernible pattern between labour-market pooling and provincial distribution of foreign presence. Secondly, it shows that cost-of-living and industrial linkage effects exert positive effects on provincial wage in Vietnam, whereas trade costs depresses it. Importantly, it fails to find any systematic relationship between foreign presence and provincial wage during the period investigated. Finally, while it concludes a negative foreign presence–provincial productivity nexus in Vietnam, it also demonstrates the deterministic role of provincial absorptive capacity in influencing the nature of this nexus. In short, the findings in this thesis make a strong case for encouraging a more balanced development of foreign presence across Vietnamese provinces in the near future; and creating a stable macroeconomic environment would be the first step going forward.

2011, Chen, George

This study investigates the interactions between provincial characteristics and foreign-specific agglomerations on Taiwanese investors' location choice in China. Using firm-level data, we find that nationality agglomeration and Asian agglomeration have non-negligible impacts on these investors. Furthermore, we find that their location choice follows a sequential selection process. These findings suggest that a region-wide development strategy is a more effective means of attracting these investors than province-specific fiscal concessions and preferential treatment.

2020-10-14, Uddin, Mirza Md Moyen, Chen, George, Leu, Chen-Yu, Villano, Renato

Man-made environmental degradation is a global challenge for both developed and developing countries. Over the last several decades, environmental degradation in the form of excessive emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) has exposed the world to destructive natural calamities and health threats. Against this backdrop, this study sets out to identify the impact of economic growth on environmental degradation in 115 countries for the 1990±2016 period.

Using the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) as the conceptual framework, the results show that there is a long-run association between economic growth and environmental degradation. Specifically, we find the existence of the EKC for CO₂ and PM_2.5 emissions in the lower and upper middle income countries and for CH₄ emissions in the lower-middle, upper-middle, and high income countries. Moreover, we show economic growth and energy consumption to be the most important causes of CO₂ emissions. Finally, the impulse response function-based forecasts reveal that all three pollutants follow the EKC pattern in lower-middle, upper-middle, and high-income countries.

In terms of the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, we find that economic growth and energy consumption exert a long-run impact on CO₂, CH₄, and PM_2.5 emissions. Although further agricultural growth has no significant impact on CO₂ emissions, it shows an inverted U-shaped EKC for CH₄ emissions for the low, lower-middle, and high-income groups and for PM_2.5 emissions for all income groups. However, manufacturing growth has a U-shaped EKC for CO₂ emissions for all income groups, implying further emissions, while it shows an inverted U-shaped EKC for CH₄ emissions for all income groups and for PM_2.5 emissions for the low and lower middle-income groups.

We assess the moderation effects of several facilitator variables by testing a number of hypotheses. The moderation effect of financial development (FD), foreign direct investment (FDI), and the human development index (HDI) as the proxy of human capital formation has significant impacts on the EKC. FD exerts negative interaction effects for all three selected pollution emissions in all income groups, indicating that deeper financial reform may promote the installation of energy efficient and environmentally friendly technology. FDI has a long-run impact on reducing emissions for different panel income groups. For instance, after achieving a certain stage of GDP growth, the interaction effect of FDI reduces CO₂ emissions for the low and lower-middle income groups, suggesting that FDI may facilitate technological transfers from the developed to less-developed countries. Finally, the interaction effect of HDI on the growth±pollution nexus reduces all three types of emissions in the upper-middle and high-income groups, meaning that human capital formation helps to create awareness and use of green technologies.

The results suggest that efficient energy consumption, conservation of energy, and environmentally friendly technology can help to mitigate emissions without harming GDP growth. Overall, stringent environmental regulation by government, reduce reliance on non-renewable energy sources and encourage the use of renewable energy can help to mitigate pollution emissions. Moreover, sharing of knowledge and the transfer of green technologies between developed and developing countries, creating enough funds for environmental conservation can be an effective measure for attaining environmental sustainability in the production process.

2017, Chen, George, Yao, Yao, Malizard, Julien

Using quarterly data spanning from 1994Q1 to 2014Q4, we find a neutral relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and domestic investment in China. However, when we consider the entry mode chosen by foreign investors, we find that whilst equity joint venture (EJV) crowds in domestic investment, wholly foreign-funded enterprise (WFFE) crowds it out. Our results remain robust under alternative estimators and across different time periods. Based on these results, we argue that the Chinese government needs to actively promote the formation of EJV and uses it as the catalyst for industrial upgrading in the economy.

2011, Chen, George

We investigate the effects of provincial characteristics on the distribution of Taiwanese investment in China. For the period 1996-2005, we find that the distribution of this investment can be attributed to the effects of industrial linkages, labour-market pooling and monitoring costs. Furthermore, we find evidence that the determinants of this investment not only differ across regions, but also change over time. Importantly, we find mild evidence that this investment is adversely affected by a market-crowding effect.

2020, Uddin, Mirza Md Moyen, Chen, George S, Leu, Chen-Yu, Villano, Renato

This is a metadata only record. The datasets used in this thesis are open and available via https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators We use panel dataset for 115 countries for the time span 1990-2016. The countries are categorized into four groups as per gross national income (GNI) measured using World Bank Atlas (2018) method [the 9 of low ($1005 or less), 32 of lower-middle ($1006-$3955), 35 of upper-middle ($3956-$12,235), and 39 of high ($12,236 or more) income panels]. The data on different variable of interests are collected from World Development Indicators (CD-ROM, 2018). We use real estimation adjusting inflation. The collected datasets of dependent variables are carbon dioxide (CO2) measured in metric tons per capita, methane (CH4) in Kt. of CO2 equivalent, and the particulate matter (PM2.5) in microgram per cubic meter. The independent variables of the collected datasets are gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (constant 2010 US$), energy consumption (EC) in kg of oil equivalent per capita, trade openness (TO) measured as the share of total trade volume in GDP, urbanization (UR) in terms of the share of urban population in total population and TR is the total transport services in percentage of total commercial service of exports and imports, financial development (FD) measured in domestic credit to private sector, foreign direct investment (FDI) is measured by the net inflows of FDI as a percentage of GDP, the human development index (HDI) measured by the UNDP as a proxy for human capital formation. Moreover, we measure the agricultural sector by its output share of GDP (constant 2010 US$) and the manufacturing sector by its output share of GDP (constant 2010 US$).

2017-10-28, Matchett, Carol A, Chen, George, Simmons, Phillip

This study investigates whether large Australian companies use their political power to lower their effective tax rates (ETRs) over and above their political costs. It also tests whether there is an industry effect on ETRs for the mining and financial industries in Australia. This study expands the current research into the effect of political power on ETRs by incorporating other tax rate theories. Using 402 mature Australian public companies over a 13-year period the study applies three separate tests to profitable companies.
Firstly, we employ panel data analysis to examine changes in the ETR of 55 profitable companies over the 2000-2012 periods. Secondly, we use cross-sectional analysis to ascertain the relationship that the effect can be seen over a long period by using panel data testing methodology between company size and ETR for profitable companies on a year-by-year basis. Finally, we assess various tax-rate theories by examining the ETR paid by the profitable public companies in 2012.
Out findings from this study provide evidence that there is a consistent negative relationship between company size and ETRs. We suggest, that further research incorporating the use of qualitative data would be needed to counter the effect of political costs on individual companies and industries.