We evaluate a reform of the US tax system switching to consumption taxation instead of income taxation. We do so in an environment that allows for progressivity of consumption taxes through differential tax rates between basic and non-basic consumption goods. The consumption tax system that maximizes aggregate welfare involves a 4% subsidy on basic consumption goods and a 68% tax on non-basic goods. Such a tax scheme generates 10% higher output in the long run, with a small increase in inequality. Nonetheless, the bench- mark with progressive income taxes and mild consumption taxes provides higher welfare on aggregate in the steady state, and even more so if we consider the transition.
Background
Some bereaved parents experience a decreasing trajectory of grief, while others fail to adapt over the long term and persistently suffer from negative health consequences. This study investigates the mediating role of social integration in the relationship between losing an only child and parental health in a family-oriented society.
Method
A sample of 1828 bereaved parents and 4739 non-bereaved parents was drawn from a 10-city survey in China. Regression methods were used to examine the impact of child loss on parental health, and Sobel test was applied to examine the mediating role of social integration.
Results
Bereaved parents who lost their only child have worse self-rated health and more negative affect than the non-bereaved parents, which lasted for years after the death of the only child. The Sobel test shows that 24.8% of the total effects on self-rated health and 6.7% of the total effects on negative affect can be explained via decreased social integration. The gender of parents and child as well as fertility intentions are important sources of heterogeneity in the Chinese culture.
Limitation
The results based on cross-sectional data may only reveal correlation rather than causality. The data was retrieved from self-reported questionnaires and there is a lack of objective measures of parental health. Moreover, the detailed mechanisms behind how child loss resulted in less social integration should be further explored.
Conclusions
Significant disparities in health outcomes and social integration were found for bereaved parents relative to the non-bereaved parents. Future work is needed to assess the health of bereaved parents, identify the vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, and design inclusive intervention programs.
Many countries are facing a shortage of modern language teachers, including teachers of Chinese as a second language (CSL), which is believed to relate to pre-service teachers’ motivations. Thus, this study aims to explore pre-service CSL teachers’ motivations and the background variables that might influence their motivations. The participants were 411 pre-service CSL teachers. A 33-item questionnaire adopted from the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) scale was administered, including nine FIT-Choice subscales and two new subscales. First, exploratory factor analysis of data from the first random split-half sample of participants suggested a 6-factor structure, which was confirmed in the subsequent confirmatory factor analysis of data from the second random split-half sample of participants. The results show that pre-service CSL teachers had strong intrinsic value, cross-cultural value and altruistic value but weak extrinsic value. Second, structural equation modelling analysis was performed with questionnaire data from 296 participants who provided complete demographic information. Age, annual family income and frequency of contact with foreigners significantly predicted the participants’ motivations, yet their predictive power varied. The implications for understanding the theoretical framework of teacher motivation and the professional development of CSL teachers were discussed.
The heterogeneous hydrolysis of dinitrogen pentoxide (N2O5) plays an important role in regulating NOx. The N2O5 uptake coefficient, c(N2O5), was determined using an iterative box model that was constrained to observational data obtained in suburban Beijing from February to March 2016. The box model determined 2289 individual c(N2O5) values that varied from <0.001 to 0.02 with an average value of 0.0046 +/- 0.0039 (and a median value of 0.0032). We found the derived winter c(N2O5) values in Beijing were relatively low as compared to values reported in previous field studies conducted during winter in Hong Kong (average value of 0.014) and the eastern U.S. coast (median value of 0.0143). In our study, field evidence of the suppression of c(N2O5) values due to pNO3 content, organics and the enhancement by aerosol liquid water content (ALWC) is in line with previous laboratory study results. Low ALWC, high pNO3 content, and particle morphology (inorganic core with an organic shell) accounted for the low c (N2O5) values in the North China Plain (NCP) during wintertime. The field-derived c(N2O5) values are well reproduced by a revised parameterization method, which includes the aerosol size distribution, ALWC, nitrate and organic coating, suggesting the feasibility of comprehensive parameterization in the NCP during wintertime. (C) 2020 Science China Press. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science China Press. All rights reserved.
The diversity of vascular plants in Inner Asia has been researched; the main environmental factors determining the distribution of species belonging to various life forms and having different distribution range sizes have been identified. The key factors determining species diversity in Inner Asia are past climate changes and precipitation parameters. By contrast, the temperature conditions of the current climate do not affect the species richness significantly. The following current climatic parameters are important for woody plants: precipitation seasonality, mean precipitation in winter and spring, and diurnal range of temperature. Quite the opposite, the species richness of herbaceous plants is determined by climate-change velocity from the mid-Holocene and Last Glacial Maximum, the spatial heterogeneity of precipitation, and mean summer temperatures. Over time, distribution ranges of rare plants in the studied region may be reduced due to the increasing aridization.
Bilateral cross-currency SWAP agreements (BSAs) were rejuvenated during the GFC by the Federal Reserve of the United States to provide liquidity to selected governments in dire financial straits. After the crisis, BSAs rapidly and widely spread around the globe and become a major component of the global financial safety net. Interestingly, it is not the United States but China which occupies the center of the global BSA network. China has signed BSAs with a diverse pool of states since 2009, and has far more partners than any other countries. While existing studies mainly focus on the motivations driving China and its partner states to enter BSAs, this paper is intended to evaluate foreign policy consequences of China’s BSAs. Asymmetric interdependence and asymmetric information, as two key features of the economic relationship between China and its partner states in BSAs, are expected to make other countries be more supportive to China’s position in global affairs, leading to a convergence of their foreign policy preferences. This is the classic “Hirschman effect”.
To empirically identify the “Hirschman effect”, we use measures of states’ foreign policy ideal points based on votes in the United States General Assembly. We apply a quantitative analysis to estimate the average effect and conduct a case study to trace and explain the development of the effect over time. In the large-N study, we draw data on 191 countries between 2009 and 2018 and specify a multilevel model with varying intercepts to control for unobserved heterogeneity in the dimension of time and space. Empirical evidence suggests that BSAs significantly drive the foreign policy preferences of China and other states to converge. Then we focus on Argentina as an in-depth case study. Different from conventional case studies, we conduct a “quantitative case study” and apply the Synthetic Control Method to estimate and quantify the causal effect of signing a BSA with China in 2009 on the distance between foreign policy ideal points of Argentina and China. The case study confirms the presence of the “Hirschman effect” suggested by theory and found in the regression analysis. It further reveals several suggestive but interesting points, including 1) activating SWAP lines may strengthen the effect, whereas the effect may be weakened by the provision of emergency liquidity assistance from the US or the IMF; 2) BSAs with China may impact on left-wing governments more strongly than right-wing governments; and 3) the Chinese government may strengthen the effect by changing the size of the committed SWAP line.