Narrow Results

This study explores the influence of government’s spending on environmental protection on air pollution in Taiwan. Using the panel data of 20 counties, county-level cities, and municipalities in Taiwan covering the period from 2013 to 2018 and the spatial econometric analysis due to considering the possible spatial dependence of air pollution represented by PM_2.5 concentration and SO₂ emissions, the primary finding is that government’s spending in the environmental protection can statistically significantly improve air pollution regardless of where the financial source is. However, rather than the local fiscal expenditure on environmental protection, subsidies of the air pollution control from the central government can play more important roles to effectively improve air quality of the local area in Taiwan.

This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 on tourist hotel performance and tourism demand in Taiwan. We use population-based administrative data on tourist hotels and visits with official records of COVID-19 cases to estimate the effect of the disease on the industry. Results show that a 1% increase in the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 decreased the total revenues, and the room revenues and food and beverage revenues of tourist hotels by 0.33%, 0.47% and 0.26%, respectively. Moreover, the impact of COVID-19 is heterogeneously distributed among tourist hotels of different quality. With respect to mechanism behind the negative effect of COVID-19 on tourist hotel performance, decreases in tourism demand is a driving factor. We find that a 1% increase in the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 reduces the number of tourist visits by 0.10%.

This research analyzes intergenerational income mobility over three generations in Taiwan by estimating intergenerational income elasticity (IGE). Results indicate that IGE between fathers and sons is 0.349, and IGE between fathers and grandsons is 0.139. Fathers’ death during grandsons’ early ages does not affect IGE between them, and the independent effect of fathers’ income on grandsons’ income is weak. Roughly, 65% of IGE between fathers and grandsons is explained by sons’ couples’ income. Quantile results show that IGE between fathers and grandsons is stronger at upper tail of fathers’ income distribution, and it is especially strong for extremely rich grandsons.

Within just four decades Taiwan was able to transform itself from a poor and backward economy into a high income, newly-industrialized economy. Taiwan's outstanding economic performance during this period prompted the World Bank and other international organizations to refer to this transformation as the "Taiwan miracle," and other developing countries have been encouraged to learn from Taiwan's experience. Harmonious and stable labor–management relations was — one of the major factors contributed to this successful development because they facilitated the inflow of a large amount of direct foreign investment (DFI) and therefore provided the island with the capital and appropriate advanced technologies that were urgently needed, and generated a large number of employment opportunities. In this paper, we use the concept of social capital to explain the causes of the harmonious labor–management relations in the past, and discuss the possible future of Taiwan's labor–management relations.

The rapid expansion of higher education in the late 1980s in Taiwan has resulted in a swift increase in the supply of highly-educated workers in the labor market. This research differs from past studies in that it analyzes the effect of the rapid expansion in higher education in Taiwan with emphasis on the cohort effect, specifically examining the effect of changes both in intra-cohort relative supply and the aggregate relative supply on college returns. Besides, when estimating the aggregate relative supply of college graduates, this study takes into account the substitutability between younger and older educated workers. We present evidence that the expansion policy has significantly depressed college premiums for workers of all ages, but the adverse effect is particularly concentrated among the younger cohorts. Furthermore, we found the elasticity of substitution between college and high school graduates to be 3–4 times higher than in developed countries. We also found the important role played by the demand side, likely linked to technological progress and changes in export structure toward the more technologically intensive. As a consequence, the expansion of higher education and increase in the relative demand for higher-educated workers, along with high elasticity of substitution between college and high school graduates, led to the rigid low college premiums.

This paper empirically investigates the relationship among the tax evasion and local disposal income, unemployment rate and demographic variables by using 20 municipalities in Taiwan with the official interior, latest, and wider range of panel data over the period from 1998 to 2011. The main findings support the positive impact of disposal income on tax evasion, while unemployment rate has a negative impact. Among the interest rate effect models, if policy-makers want to hinder the extension of tax evasion, they should reduce the interest rate. Furthermore, government not only applies fiscal policy but also applies monetary policy for improving tax evasion. In our regional effect model, we have found evidence on a positive impact of the demographic structure variables on tax evasion except social expenditure of local government. We have also found clear evidence on the positive impact in South and East areas on tax evasion in the regional effect model. Moreover, both interest rate and regional factors have an influence on tax evasion.

This paper presents evidence that since 1980, relative to native-born Americans and other immigrants, the earnings of Taiwanese immigrants have grown rapidly as they assimilate into the U.S. economy. Consistent with the existing U.S. evidence, I show that most of the immigrant–native earnings gaps can be explained by endowments, and the importance of endowments continues to increase. The estimates indicate that the improved endowments from education and U.S. experience, along with rising returns to both factors, largely explain Taiwanese immigrants’ economic assimilation experience. I show that more recently arrival cohorts of Taiwanese immigrants have earned more than the older ones since 1980.

This study examines how and why the gap between economic growth and real wage growth in Taiwan is widening, a phenomenon that contrasts sharply with South Korea, which has a similar industrial structure to that of Taiwan. We empirically demonstrate that, despite the continued growth of labor productivity, the benefits from economic growth allocated to workers have been falling, and that this process has accelerated following the 2008–2009 financial crisis. The labor market institutional effect contributed partially to the problem. Workers’ purchasing power, measured by the real consumption wage rate, has been declining for a relatively long period, implying significant deterioration of terms-of-trade, and cutting real wage growth by as much as 2.23% per year. The terms-of-trade effect is particularly prominent in the manufacturing sector, which is highly export-oriented. Moreover, we found cash wages to be very sensitive to the rise in the rate of unemployment, and to the changes in output performance of the industry in which the workers are employed. The latter factor significantly reduced the cash wages paid to workers in the manufacturing sector, which highlighted the waning of workers’ bargaining power regarding wages, as well as the negative impact of globalization on the labor market. We therefore conclude that the deterioration of terms-of-trade, increases in the aggregate unemployment rate, the adverse globalization effect and the institutional effect might be the main driving forces for real wage stagnancy in Taiwan.

Globalization has caused many countries to experience significant slowdown, thus, tourism development becomes the primary policy to stimulate the economy. Investigating the demand of leisure activities is necessary for the development of a tourism industry with sound policies. This research adopts demographic data to allocate the factors affecting participation decisions and utilizes semi-nonparametric (SNP) regressions to analyze household decision regarding domestic and international trips. By combining a parametric component with a nonparametric component, the SNP method increases the flexibility of participation decision models from relaxing distributional assumptions. The results of this study reveal that decision-making for both domestic and international trips is jointly determined. Various factors, including income, capital gain ratio, age and education, are decisive to trip types, indicating the market segmentation of tourism businesses. Moreover, SNP regression performs superior to the traditional bivariate probit model, suggesting that the model developed in this research can provide comprehensive results for policy implications.

Since the economic consequences of a low fertility rate, such as a change in consumption patterns, might affect the path of economic growth, this study investigates how the relationship between the low fertility rate and consumption behavior in Taiwan has changed over time. Using county-level panel data from 1995 to 2014 to examine the impact of the low fertility rate on the consumption behavior of households in Taiwan, the major finding of this study is that a low fertility rate will change the behavior and the composition of consumption. A low fertility rate will increase the share of the total consumption expenditure in a household’s disposable income, in particular, in relation to the consumption categories of food, health care, education, and transportation and communication, but will decrease the share of expenditure on clothing in the household’s disposable income.

This paper aims to investigate the following two issues related to internal migration in Taiwan: one is the widely discussed issue of the existence of magnetic effects induced by welfare benefits and the other is a rarely discussed issue of the existence of phantom voters. Using panel data for 23 counties and cities from 1995 to 2010 and estimating three fixed-effects spatial Durbin models, the primary findings of this study are that, by keeping other factors constant and considering the spatial dependence of migration, welfare migration is found to exist, particularly for females, and the number of phantom voters in an election year can significantly affect internal migration in Taiwan.

This paper investigates the effect of exchange rate volatility on bilateral trade between Taiwan and Indonesia via 19 export and import industries. Considering the existence of an asymmetric effect of exchange rate volatility on trade, we employ an asymmetric ARDL model and arrive at the following main results. First, the long-run asymmetric effect of exchange rate volatility shows far higher impacts on Taiwan’s exports to Indonesia than on Taiwan’s imports from Indonesia. Second, the short-run asymmetric effect of exchange rate volatility causes unstable changes on the trade amounts for most of Taiwan’s export and import industries with Indonesia.