Scientific Empirical Evidence Research Articles

Health welfare in the digital era: Exploring the impact of digital trade on residents' health

As a product combining information and communication technology, digital technology, and traditional trade, digital trade represents a new form of international trade development in the context of economic globalization. As its scale continues to expand, digital trade not only profoundly impacts consumer health behaviors and environmental pollution control but also enhances opportunities for residents to access healthcare products and services. This could potentially have a significant promoting effect on residents' health levels. However, the extent and mechanisms through which digital trade affects residents' health remain unclear. Accordingly, this study fills in a gap in the research by calculating the provincial-level digital trade index for China from 2012–2020 and matching it with data from the China Family Panel Studies. The goal is to find the micro-causal mechanisms of digital trade on residents' health from green consumption and environmental improvement perspectives. The results show that digital trade reduces residents' medical expenses and improves their health. We use a quasi-natural experiment by treating the cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone as a digital trade treatment group and conducting a difference-in-differences estimation, finding that the health effects of digital trade remain significant. Heterogeneity indicates that the health effects of digital trade are powerful for middle- and high-income households and rural residents. In the east and center, in regions with well-developed transportation infrastructure and digital financial inclusion, the development of digital trade is more conducive to residents' health. Additionally, we demonstrate that digital trade can affect residents' health by promoting green consumption, eliminating energy poverty (i.e., improving indoor air pollution), and enhancing environmental quality (i.e., improving outdoor environmental pollution). This study provides solid scientific empirical evidence for enhancing human sustainable development through global digital trade.

How the rural infrastructure construction drives rural economic development through rural living environment governance—case study of 285 cities in China

With deepening of rural revitalization strategy, rural infrastructure construction plays an important role in local economic development and living environment governance. Based on the mediation model, this paper takes case study of 285 cities in China from 2017 to 2022 as samples, constructs the explanatory variable, the explained variable and the mediator variable by entropy method, empirically analyzes the impact of rural infrastructure construction on rural living environment governance and rural economic development, as well as the mediation role played by rural living environment governance. It is found that there is a significant positive impact between rural infrastructure construction and rural economic development, and rural infrastructure construction can promote economic development through rural living environment governance. Further analysis show that the impact of rural infrastructure construction on rural economic development presents heterogeneity, and the impacts of rural infrastructure construction on local economic development and on local economic development through living environment governance in the eastern and central China is stronger than that in the western China. After controlling a series of variables related to rural infrastructure construction, and performing endogeneity tests and robustness tests such as tail-shrinkage regression and principal component analysis, the regression results are still robust. This paper firstly provides scientific empirical evidence for the hypothesis that rural infrastructure construction promotes local economic development through rural living environment governance, and secondly confirms the necessity of strengthening rural infrastructure construction in China to promote rural revitalization, providing a policy basis for scientific decision-making, and finally finds an important way out to solve the problem of unbalanced economic development in rural areas to some extent.

The art of painting chromosome loops.

How to get a metre of DNA into a tiny space while preserving its functional characteristics? This question seems easy to pose, but the answer is far from being trivial. Facing this riddle, salvation came from technical improvements in microscopy and in situ hybridisation techniques applied to cytogenetics. Here, we would like to look into the past at one of these pure cytogenetics articles that makes a breakthrough in addressing this question in plant science. Our choice fell on the work published two decades ago by Fransz et al. (2002). Besides the elegant manner in which DNA probes were organised to bring into light the out-looping arrangement of interphase chromosomes in Arabidopsis thaliana nuclei, this article perfectly illustrates that painting is not reserved to the fine art. As for whether emotional expression prioritised by artists can sometimes hide behind scientific empirical evidence, there is only a small step to make to the general case.

Do Short Selling and Margin Trading Affect Price Randomness?

Purpose: Both short sellers and margin traders believe in active investment. However, they have the opposite opinions about the prediction of future share price direction: while short sellers are those who predict future price declines, investors buying on margin are those who predict future share price increases. Short selling and margin trading are generally perceived to intensify stock price volatility and undermine market stability. However, this general perception in investment practice lacks in scientific empirical evidence. This paper investigates the effect of short selling and margin trading on stock price randomness in Korean stock market. Design/methodology/approach: The random walk hypothesis has been tested for many equity markets since Lo and MacKinley (1988) work, which proposes the variance ratio test for the random walk hypothesis. The Dickey-Fuller unit root test or the Box-Pierce Q test are widely used to test the stock price efficiency. However, Lo and MacKinley (1989) indicate that the variance ratio test is more reliable and more powerful than the two tests. Ayadi and Pyun (1994) also acknowledge that the variance ratio test is more appealing than other traditional tests for the random walk. Findings: Our main findings are as follows. Short selling increases variance ratios, suggesting that short selling decreases the degree of price randomness. However, margin trading is negatively related to variance ratios. Short selling makes stock prices more predictable; on the contrary, margin trading makes stock prices more random. Dividing by market, short selling and margin trading is more active in the KOSPI market than the KOSDAQ market. The variance ratio test shows that short selling in KOSPI market exacerbates price randomness compared to KOSDAQ market. We also find that a significant and positive relation between short selling and absolute deviation of the variance ratio when short selling is constrained. Research limitations/implications: Our study tried to provide new implications to both practitioners and academicians by analyzing the effects of short selling and margin trading on price randomness, a major aspect of market efficiency. However, this study still has some limitations in that the effect of short selling and margin trading on market efficiency has not been completely fully analyzed. Therefore, we expect that further studies on the effects of short selling and margin trading on market efficiency will be conducted to provide additional implications. Originality/value: Our study uses the same data in analyzing the impact of short selling and margin trading. Thus, compared to two separate strands of studies on short selling and margin trading, our study would facilitate the comparison of the empirical results on the impact of these two investment methods. Analyzing and comparing the effects of two investment methods on the same data would enhance the reliability of the comparative empirical results.

One anthropologist’s answer to Glenn D. Paige’s question challenging peace studies

ABSTRACTGlenn D. Paige pioneered in the revolutionary development of a far-reaching transformation of science, academia, and society from a killing to a nonkilling worldview, values, and attitudes. For six decades, anthropology has been accumulating scientific empirical evidence and rational arguments demonstrating that nonkilling societies exist, thereby rebutting the simplistic biological determinist myth that human nature inevitably and universally generates violence and war. Nevertheless, Hobbessians persist in their echo chamber advertising and celebrating the innate depravity of the human species as apologists for war and peace resisters. This systemic bias operates in synergy with the American industrial-military-media-academic complex and culture, the latter exemplified by a revealing comparison of war and football. With great intellectual courage and creative thinking, Paige critically challenges the anachronistic Hobbesian paradigm and offers a far more compelling and positive alternative for sustainable peace in the future.

Equity, quantum physics, dreamtime and nature's title

The origins of the equitable jurisdiction were premised on correcting defects in the common law to prevent unconscionable conduct. Although property law presupposes separation of person from place, a court of equity may be persuaded by scientific evidence, which supports an interconnected and interdependent world, where person cannot be separated from nature, nor from place. Australian aboriginal dreamtime practices underscored the High Court’s decision to overturn the terra nullius doctrine, giving rise to native title recognition. These same practices could with additional scientific empirical evidence give support for a court of equity to acknowledge rights for nature.

The Broken Family and Juvenile Delinquency: Scientific Explanation or Ideology?

The relationship between broken homes and juvenile delinquency was widely accepted from about 1900 until 1932. Then the broken home was rejected for a period of time. In the past 20 years, there has been a revival of interest in the broken home as an important factor in predicting delinquency. More recent studies have provided contradictory evidence; some evidence supports the hypothesis, while other evidence fails to support it. It is the contention here that these periods of varying acceptance reflect changing cultural and ideological conditions rather than scientific empirical evidence. Because cultural bias seems to have been influential in affecting the acceptance of the broken home as a factor in delinquency etiology, further research is justified before either accepting or rejecting the importance of the broken home as a significant variable in delinquency theory.

Organization Man: Rational and Self-Actualizing

internal organizational environment and the influence of the manager upon the individual. The point being made was that the manager the agent of the organization and has much to say about creating its internal environment. Given the rational-man theory of administration, one can travel from the internal organizational environment to the manager to the people in power to managerial control, etc., and still find that all these factors usually have, from the subordinate's viewpoint, a similar psychological impact upon him or her. Nor do I confuse an is with an ought. If a manager reads Simon's book, and if it tells him (descriptively) that organizations train and indoctrinate their members and that they manage the internalization of influence because it injects into the very nervous systems of the organization members the criteria of decision that the organization wishes to employ, and if he makes this descriptive statement a part of his theory of management, then indoctrination, etc., become his responsibility. I realize that Simon does not view himself responsible for the translation by the manager of Simon's is statement to an ought activity. I suggest that we have a responsibility in this translation process because we provide the models of organization from which practitioners may choose courses of action. Similarly, I agree with Simon about the bankruptcy of most of the youth rebellion. However, I maintain that we are partially responsible for the rebellion because we provided no model of organization that went much beyond the traditional ones (in terms of the usage of power, specialization of work, and the creation of conformity, closedness, and mistrust, etc.). I am aware of the requirements of scientific empirical evidence, but surely there room for more than one kind of article. Simon's brilliant Administrative Behavior would have never become a classic if people judged its contribution on the basis of empirical scientific evidence. The Levin work was presented only as anecdotal evidence because that was the only evidence available. Moreover, Professor Simon's rebuttal contains several undocumented generalizations. For example, he asserts, with no evidence (and I believe it appropriate to do so in this context), that the following statement accepted by most observers: Most of the (information) systems devised so far (are resisted because they) simply did not provide the information managers perceive as most relevant to their decisions.