Narrow Results

This paper estimates the smooth transition autoregressive model with exogenous variables to evaluate the effects of stock market returns on the exchange-traded funds’ (ETFs) returns in China with reserve requirement ratio (RRR) from monetary policy as a transition variable. The sample used in this study lasts from March 4, 2005 to June 30, 2017. The empirical result points out that there is the effect of RRR value on the relationship between stock market returns and ETF return. Moreover, these effects are variable depending on the conversion and its changes over time in different variations of threshold intervals. Lastly, the larger the change of China’s stock market variables’ lag period, the smaller the impacts on Chinese ETF return.

This paper empirically investigates the impact of China’s OFDI on the industrial structure upgrading of countries along the Belt and Road (B&R) and examines the threshold effect of the infrastructure levels on that impact based on the panel data of 52 B&R countries from 2006 to 2017. The results show that China’s OFDI can significantly promote the industrial structure upgrading of B&R countries and that the Belt and Road initiative implementation can help to strengthen the promoting effects of China’s OFDI in the comprehensive FGLS, the Diff-GMM and the System GMM estimation. Moreover, China’s technology transfer OFDI has the greatest promotion effect, followed by capital transfer OFDI; labor transfer OFDI has the least promotion effect. China’s OFDI plays a larger role in promoting the industrial structure upgrading of Central Asia and South Asia countries, followed by ASEAN and CIS countries and it plays a smaller role in West Asia and Central-Eastern Europe countries. There is a threshold effect of the B&R countries’ infrastructure level. When the transportation infrastructure, energy infrastructure, communication infrastructure and overall infrastructure levels exceed the corresponding thresholds, the promoting effect of China’s OFDI will be further enhanced in the comprehensive FGLS estimation. Our study proposes that under the Belt and Road initiative, to improve the infrastructure level of the B&R countries, and to increase the effectiveness of China’s OFDI in promoting the industrial structure upgrading of the B&R countries, China should further strengthen international cooperation, expand outward investment, and strengthen the infrastructure connectivity construction with B&R countries.

We study the nonlinear effects of raw material prices measured by that of cotton product on the economic growth of a sample of African countries for the period of 1991–2019. Using the procedure for determining endogenous thresholds (Hansen, 1999) [Threshold effects in non-dynamic panels: Estimation, testing, and inference. Journal of Econometrics, 93, 345–368], the study revealed that raw material prices positively affect economic growth when the prices reach a threshold above 96.1. These results indicate that to be effective, any economic policy measure aimed at accelerating the economic growth of these commodity-dependent countries must take into account the level of raw material price indices, the quality of governance, and the level of financial development.