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This study explores the impact of parents’ and children’s early expectations on children’s later school persistence and completion of compulsory and secondary education, paying special attention to the parent-child agreement in early educational expectations. Results from analyzing longitudinal data from the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF) show that children often carry educational expectations quite different from their parents’. Consistent with previous research, children’s and their parents’ early expectations are strong predictors of children’s later educational attainment. More importantly, the analysis reveals that children benefit greatly when they share with their parents’ high expectations. Those children whose high expectations aligned with their parents fair best in later educational outcomes: They are more likely to complete compulsory education and secondary education. The combined determination of parents and children can help moderate the negative impact of poverty and facilitate children’s continued efforts in fulfilling their expectations. This positive impact holds even for children from the most impoverished families. This study points to the importance to recognize that there are non-material resources that family could provide to advance children’s education.

This chapter examines China’s corporate governance and accounting environment that shapes the adoption of internationally acceptable principles and standards. Specifically, it examines international influences, including supranational organizations; foreign investors and international accounting firms; domestic institutional influences, including the political system, economic system, legal system, and cultural system; and accounting infrastructure. China’s convergence is driven by desired efficiency of the corporate sector and legitimacy of participating in the global market. Influenced heavily by international forces in the context of globalization, corporate governance and accounting practices are increasingly becoming in line with internationally acceptable standards and codes. While convergence assists China in obtaining legitimacy, improving efficiency is likely to be adversely affected given that corporate governance and accounting in China operate in an environment that differs considerably from those of Anglo-American countries. An examination of the corporate governance and accounting environment in China suggests heavy government involvement within underdeveloped institutions. While the Chinese government has made impressive progress in developing the corporate governance and accounting environment for the market economy, China’s unique institutional setting is likely to affect how the imported concepts are interpreted and implemented.

This chapter proposes semiparametric estimation of the relationship between growth rate of GDP per capita, growth rates of physical and human capital, labor as well as other covariates and common trends for a panel of 23 OECD countries observed over the period 1971–2015. The observed differentiated behaviors by country reveal strong heterogeneity. This is the motivation behind using a mixed fixed- and random coefficients model to estimate this relationship. In particular, this chapter uses a semiparametric specification with random intercepts and slopes coefficients. Motivated by Lee and Wand (2016), the authors estimate a mean field variational Bayes semiparametric model with random coefficients for this panel of countries. Results reveal nonparametric specifications for the common trends. The use of this flexible methodology may enrich the empirical growth literature underlining a large diversity of responses across variables and countries.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission has a detrimental impact on climate change. There is an increasing trend for firms to use disclosure to signal stakeholders about its environmental responsibilities and performance in dealing with climate change. China is one of the countries producing the most carbon emissions. Over the last decade, Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are becoming important players in international trade. However, the existing literature provides limited evidence on how Chinese SOEs influence GHG disclosure. Through the lens of stakeholder–agency theory, this chapter studies the top 300 listed firms to examine the relationship between Chinese SOEs and the likelihood of GHG disclosure. The result suggests a negative relationship between Chinese SOEs and the likelihood of GHG disclosure. This could be explained as a consequence of the managers' political self-interests, economic and policy-oriented decision-making process and the power differentials between the government and SOE managers. This research extends the GHG literature to Chinese SOEs context, providing direct evidence on how state ownership impacts on GHG disclosure.

This chapter seeks to analyse neighbouring in times of rapid change in the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai. Using the local neighbourhood of Tianzifang as a case study, this chapter shows how the pace of change in Shanghai since the 1950s has reshaped the social fabric of the area, including traditional neighbour relations. As Tianzifang has shifted from an unknown neighbourhood comprised of traditional lilong dwellings, where social relations played out in private communal settings, to one of Shanghai’s most famous tourist spots, the relationships between residents, as well as with ‘outsiders’ and the familiar local environment, have also changed. Traditional neighbourly ties have been broken, rebuilt and transformed again through waves of new residents coming into the area and the displacement of others who can no longer afford to live there. For those who remain, the question of who is, and thus who is not, a ‘real’ neighbour has been narrowed to include only ‘insiders’ with a deep sense of belonging and connection to the area – i.e. the urban working class who have always lived in Tianzifang and own rather than rent their homes. Yet even this is no longer sufficient. The disruption that Tianzifang’s physical and social transformation has brought to residents’ lives has also imposed new social norms about how neighbours should behave in this new, intermediary space of public and private. ‘Real’ neighbours are those who conform to changing social norms while neighbours who breach them can be ostracised and excluded by others who once saw them as an insider.

We take a state-stewardship view on corporate governance and executive compensation in economies with strong political involvement, where state-appointed managers act as responsible “stewards” rather than “agents” of the state.

We test this view on China and find that Chinese managers are remunerated not for maximizing equity value but for increasing the value of state-owned assets.

Managerial compensation depends on political connections and prestige, and on the firms’ contribution to political goals. These effects were attenuated since the market-oriented governance reform.

Economic reform without reforming the human resources policies at the executive level enables the autocratic state to exert political power on corporate decision making, so as to ensure that firms’ business activities fulfill the state’s political objectives.

As a powerful social elite, the state-steward managers in China have the same interests as the state (the government), namely extracting rents that should adhere to the nation (which stands for the society at large or the collective private citizens).

As China has been a communist country with a single ruling party for decades, the ideas of socialism still have a strong impact on how companies are run. The legitimacy of the elite’s privileged rights over private sectors is central to our question.

Chinese executive compensation stimulates not only the maximization of shareholder value but also the preservation of the state’s interests.

Special education in China has lagged behind regular education for many years, however, the past few decades, the government has made considerable efforts to develop and improve the special education system. While the citizens of China have had a generic moral interest in disability since ancient times, the development of special education schools did not occur until American and European missionaries started schools for the visually and hearing impaired in the 19th century. The next major influence in the development of the special education system occurred with China’s Cultural Revolution in 1978. Interestingly, there is not any exclusive legislation on special education but in the 1980s, the government started Learning in Regular Classrooms (LRC), which is China’s version of inclusion. LRC has progressed rapidly the past two decades; however, the quality of instruction is low due to a lack of specialists, a shortage of personnel, inadequate funding, and limited technology as well as other barriers that are delineated in the chapter. The chapter emphasizes the government’s recent efforts in in-service teacher training, the preparation of preservice teachers, working with families, developing community rehabilitation training programs, and implementing evidence-based practices. Special education in China today is at a good place but it has quite a way from the ideal situation.