| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this dissertation is applying microeconometric techniques to further investigate some important topics in the world. This dissertation is composed of three self-contained empirical essays. The first question that arises concerns the size distribution of Chinese cities. Since China’s experience with high economic growth has undergone dramatic change following the reforms initiated in 1978, which not only introduced economic incentives, but also encouraged urbanization. Thus, the central purpose of first chapter is to investigate the trend of the size distribution of cities and the factors that may contribute to the change in the size distribution of cities in China. Thus the empirical data are obtained from the 1984-2008 period to examine the size distribution of China’s cities. The results indicate that the size distribution of Chinese cities is more equal than would be predicted by Zipf’s Law. According to our results, the possible explanations for the more even distribution of large cities relative to the smaller ones is related to China’s government expenditures and industrial structure. Finally, we find that economic growth promotes population concentration and that lower transportation costs will promote population concentration.
The second research question investigated the determinants of China’s outward direct investment (ODI). We first analyze the structure and dynamics of China’s ODI over the past decade, highlighting its specific types. Based on the analysis, this study then proposes three testable hypotheses including technology sourcing, resource seeking, and political linkage. Various estimates show that technology sourcing is supported moderately, whereas resource seeking serves one of primary driving forces. Crucially, the motive of political linkage is significantly related to ODI and it is particularly relevant to developing destinations. This finding indicates that China tends to invest in developing countries with high political risk, which is in contrast with the prediction of the FDI theory. Furthermore, a developing country with high political risk seems to be the favored destination for China’s ODI to acquire technologies and resources.
The final research question focused on examining relationship between renewable energy and GDP and how renewable energy impacts GDP. The empirical data are obtained from for 70 countries from 1980 to 2010. The result shows that an increase in renewable energy would stimulate to increase GDP. We further to investigate the mechanism of how the renewable energy impacts GDP, according to our results we notice that an increase in renewable energy would lead to increase capital formation and decrease imports of energy therefore lead to the increase of GDP. The results of causality test revealed that the bidirectional relationship between GDP to renewable energy in developed and developing countries. The results of causality test show bidirectional causality between renewable energy and capital formation both in developed and developing countries. Nevertheless, the result indicates unidirectional causality between imports of energy to renewable energy in developed countries, and no causality between imports of energy to renewable energy in developing countries. | en_US |