Geographic clusters, regional productivity and resource reallocation across firms: Evidence from China

We link industrial clusters, regional productivity and resource reallocation efficiency with geographical and sectoral disaggregated data. Based on a county-industry level panel from 1998 to 2007 in China, we find that industrial clusters significantly increase local industries' productivity by lifting the average firm productivity and reallocating resources from less to more productive firms. Moreover, we find major mechanisms through which resource reallocation is improved within clusters: (i) clusters are associated with a higher firm turnover with increased entry and exit rates simultaneously; and (ii) within clusters' environment, the dispersion of individual firm's markup is significantly reduced, indicating intensified local competition within clusters. Such results suggest that industrial clusters in China help improve regional productivity and resource allocation efficiency with intensified competition and accelerated firm dynamics. The identification issues are carefully addressed by two-stage estimations with instrumental variables and other robustness checks

Net Phosphorus Requirements of Dorper×Thin-tailed Han Crossbred Ram Lambs

A comparative slaughter trial was conducted to estimate the phosphorus (P) requirement for maintenance and growth of crossbred lambs of Dorper with a Chinese indigenous sheep breed, thin-tailed Han sheep. Thirty-five Dorper×thin-tailed Han crossbred, noncastrated ram lambs (20.3±0.22 kg of shrunk body weight (SBW)) were used. Seven lambs were randomly chosen and slaughtered at 20 kg SBW as the baseline group for measuring initial body composition. Another seven lambs were also randomly chosen and offered a pelleted mixed diet for ad libitum intake and slaughtered at 28 kg SBW. The remaining 21 sheep were randomly divided into 3 groups with 7 sheep each and subject to the same diet of either 70 or 40% of ad libitum intake. The 3 groups were slaughtered when the sheep fed ad libitum reached 35 kg of SBW. Body P contents were determined after slaughter. The results showed that the net P requirement for maintenance was 30.0 mg/kg of empty body weight (EBW) or 23.4 mg/kg body weight (BW), and the P requirement for growth decreased from 5.3 to 5.0 g/kg of EBW gain as the lamb grew from 20 to 35 kg. The net P requirement for growth of Dorper×thin-tailed Han crossbred ram lambs was lower than that of sheep adopted by the American nutritional system

Political economy of private firms in China

National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean government (NRF-2013S1A5B8A01054955); Hong Kong RGC General Research Fund Project No 756711 and HKU791113B; RGC Theme-based ResearchScheme (TRS) (T31-717 112-R

Corrigendum to: The TianQin project: current progress on science and technology

In the originally published version, this manuscript included an error related to indicating the corresponding author within the author list. This has now been corrected online to reflect the fact that author Jun Luo is the corresponding author of the article