College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Changing Lifestyles Towards a Low Carbon Economy: An IPAT Analysis for China(MDPI, 2011-12-27) Hubacek, Klaus; Feng, Kuishuang; Chen, BinChina has achieved notable success in developing its economy with approximate 10 percent average annual GDP growth over the last two decades. At the same time, energy consumption and CO2 emissions almost doubled every five years, which led China to be the world top emitter in 2007. In response, China’s government has put forward a carbon mitigation target of 40%–45% reduction of CO2 emission intensity by 2020. To better understand the potential for success or failure of such a policy, it is essential to assess different driving forces such as population, lifestyle and technology and their associated CO2 emissions. This study confirms that increase of affluence has been the main driving force for China’s CO2 emissions since the late 1970s, which outweighs reductions achieved through technical progress. Meanwhile, the contribution of population growth to CO2 emissions was relatively small. We also found a huge disparity between urban and rural households in terms of changes of lifestyle and consumption patterns. Lifestyles in urban China are beginning to resemble Western lifestyles, and approaching their level of CO2 emissions. Therefore, in addition to the apparent inefficiencies in terms of production technologies there is also a lot of room for improvement on the consumption side especially in interaction of current infrastructure investments and future consumption.Item SHAPE OF CARE: PATTERNS OF FAMILY CAREGIVING ACTIVITIES AMONG OLDER ADULTS FROM MIDLIFE TO LATER AGES IN CHINA AND THE U.S.(2022) Duan, Haoshu; Chen, Feinian; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three papers that investigate the long-term family caregiving patterns among Chinese and American older adults. Family caregiving has long been an essential fabric of long-term care services. Due to the prolonged life expectancy and the declined family size, older adults today are more likely to care for multiple family members for longer years than the previous cohorts. However, studies on caregiving predominately focus on singular care experiences over a short period time. As older adults transition into and out of multiple care roles, the overall caregiving patterns are overlooked. Leveraging two rich longitudinal datasets (the China Health and Retirement Study and the Health and Retirement Study), this dissertation aims to fill this current research gap by developing long-term family caregiving typologies. The first paper develops a care typology for Chinese older adults, and thoroughly assesses how gender, hukou status, living arrangement, and significant life transitions are associated with the long-term caregiving patterns. In the second paper, using linear mixed-effects models, I continue exploring the positive and negative health consequences of each caregiving pattern among Chinese older adults. The third paper focuses on developing a long-term family caregiving pattern for American older adults. In addition to prolonged life expectancies and the decline in family size, the U.S. has experienced complex transitions in family structures over the past few decades, leading to more diverse family networks and international relations in later life. After establishing the long-term care typology, the third paper pays closer attention to the variations of family caregiving patterns across the War Babies cohort, Early Baby Boomer, and the Middle/Late Baby Boomer cohort. Moreover, I explore how gender, race, and socioeconomic status are linked with these patterns. In the context of global aging, this dissertation highlights the heterogeneity in the family caregiving experiences and identifies the most vulnerable demographic groups who shoulder the heaviest care burden over time. In the end, the findings from the dissertation provide guidance for the investment and design of long-term care services in rapidly aging contexts.Item ESSAYS ON FINANCIAL REFORMS AND FIRM PERFORMANCE IN EMERGING MARKETS(2017) Li, Wei; Kalemli-Ozcan, Sebnem; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation describes three studies on the linkages between changes in financial markets and firm-level performance in the real economy. The first chapter studies the impact of foreign bank deregulation on domestic firms' credit access and real outcomes in China, using an extensive firm-level data set from the manufacturing census. Following the deregulation policies implemented by the government in 2001, foreign banks were allowed to enter the Chinese banking market gradually, in different years in different cities. As a result, from 2001 to 2006 firms in different cities had differential access to foreign bank credit. Empirical results suggest that after foreign bank entry, private-owned firms which were previously more credit-constrained obtained more bank loans, increased investment and increased sales significantly more than state-owned firms, which were previously less constrained. The findings provide evidence that policy-driven positive foreign credit supply shocks could reduce domestic firms' financing constraints, especially for private-owned enterprises. In addition, I investigate the hypothesis that foreign bank entry intensified competition in the domestic banking sector, using a newly constructed regional bank competition index. Results confirm that increases in bank competition brought by foreign bank entry improved credit access for private-owned firms relative to state-owned firms. The second chapter studies determinants and impacts of foreign currency borrowing by firms in emerging Europe. Most of the existing studies on currency mismatch focus on large corporations, and this study complements literature by using firm-level survey data mainly covering small non-listed firms. The third chapter presents evidence on zombie firms and stimulating policies in China. We apply the framework from the seminal study of zombie firms in Japan to a broader manufacturing census sample in China between 1998 and 2013. We show that the number and the magnitude of undesirable zombie firms increased sharply after an enormous monetary expansion right after the 2008 financial crisis.Item Integrated use of Landsat and Corona data for long-term monitoring of forest cover change and improved representation of its patch size distribution(2016) Song, Danxia; Townshend, John R; Huang, Chengquan; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Forest cover change has profound impact on global carbon cycle, hydrological processes, energy balance, and biodiversity. The primary goal of this dissertation is to improve forest cover change characterization by filling a number of knowledge gaps in forest change studies. These include use of Corona data to extend satellite based forest cover change mapping back to pre-Landsat years in the 1960s, quantification of forest cover change over four decades (1960s – 2005) for a major forested province in China using Corona and Landsat data, and development of more accurate patch size-frequency modeling methods for improved representation of forest disturbances in ecosystem and other spatially explicit models. With comprehensive data coverages in the 1960s, Corona data can be used to extend Landsat-based forest change analysis by up to a decade. The usefulness of such data, however, is hindered by poor geolocation accuracy and lack of multi-spectral bands. In this study, it was demonstrated that combined use of texture features and the advanced support vector machines allowed forest mapping with accuracies of up to 95% using Corona data. Further, a semi-automated method was developed for rapid registration of Corona images with residual errors as low as 100 m. These methods were used to assess the forest cover in the 1960s in Sichuan, a major forest province in China. Together with global forest cover change products derived using Landsat data, these results revealed that the forest cover in Sichuan Province was reduced from 45.19% in the 1960s to 38.98% by 1975 and further down to 28.91% by 1990. It then stayed relatively stable between 1990 and 2005, which contradicted trends reported by inventory data. The turning point between sharp decreases before 1990 and the stable period after 1990 likely reflected transitions in forest policies from focuses on timber production to forest conservation. Representation of forest disturbances in spatially explicit ecosystem models typically relies on patch size-frequency models to allocate an appropriate amount of disturbances to each patch size level. Existing patch size-frequency models, however, do not provide accurate representation of the total disturbance area nor the patch sizes at each frequency level. In this study, a hierarchical method was developed for modeling patch size-frequency distribution. Evaluation of this method over China revealed that it greatly improved the accuracy in representing the patch size at different frequency levels and reduced error in total disturbance area estimation over existing methods from around 40% to less than 10%. The significance of this dissertation is the contribution to improve the characterization of forest cover change by extending the satellite-based forest cover change monitoring back to the 1960s and developing a more accurate patch size distribution model to represent the forest disturbance in ecosystem models. The work in the dissertation has a broader impact beyond developing methods and models, as they provide essential basis to understand the relationship between the long-term change of forest and the socioeconomic transitions. They also improve the capacities of ecosystem and other spatially explicit models to simulate the vegetation dynamics and the resultant biodiversity and carbon dynamics.Item Reconciling History and International Law: Territorial and Maritime Claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea(2016) Wilson, Kimberly L.; Pearson, Margaret M; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)High-ranking Chinese military officials are often quoted in international media as stating that China cannot afford to lose even an inch of Chinese territory, as this territory has been passed down from Chinese ancestors. Such statements are not new in Chinese politics, but recently this narrative has made an important transition. While previously limited to disputes over land borders, such rhetoric is now routinely applied to disputes involving islands and maritime borders. China is increasingly oriented toward its maritime borders and seems unwilling to compromise on delimitation disputes, a transition mirrored by many states across the globe. In a similar vein, scholarship has found that territorial disputes are particularly intractable and volatile when compared with other types of disputes, and a large body of research has grappled with producing systematic knowledge of territorial conflict. Yet in this wide body of literature, an important question has remained largely unanswered - how do states determine which geographical areas will be included in their territorial and maritime claims? In other words, if nations are willing to fight and die for an inch of national territory, how do governments draw the boundaries of the nation? This dissertation uses in-depth case studies of some of the most prominent territorial and maritime disputes in East Asia to argue that domestic political processes play a dominant and previously under-explored role in both shaping claims and determining the nature of territorial and maritime disputes. China and Taiwan are particularly well suited for this type of investigation, as they are separate claimants in multiple disputes, yet they both draw upon the same historical record when establishing and justifying their claims. Leveraging fieldwork in Taiwan, China, and the US, this dissertation includes in-depth case studies of China’s and Taiwan’s respective claims in both the South China Sea and East China Sea disputes. Evidence from this dissertation indicates that officials in both China and Taiwan have struggled with how to reconcile history and international law when establishing their claims, and that this struggle has introduced ambiguity into China's and Taiwan's claims. Amid this process, domestic political dynamics have played a dominant role in shaping the options available and the potential for claims to change in the future. In Taiwan’s democratic system, where national identity is highly contested through party politics, opinions vary along a broad spectrum as to the proper borders of the nation, and there is considerable evidence that Taiwan’s claims may change in the near future. In contrast, within China’s single-party authoritarian political system, where nationalism is source of regime legitimacy, views on the proper interpretation of China’s boundaries do vary, but along a much more narrow range. In the dissertation’s final chapter, additional cases, such as South Korea’s position on Dokdo and Indonesia’s approach to the defense of Natuna are used as points of comparison to further clarify theoretical findings.Item Empirical Essays on Development Economics in China(2010) Meng, Lingsheng; Duggan, Mark; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation is composed of three essays on Development Economics in China. The first chapter, co-authored with Hongbin Li, evaluates the impact of the 8-7 Plan, the second wave of China's poverty alleviation program, on rural income growth at the county level over the period 1994-2000. Since program participation was largely determined by whether a county's pre-program income fell below a given poverty line, a regression discontinuity approach is employed to estimate causal effects of the program. Using a panel dataset, we find that the 8-7 Plan resulted in a gain of about a 26 percent increase in rural income for the counties which were treated. Our empirical results also suggest an important role for initial endowments in the path towards economic development. The second chapter examines the question: How much of the increase in the sex ratio (males to females) at birth since the early 1980s in China is due to increased prenatal sex selection? I answer this question by exploiting the differential introduction of diagnostic ultrasound throughout China during the 1980s, which significantly reduced the cost of prenatal sex selection. The improved local access to ultrasound technology is found to have resulted in a substantial increase in the sex ratio at birth. Furthermore, this effect was driven solely by a rise in the sex ratio of higher order births, especially following births of daughters. I estimate that the local access to ultrasound increased the fraction of males by 1.3 percentage points for second births and by 2.4 percentage points for third and higher order births. Using the annual birth rate at the county level as a proxy for local enforcement of the One Child Policy, the effects of ultrasound are found to be stronger for individuals under tighter fertility control. These findings suggest that the current trend in skewed sex ratios in China is significantly influenced by prenatal sex selection. Several robustness checks indicate that these results are not driven by preexisting differential trends. The third chapter, co-authored with Douglas Almond and Hongbin Li, explores the gender bias in parental investment in children's health in China. Where the fraction of male births is abnormally high, heterogeneity in son preference would suggest that parents of sons may have a stronger son preference than parents of daughters. Child sex may have become a stronger signal of parental sex preferences over time as the cost of sex selection has declined and sex ratios at birth have increased. In this chapter, we consider whether ultrasound diffusion changed the pattern of early childhood investments in girls versus boys. If parental investments (like sex ratios) respond to parental sex preferences, postnatal investments in girls should increase with the diffusion of ultrasound and increased prenatal sex selection. In contrast, the prediction for investments prior to birth is ambiguous. For pregnancies carried to term, ultrasound revealed sex as much as six months prior to delivery, enabling gender discrimination in in utero investments. In contrast, sex selective abortions would tend to increase in utero investments in girls through preference sorting. We evaluate these competing predictions using microdata on investments in children using the 1992 Chinese Children Survey. We find no effect of ultrasound access on the gender difference in postnatal investments. In contrast, we find early neonatal mortality of girls increased relative to boys with ultrasound access. As neonatal mortality tends to reflect pregnancy conditions, we infer that prenatal investments for girls carried to term may have fallen relative to boys once fetal sex was revealed.Item Brings the Politics Back in:Political Incentive and Policy Distortion in China(2009) Mei, Ciqi; Pearson, Margaret M.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores why some commendable policy goals set by the central government of China have been left unmet at the local levels. Observing the significance of policy behaviors of local officials in producing policy outcomes in their jurisdictions, it attributes the apparent policy distortion to the "incorrect" incentives that local officials face now. Different from those focusing on the new economic incentive offered by the new decentralization arrangement during the reform era, this study looks into the nature of political incentives embedded in the oldtop-down cadre management system to see how local officials are "incentivized" politically to produce distorted policy outcomes. By investigating formal rules governing local chiefs' turnovers and actual past turnovers of the prefectural chiefs in Zhejiang and Hubei provinces during the reform era, this study finds out that the top-down political incentive is unbalanced by nature in that promotion criteria for local chiefs slant heavily to local chiefs' achievements (zhengji) in promoting local economic growth while their performance in other policy issues are neglected at large. It argues that such unbalanced nature of top-down political incentive has induced local officials to divert more efforts to pursue "mindless" economic growth at the cost of other commendable goals; policy distortion therefore emerges as the consequence of unbalanced political incentive. This dissertation continues to explain why the apparent policy distortion has persisted. By investigating five cases illustrating the way the center deals with local policy distortion, it argues that the central government is unwilling, unable and ineffective to sanction policy distortion because of the innate conflict between the indirect management tool the center uses and the multiple governance goals it desires for. The unbalanced nature of current top-down political incentive is therefore predetermined and policy distortion persists. This dissertation contributes to the general discussion on central-local dynamics in China by bringing back the top-down political incentives as the most important institutional cause for policy outcome. Policy implication of this study is clear: the problem of policy distortion could not be solved without reshuffling the top-down political incentive system.Item Three Essays on China's Economic Reform(2008-05-30) Li, Lixing; Murrell, Peter; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation contains three essays. In Chapter 2, I investigate the causal factors of the soft budget constraint (SBC) problem. Based on a panel dataset from a survey of Chinese enterprises, the test results support the policy burden hypothesis but not the ownership hypothesis. The findings emphasize the importance of creating a sound social security system in the process of China's enterprise reform. The other two essays focus on the upgrading of counties to cities in China. Chapter 3 examines its role in providing local governments with incentives on economic growth. Using a large panel data set covering all counties during 1993-2004, I find that the official minimum requirements for upgrading are not enforced in practice. Instead, a county's economic growth rate plays a key role in obtaining city status. Furthermore, I conduct an empirical test to distinguish between a principal-agent incentive mechanism and political bargaining. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the central government uses upgrading to reward local officials for high growth, as well as aligning local interests with those of the center. This essay highlights the importance of both fiscal and political incentives facing the local government. Chapter 4 examines the consequences of upgrading by looking at various economic, fiscal and public service outcomes. I find that city status increases government size and revenues, and creates more urban employment opportunities. However, there is no significant improvement in local public services after counties were upgraded, and their high growth rates dropped. These results are interpreted by analyzing the incentive structure of local government officials.Item WTO Accession as Commitment: Theory and Evidence from the Choice of Redistribution Policies(2007-06-05) Chandra, Piyush; Limão, Nuno; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)With 150 member countries, and 29 more currently in the process of accession, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the most important body governing international trade. However, there is little theory on how governments choose between alternative redistribution policies and no work has been done on the role of the WTO in this choice. In this dissertation we develop a theoretical model that explains how a particular set of WTO rules, the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM), affect the choice and the level of tariffs and subsidies -- two of the most important and frequently observed redistribution policies -- in an acceding country. The WTO SCM agreement guides the subsidies that could be used by a member country, as well as, provides other members with retaliatory measures if these subsidies hurt their interests. We show that, as a country joins the WTO, there will be an increase in its tariffs in those sectors that face a threat of retaliation against subsidies. Our model also offers a new explanation for why a country would want to join the WTO. According to our model, the government would like to be a part of the organization since that would increase its utility through an improved bargaining position vis-à-vis the domestic lobbies. We provide a numerical example to illustrate this channel. In the second part of the dissertation we test the prediction of our theoretical model that the sectors, which after accession face a positive probability of retaliation to subsidization, will experience a switch towards tariffs as an alternative instrument of income redistribution. Since Countervailing Duties (CVD) are the most frequently used measure to retaliate against subsidies, we construct a product level database on CVD duties imposed during 1995-2001 by four major users of CVD -- Australia, Canada, the EU, and the US -- and use it to test the above prediction of the model for the case of China's accession to the WTO in 2001 and Taiwan's accession to the WTO in 2002. We use the underlying variation in the way countervailing duties are targeted across different industries to derive a proxy for the threat of retaliation faced by Chinese (Taiwanese) industries at the time of the country's accession to the WTO. We show that in case of both countries accession to the WTO led to a relative increase in tariffs for sectors facing a higher threat of retaliation by CVD. We also show that, as predicted by the model, the increase in tariffs was larger in sectors with higher costs imposed by retaliation.Item Continuous tree distribution in China: A comparison of two estimates from MODIS and Landsat data(American Geophysical Union, 2006-04-18) Liang, Shunlin; Liu, Ronggao; Liu, Jiyuan; Zhuang, DafangForest change is a major contributor to changes in carbon stocks and trace gas fluxes between terrestrial and atmospheric layers. This study compares two satellite estimates of percent tree distribution data sets over China. One estimate is from the Chinese National Land Cover Data Set (NLCD) generated by a multiyear national land cover project in China through visual interpretation of Landsat thematic mapper (TM) and the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images primarily acquired in the year 2000. The other estimate is the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) standard product (MOD44B) from the same year. The two products reveal some common features, but significant discrepancies exist. Detailed analyses are carried out with different land cover types and over different regions. Comparison results show that the difference of the total tree canopy area for the whole country is 159,000 km2. The pixel counts in the NLCD data set for dense forest are ~4 times those in the MODIS data set with the reverse holding for sparse forest. Generally, the percent tree canopy area of the NLCD data set is larger in eastern China and lower in the Tibetan plateau margin region. For different land cover types the percentage of tree canopy areas shows a good agreement for evergreen forests but a large discrepancy for deciduous forests. The largest variations are associated with grassland and nonvegetation classes. Regarding the spatial distributions of their differences, Inner Mongolia is the place where both data sets show a diverse result, but Guizhou and Fujian present the least divergence among those provinces with the tree canopy area being more than 20,000 km2.