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The purpose of this paper is to estimate the causal effect of minimum wages on the employment of low-skilled workers in less developed regions of China.

Based on data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, a double-difference (DD) methodology is used to compare the employment of low-skilled individuals before and after a minimum wage increase in their provinces with a comparison group of individuals in provinces that did not have a minimum wage increase. Also, a triple-difference methodology (DDD) is used that also includes an additional control group of highly educated workers as a within-province internal comparison group that should not be affected by a minimum wage increase.

No evidence of an adverse employment effect is found in any of the 36 different estimates, consistent with recent US evidence that uses a similar DD methodology.

The data are not national representative; rather heavily weighted towards the less developed Central, Western and parts of the Eastern Regions of China. This may partially explain the absence of the theoretically expected adverse employment effect. Other related reasons are discussed, including: lack of enforcement in those less developed regions; a large presence of state-owned enterprises in the regions where employment security clause remains intact; the relatively less developed labour markets in the regions including where employers may behave in a monopsony fashion in their labour markets; shock effects; and cost offsets from reduced fringe benefits and increases in the pace of work. This paper was unable to disentangle the separate effect of these possible factors.

This is one of the few studies on minimum wages in China to focus on low-skilled workers in less developed regions, to use individuals as the unit of observation rather than aggregates, and to provide causal estimates based on DD and DDD methodologies.

This study aims to analyse what factors influence ethnic minority group (EMG) college students’ attitudes towards promoting online start-ups and how their different attitudes impact their final online start-up behaviours on the live streaming platform. Based on the COM-B behaviour changing model and the theory of liberal and conservative attitudes, the research model has been established in this study, and it divides influencing factors into the environmental opportunity unit and personal capability unit.

To test relationships among the environmental opportunity, personal capability and personal attitude units, the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling have been applied on the SmartPLS. Meanwhile, this study considers the regional difference between China’s developed and less-developed regions and promotes multi-group analysis based on it.

Research results show that the online start-up opportunity and capability positively affect EMG college students’ liberal attitudes but reduce EMGs’ conservative attitudes. Meanwhile, this study finds four significant differences, such as the path between conservative attitude and EMG students’ online start-up behaviour and the path between online start-up capability and conservative attitude.

This paper analyses the relationship between influencing factors and EMG students’ online start-up attitudes based on the COM-B behaviour changing model, contributing to the theoretical implications. Meanwhile, considering the impact of regional differences, this paper promotes the multi-group analysis and compares EMG college students from developed regions and others from less-developed areas.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

This study aims to investigate whether the presence of female directors on audit committees affects audit fees in Chinese listed companies. This study also investigates whether the audit committee’s gender diversity moderates the relationship between the firm’s inherent situational factors (e.g. audit complexity and firm risk) and audit fees. Finally, this study investigates whether the effect of the audit committee’s gender diversity on audit fees varies with within-country institutional contingencies (e.g. state-owned enterprises [SOEs] vs non-SOEs and firms that are located in more developed regions vs firms that are located in less developed regions)

This study used the data of all A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges for the period from 2009 to 2015. The authors use ordinary least squares regression as a baseline methodology, along with firm fixed effect, Deference in Deference method, two-stage least squares regression, two-stage Heckman model and generalized method of moments models to control for the possible issue of endogeneity.

The study’s findings suggest that the presence of female directors on the audit committee improves internal monitoring and communication, which reduce the perceived audit risk and the need for assurances from external auditors. The results also suggest that female directors demand high-quality audits and further assurance from external auditors when the firm is more complex and riskier. In addition, the results suggest that within-country, institutional factors play significant role in shaping the governance role of gender-diverse audit committee.

The study contributes to the agency theory by providing evidence that the interaction between agency theory and corporate governance “board composition” generates an effective monitoring mechanism and contributing to the institutional theory by finding that role of female directors on audit committee varies from context to another. In addition, this study contributes to literature review of gender diversity in the boardroom by finding the economic benefit of having female directors on audit committee. Finally, this study has implications for policy-makers in promoting regulations to legalize women presence on the board, to external auditors in assessing control risk during planning the audit, to those who responsible for appointing audit committee members.

The authors extend earlier studies by providing novel evidence on the relationship between gender-diverse audit committees and audit fees in terms of both the supply- and demand-side perspectives; that female directors moderate the relationship between firm inherent situational factors (e.g. audit complexity and firm risk) and audit fees; and that the effect of audit committees’ gender diversity on audit fees varies with sub-national institutional contingencies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of lean practices by manufacturing companies in regions of low economic and technological development and to compare findings with previous studies from more developed regions highlighting important contextual differences. The paper uses the contingency theory to explore how contextual variables and scarce resources influence the adoption of lean practices.

A survey of 233 manufacturing firms was conducted in the State of Pará in the Amazon Region of Brazil.

The results demonstrate that six internal lean practices (single minute exchange of dies, human resource management, continuous flow, total productive maintenance, pull and statistical process control) and two external lean practices (supplier feedback and customer involvement) are implemented. However, the two external lean practices of just-in-time delivery by suppliers and supplier development were not implemented. Furthermore, from the 36 operating items comprised in eight lean practices that are being used, 13 were not implemented. As such, compared to developed regions, there is evidence for a more fragmented implementation in less developed regions. The results reveal empirical evidence explained by the contingency perspective, such as national, geographical, strategic context and culture.

There is broad evidence on lean implementation in developed and developing countries in the literature. However, little is known about lean implementation in poorer regions of developing counties. This is one of the first studies mapping lean implementation in a region with low economic and technological development. This has important implications for research and practice, especially to cross-country/cultural research on operation management.

This study is concerned with the separate output effects of female and male education, as well as output effects of the educational gender gap. Several recent empirical studies have examined the gender effects of education on economic growth or on output level using the much exploited, familiar cross-country data. This paper aims to undertake a similar study of the gender effects of education on economic growth using a panel data across the provinces of Turkey for the period 1975-2000.

The theoretical basis of the estimating equations is the neoclassical growth model augmented to include separate female and male education capital and health capital variables. The methodology the authors use includes robust regression on pooled panel data controlling for regional and time effects. The results are found to be robust to a number of sensitivity analyses, such as elimination of outlier observations, controls for simultaneity and measurement errors, controls for omitted variables by including regional dummy variables, steady-state versus growth equations and different samples of developed and less-developed provinces of Turkey.

The main findings indicate that female education positively and significantly affects the steady-state level of labor productivity, while the effect of male education is in general either positive or insignificant. Separate examination of the effect of educational gender gap was to reduce output.

As evident in the literature, there is controversy surrounding the gender effects of education on growth. This paper provides new evidence on this issue from the perspective of a single country rather than a cross-country viewpoint.

The unequal distribution of economic activities, transposed in economic, social and territorial disparities is the general characteristic of the European economy. Gaps increased in the context of European Union (EU) enlargement towards Eastern and Central Europe and of the economic crisis, thus bringing new differentiations among member states’ economies. The main aim of the chapter is to emphasise the centre-periphery differentiations in the European economy, by using a composite index of peripherality, in order to better understand the determinants of growth and convergence in Central and Eastern European countries and to reach normative conclusions for increasing Cohesion Policy (CP) effectiveness. The first part of the chapter provides a short overview of the main theories and models of the peripherality analysis and the relationships between the centre and the periphery, in order to find out how this analysis relates to the research in the field. The second part provides a comparative analysis of the evolution of European economies during 2003–2014, in order to find out whether the EU enlargement process stabilised the EU core-periphery pattern or, on the contrary, the process of core-periphery structural convergence occurred. The third part includes the suggested model of analysis (methodology, data, and main results) from a multidisciplinary perspective, underlining the centre-periphery differentiations on the two axes, North–South and West–East. The results have been interpreted in conclusions, with a focus on their relevance for the European CP challenges.

The chapter provides a radiography of the 2014–2020 Cohesion Policy, focusing on both main continuity and innovation elements (in terms of objectives, implementation rules and financial allocations) and on some of the likely effects of the current rules on the new European Union (EU) non-euro member countries. The closer link between EU funds and EU economic governance, which has been introduced in the current financial period, has the potential to influence negatively the evolution of the EU regional development disparities, especially in the EU eastern periphery. These new conditionalities (ex-ante and macroeconomic), whose main effects, in the case of non-compliance, would be the suspension of EU funds, might deteriorate even more the economic situation, particularly in those regions with the greatest needs in terms of infrastructure or administrative capacity. The Romanian case is particularly relevant for this debate.

The purpose of this research is to study what factors influence European citizens in their interaction with government in the EU regions. It analyses the differences across European regions, taking account of each region’s degree of economic development and incorporating different spatially tailored approaches into the analysis.

A logistic regression analysis was used to establish whether the profiles of e-Government users differ according to the development tier they live in and other explanatory variables: socio-demographic, digital skills and type of internet connection.

This research identifies regional inequalities in EU citizens’ digital behaviour with public administration. This statistical study of European regions allows to better apprehend the profile of the EU’s e-citizens and offers conclusions to explain citizens’ behaviour, highlighting the influence of several variables.

Given the lack of pan-European e-government studies at a regional level, this article provides a comparative analysis for the European Union and gives insights into the behaviour of European e-citizens, highlighting the presence of digital inequalities in Europe depending on the region where citizens reside.