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Sunday Papers

The Sunday Paper – The Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Performance in China

The paper highlighted today from Jahidur Md Rahman and Fang Yu, both from the Wenzhou-Kean University, claims to be a first. Research elsewhere in the world has produced mixed results on whether or not an attention to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) results in higher profits, or not; but in this study of A-share listed Chinese […]

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The Sunday Paper – Global Economic Impact of COVID-19: Evidence from Insider Trades

Deniz Anginer from the Simon Fraser University (et. al.) in Canada took a look at corporate insiders’ dealing from January 2017 to April 2020 to see if this activity can predict how COVID-19 might affect the longer term economic performance of economies in which these managers operate? They studied individuals in the U.S., Canada, China, […]

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The Sunday Paper – Is Gold a Hedge or Safe Haven Asset during COVID–19 Crisis?

I settled the gold (to hold or not) argument some time ago and the answer is simple. As with any other financial asset the decision should be based on your circumstances. For me therefore I don’t think it’s appropriate; but for you? It might be. As the paper highlighted today notes in a quote from […]

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The Sunday Paper – The Long-Term Cognitive and Schooling Effects of Childhood Vaccinations in China

People who don’t allow their children to be vaccinated are doing them a great dis-service. Unvaccinated children have poorer life outcomes, get sicker, earn less money and have poorer cognitive ability in old-age than peers. Writing in a Working Paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research Hamid Oskorouchi et. al. provide (yet more ) […]

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Sunday Papers

The Sunday Paper – Coronavirus: Case for Digital Money?

More a monograph than a paper highlighted today from Zara Kakushadze and Jim Kyung Soo Liew in which they put forward an incredibly simple idea. One who’s time appears to have been at hand for some time but one COVID-19 might hasten into reality. Money is dirty the researchers point out. Not just in a […]

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The Sunday Paper – Fighting Covid-19 China in Action

On June 7th The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China published Fighting Covid-19 China in Action (click the link to get to the full text). A 66-page ‘White Paper’ it aims to: a) set the record straight on how China initially communicated it’s COVID-19 problems to the world and, b) provide […]

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Sunday Papers

The Sunday Paper – Why are fossil fuels so hard to quit?

The clear skies many cities have enjoyed thanks to an economic slowdown forced by COVID-19 responses has led to fresh discussions about the need to stop burning ‘stuff’ to satisfy our energy needs. Samantha Gross, an engineer by training and a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings (the non-partisan Washington based think-tank), weighs […]

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The Sunday Paper – The Innovation Winter Is Coming: How the U.S.-China Trade War Endangers the World

Here’s the key message from the paper highlighted today: “The U.S. is playing a game of catch-up, but rather than supporting its own tech industry it is seeking to slow down China’s progress. The U.S. cannot afford to miss out on AI’s potential to deliver $13 trillion to the global economy.The U.S.-instigated trade war not […]

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The Sunday Paper – Corporate Governance in China: A Survey

If you have a practitioner or academic interest in the issue of Corporate Governance in China you need to review the paper highlighted today in full; but, to warn you, it’s a dry old read. For those with merely a general interest I’ll do my best to summarize the main points below. Fuxiu Jiang and […]

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The Sunday Paper – Age, Death Risk, and the Design of an Exit Strategy: A Guide for Policymakers and for Citizens Who Want to Stay Alive

The authors of the paper highlighted today, Andrew J. Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee from the University of Warwick, writing in a Discussion Paper for the German based IZA Institute for Labour Economics, want you to understand just one thing: it’s now irrefutably clear, COVID-19 hits the older members of society hardest. They use data from […]

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The Sunday Paper – Rage Against the Regime? Risk of Job Automation and Political Attitudes in China

A sure sign a survey is reliable is a wide spread of responses. Stefan Pasch of the Goethe University in Frankfurt notes this when discussing the results of his work which involves asking Chinese people, in China, how they feel about their government (among other things). If people were towing a Party-line or too afraid […]

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The Sunday Paper – Education and Innovation: The Long Shadow of the Cultural Revolution

In the paper highlighted today Zhanghai Huang from the Tsinghua University (et. al.) takes a look at the long term consequence on business innovation of denying managers a college education. China’s a good place to study this as one of the greater wickednesses of the so-called Cultural Revolution was to close down all institutes of […]

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The Sunday Paper – Is Financial Globalization in Reverse after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis? Evidence from Corporate Valuations

Craig Doidge (et. al.) from the University of Toronto has taken a look at company valuations around the world, pre- and post-GFC, to see how they’ve altered relatively and if the world got financially ‘flatter’ in the process? However as the study period, from 2001-2007 before the GFC and 2010-2018 after the GFC, was associated […]

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The Sunday Paper – Trends in Fat Intake and Their Impacts on Body Weight and the Risk of Overweight and Obesity Among Chinese Adults

The paper highlighted this week is a pre-print from the Lancet and they wish to make it clear that such” Preprints are not peer-reviewed and should not be used for clinical decision making or reporting of research to a lay audience without indicating that it is preliminary research that has not been peer-reviewed.” OK? Fat, […]

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The Sunday Paper – Eating Breakfast or Attending Extracurricular Tutoring, Which One is More Effective in Improving Student’s Performance? An Empirical Study Based on the Data from A Large-Scale Provincial Survey

For many families a choice doesn’t have to be made between more food and more instruction for their children; but, for a surprisingly high number in a study highlighted today from Jiangsu province in China, resources have to be juggled. As Yanliu Liu of the Nanjing Normal University (et.al) points out the jury remains out […]

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The Sunday Paper – Will [The] Coronavirus Pandemic Diminish by Summer?

Qasim Bukhari and Yusuf Jameel of M.I.T. qualify their work in the paper highlighted today by reminding their sample is only from January 22nd to March 21st and over this period 83% of testing has taken place in non-tropical i.e. countries in a latitude 30-degrees North or above. Moreover 90% of positive results have come […]

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The Sunday Paper – A Behavioral Signaling Explanation for Stock Splits: Evidence from China

‘Because people are idiots!’ is something you hear in finance when something happens that, well, shouldn’t. However the real world is filled with examples of things that finance-theory says are ‘wrong’ and ‘shouldn’t happen’ but happen anyway. An outstanding example is the stock-split. This is when a company has done so well its stock price […]

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Sunday Papers

The Sunday Paper – Mathematical Recommendations to Fight Against COVID-19

Chenlin Gu of the École Normale Supérieure (Paris, France) and colleagues (the authors of today’s highlighted paper) admit they’re not medical practitioners, they’re numbers geeks. Nor do they represent (as far as I can tell) any special-interest political group and this makes their work especially pertinent as it comes without implied partisanship. In this short […]

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Sunday Papers

The Sunday Paper – On the Drivers of Persistence in Stock Market Volatility in China

Previous studies have noted China’s stock markets are more volatile than more developed peers; but the paper highlighted today, from Julia Darby and Jinkai Zhang at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, addresses the why of this. By analyzing the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets from 2010 to 2017 and comparing them to the U.S. and […]

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The Sunday Paper – Automated Detection of Chinese Government Astroturfers Using Network and Social Metadata

Know what an ‘astroturfer’ is? Media manipulators have been employing these for some time and in the West the tobacco and oil industries are among the special interest groups caught red-handed in the practice. An astroturfer is an agent employed to post comment on the interweb as if they were a ‘grass-roots’ real-life person genuinely […]