Platforms, network effects and small business dynamics in China : case study of the Shanzhai cell phone industry

This paper seeks to argue the significance of platforms on emerging markets through a case study of the Shanzhai cell phone industry in Shenzhen, China. In this industry, value chains are being driven by both the technology platforms and the market platforms. The former include MTK baseband chipset, and so-called Shared PCBA and Shared Mould. The latter include the North Huaqiang Market and the Purchasing and Money Platform. Technology platforms greatly reduced the technological barriers to entry for independent design houses and system integrators, while market platforms markedly improved their poor marketing and purchasing abilities. Due to factors such as social networks, supporting industries, informality and platform governance, strong network effects have been exhibited in the two types of platforms, which have not only fostered numerous start-ups, but have also led to effective exploitation of emerging markets.

Stability of complementarity between Japanese FDI and import of intermediate goods : agglomeration effects and parent-firm heterogeneity

This paper examines the duration of intermediate goods imports and its determinants for Japanese affiliates in China. Our estimations, using a unique parent-affiliate-transaction matched panel dataset for a discrete-time hazard model over the 2000–2006 period, reveal that products with a higher upstreamness index, differentiated goods, and goods traded under processing trade are less likely to be substituted with local procurement. Firms located in more agglomerated regions with more foreign affiliates tend to shorten the duration of imports from the home country. For parent-firm characteristics, multinational enterprises that have many foreign affiliates or longer foreign production experience import intermediate goods for a longer duration.

Ramadan school holidays as a natural experiment : impacts of seasonality on school dropout in Bangladesh

In 2000, Ramadan school vacation coincided with the original annual exam period of December in Bangladesh. This forced schools to pre-pone their final exam schedules in November, which was the month before the harvest begins. 'Ramadan 2000' is a natural experiment that reduced the labor demand for children during the exam period. Using household level panel data of 2000 and 2003, and after controlling for various unobservable variations including individual fixed effects, aggregate year effects, and subdistrict-level year effects, this paper finds evidence of statistically significant impact of seasonal labor demand on school dropout in Bangladesh among the children from agricultural households.

Domestic and international border effects

Previous studies in the border-effect literature surprisingly found that domestic border effects are larger than international border effects (e.g., in the United States or Brazil). One interpretation of this result is that these estimates include the effects of producer agglomeration. Therefore, in this study, we estimate those border effects exclusively for transactions for final consumption, in which such agglomeration forces will be weak, in China and Japan. As a result, we found larger international border effects and could not find a significant role for producer agglomeration in the estimates of border effects. We also found that China's accession to the World Trade Organization reduces border effects in trading between China and Japan but does not decrease domestic border effects.