This study aims to establish the linkage among export tax rebate (ETR), firm innovation and product quality of Chinese agricultural product processing industry (APPI), so that more targeted policy implications can be discussed.

Using highly disaggregated firm-product-destination-level data through 2001 to 2013 of Chinese APPI, this study employs a two-way fixed effects specification to establish the linkage between ETR and product quality, while the mediational model is adopted to examine potential mechanisms.

To cope with the stricter environmental regulation, manufacturing firms need to carry out pollution reduction activities and change their optimal production decisions, which may affect their labor demand.

Are COVID-19 spread and mortality related to different countries’ government mobility restriction policies, democratic institutions, and cultural norms? Leveraging data from 140 countries, we find that policy, institutions, and vulnerabilities interact to determine pandemic spread and mortality. A delay in restricting international mobility increases pandemic mortality. Combining vulnerabilities with a delay in domestic mobility restrictions increases mortality.

Since the public assessment of political leadership is more evident during crisis events, natural disasters have become a plausible explanation for electoral outcomes and public support. This imposes a prominent challenge for developing countries, which are less prepared to deal with catastrophes. This paper proposes a theoretical and an empirical approach to evaluate the unrestricted and conditional impact of natural disasters on the continuity of local authorities.

Literature on the resource curse argues that resource windfalls, such as those resulting from a commodity price boom, crowd out several determinants of long-term fiscal income (Papyrakis and Gerlagh, 2006). Although empirical literature tests this theory at an intercountry context, similar attention has not been paid to that of subnational governments. This different type of spatial scope would reveal how low-tier governments strategically behave in regard to resource windfalls and covering local costs.