Bayesian model averaging (BMA) has become widely accepted as a way of accounting for model uncertainty, notably in regression models for identifying the determinants of economic growth. To implement BMA the user must specify a prior distribution in two parts: a prior for the regression parameters and a prior over the model space. Here we address the issue of which default prior to use for BMA i...

Significant economic disparities among China’s Eastern, Central, and Western regions pose unequivocal challenges to social equality and political stability in the country. A major impediment to economic development, especially in the poor, remote Western region, is the shortage of transportation infrastructure. The Chinese government has committed to substantial investment for improving the acc...

This study investigates spatial dependence and mechanisms of regional development in Greater Beijing, China by employing spatial statistical techniques. We have detected positive, strengthening global spatial autocorrelation from 1978 to 2001, and found such strengthening is the result of newly formed/extended clusters in the area. The local analysis recognizes local regimes of two-tier urban-r...

This paper investigates the relationship between firm heterogeneity and a firm’s decision to export, using the annual survey of Thai manufacturing firms from 2001 to 2004. A significant contribution of this paper is that we are, for the first time, able to break down FDI by country of origin to observe whether the behavior of MNEs differs by region of origin. We find that entry sunk costs and f...

The rise of China as an economic powerhouse has caused concerns in its neighbors. Prevailing in the region is the fear that China is becoming a gigantic ‘‘regional factory’’ that will ‘‘hollow out’’ neighboring economies’ industries. In this paper, we emphasize the economic benefits that a rising Chinese economy can bring into the region. A discussion on the country’s growth strategy suggests t...

Article history: Received 14 January 2015 Received in revised form 17 August 2015 Accepted 17 August 2015 Available online 1 September 2015 This paper estimates income polarization in China from 1978 to 2010 and decomposes the estimated polarization by population subgroups. In addition, a framework is proposed to disentangle a change in polarization into a growth and a redistribution component....

Shigella strains are in reality clones of Escherichia coli and are believed to have emerged relatively recently (G. M. Pupo, R. Lan, and P. R. Reeves, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97:10567-10572, 2000). There are 33 O-antigen forms in these Shigella clones, of which 12 are identical to O antigens of other E. coli strains. We sequenced O-antigen gene clusters from Shigella boydii serotypes 4, 5, 6...

Article history: Received 12 October 2012 Received in revised form 24 April 2013 Accepted 20 August 2013 Available online xxxx Industrial competitiveness (IC) is a country's ability to produce and export manufactured goods competitively. Howdoes foreign direct investment (FDI) affect IC in China? The significance of the topic, besides the intrinsic importance of IC, is heightened by outstanding...

The combination of structural class assignment with intensive sequences comparisons has permitted to develop a new concept in the prediction of the secondary structure of proteins called a self optimised prediction method (SOPM). The accuracy of this method has been checked onto an updated release of the Kabsch & Sander database which comprises 239 protein chains. This new method correctly pred...

Executive Compensation, Firm Performance, and Corporate Governance in China: Evidence from Firms Listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges This paper provides evidence on how executive compensation relates to firm performance in listed firms in China. Using comprehensive financial and accounting data on China’s listed firms from 1998 to 2002, augmented by unique data on executive comp...