Capitalizing China

Despite a vast accumulation of private capital, China is not embracing capitalism. Deceptively familiar capitalist features disguise the profoundly unfamiliar foundations of “market socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), by controlling the career advancement of all senior personnel in all regulatory agencies, all state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and virtually all major financial institutions state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and senior Party positions in all but the smallest non-SOE enterprises, retains sole possession of Lenin’s Commanding Heights. This manuscript introduces the chapters comprising the NBER volume Capitalizing China (Fan and Morck, eds. 2012), which examine China’s high savings rate, banking system, financial markets, financial regulations, corporate governance, and public finances; and consider policy alternatives the CCP might consider if its goal is China’s elevation into the ranks of high income countries.

Institutions and Foreign Investment: China versus the World

Weak institutions ought to deter foreign direction investment (FDI), and mass media stories highlight China's institutional deficiencies, yet China is now one of the world's largest FDI destinations. This incongruity characterizes China's paradoxical growth. Cross-country regressions show that China's FDI inflow is not exceptionally large, given the quality of its institutions and its economic track record. Institutions clearly determine a country's allure as an FDI destination, but standard measures of institutional quality can be problematic for countries undergoing rapid institutional development, and can usefully be augmented by economic track record measures. Deng Xiaoping's 1993 "southern tour" heralded sweeping reforms, and this regime shift is insufficiently reflected in commonly used measures of institutional quality. China's FDI inflow surge after these reforms resembles similar post-regime shift surges in the East Bloc, and so is also unexceptional. Recent arguments that China's FDI inflow is inefficiently large because weak institutions deter domestic investment while special initiatives attract FDI are thus either unsupported or not unique to China.

Does"good government"draw foreign capital ? Explaining China's exceptional foreign direct investment inflow

China is now the world's largest destination of foreign direct investment (FDI), despite assessments highlighting its institutional deficiencies. But this FDI inflow corresponds closely to predicted FDI flows into China from a model that predicts FDI inflow based on government quality indicators and controls and is estimated across a sample of other weak-institution countries. The only real discrepancy is that, if government quality is measured by constraints on executive power, China receives somewhat more FDI than the model predicts. This might reflect an underestimation of the strength of these constraints in China, a unique institutional setting for FDI operations, FDI based on expected future institutional improvements, or a unique Chinese model of development. The authors conclude that Ockham's razor disfavors the last. They also note that FDI may be elevated because Chinese institutions protect foreign firms better than domestic ones.Foreign Direct Investment,Economic Theory&Research,Legal Products,Investment and Investment Climate,Parliamentary Government

Pastoral Premarital Counseling for Bi-cultural Traditional Chinese and Chinese American Couples

This ministry focus paper provides a premarital counseling manual based on partnership in tnarriage for pastors who counsel bicultural couples. Bicultural is defined as couples that include a traditional Chinese Christian and Chinese American Christian. The paper\u27s thesis is that a pastoral pretnarital counseling manual can be developed for couples that include a traditional Chinese Christian and a Chinese American Christian in a bi-cultural relationship. Traditional Chinese Christians are influenced deeply by traditional Chinese culture, and their behavior and cultural patterns are relatively unaffected by Atnerican culture. Chinese American Christians are raised in America and embrace American culture, behavior, and cultural patterns. When individuals from these differing backgrounds tnarry, many difficulties tnay etnerge in their tnarriages. This manual addresses the importance of pastoral premarital counseling and provides guidelines for pastors. The tnanual uses the theological concepts of partnership in marriage, support, and tnutual subtnission. The paper addresses the problem of bi-cultural marriage and the varying assutnptions and expectations of the traditional Chinese and Chinese American cultures. It also looks at other proposed solutions and analyzes thetn from a biblical perspective. The author presents the thesis and its scriptural support. He incorporates and explains Adam and Eve\u27s pre-fall partnership, Jesus\u27 views on marriage and divorce, and Paul\u27s concept of tnutual submission. The paper includes the manual as a practical solution to the pastoral pre-marital counseling challenge

Pif1-family helicases cooperatively suppress widespread replication-fork arrest at tRNA genes

Saccharomyces cerevisiae encodes two distinct Pif1-family helicases – Pif1 and Rrm3 – which have been reported to play distinct roles in numerous nuclear processes. Here, we systematically characterize the roles of Pif1 helicases in replisome progression and lagging-strand synthesis in S. cerevisiae. We demonstrate that either Pif1 or Rrm3 redundantly stimulate strand-displacement by DNA polymerase δ during lagging-strand synthesis. By analyzing replisome mobility in pif1 and rrm3 mutants, we show that Rrm3, with a partially redundant contribution from Pif1, suppresses widespread terminal arrest of the replisome at tRNA genes. Although both head-on and codirectional collisions induce replication fork arrest at tRNA genes, head-on collisions arrest a higher proportion of replisomes. Consistent with this observation, we find that head-on collisions between tRNA transcription and replication are under-represented in the S. cerevisiae genome. We demonstrate that tRNA-mediated arrest is R-loop independent, and propose that replisome arrest and DNA damage are mechanistically separable

Impact of the Great Recession on Middle Class Americans

This research paper studies the effect of the Great Recession (Late-2000s Recession) on middle-class Americans. It will analyze and cover the extent of the impact through evaluating data on several factors, such as the percent of the middle class in college, percent female participation rate, single parent households (female householder), middle class income, unemployment rate, and several other factors from the years 1970 to 2010. This research will offer insight into the extent of the Great Recession’s impact on the middle-class and identify which key factors had the most significant effect