Jun Du

Jun Du
Aston University · Economics, Finance and Entrepreneurship Group, Aston Business School

PhD in Economics

About

60
Publications
17,696
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
2,011
Citations
Introduction
Jun Du is an economist at Aston Business School and UK Enterprise Research Centre. Her main research interest is to understand the driving forces and impediments of productivity enhancement and economic growth, from multi-level dimensions of individuals, firms, industries, regions, governments, and their interplays, in both mature economic and emerging economic contexts.
Additional affiliations
August 2016 - October 2016
Aston University
Position
  • Professor
September 2013 - August 2014
Stockholm School of Economics
Position
  • Research Associate
August 2013 - July 2016
Aston University
Position
  • Reader of Economics

Publications

Publications (60)
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines the impact of Brexit-related uncertainty on the UK’s trade in services, with a focus on how different types of international business policy uncertainty (IBPU) influence export participation and intensity. Leveraging a novel conceptual framework, we integrate multiple layers of uncertainty—including regulatory, legal, and market...
Preprint
Full-text available
The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union has resulted in a notable rise in trade costs between these two parties, even though the new trading relationship established a tariff- and quota-free trade in goods between the UK and the EU. Employing the synthetic control difference-in-difference methodology, we empirically establish t...
Article
Full-text available
The creative industries in the UK are a vibrant, fast growing, and innovative part of the economy. Not only do they generate many jobs and add significant economic value, parts of the sector can also produce social value for the nation and its regions. This study takes a first step in using the available data to quantify the Brexit impact on the UK...
Article
Full-text available
This paper assesses the effect of Brexit implemented through the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement on UK trade. Using COMTRADE data for the period of 2019 up to 2022Q1, and the method of synthetic difference-in-differences (SDID), we build a counterfactual UK that did not experience the change in its trade relationships with the EU. We show tha...
Article
China is perceived to rely on subsidizing firms in targeted industries to improve their performance and stay competitive. We implement an approach that allows for the joint estimation of direct and indirect effects of subsidies on subsidized and non‐subsidized firms. We find that firms that receive subsidies experience a boost in productivity. Howe...
Article
According to recent literature in new institutional economics and entrepreneurship, institutions, including formal and informal ones (i.e., the rules) are important. However, in a homogeneous national institutional environment, it is unclear whether and how the execution of institutions (how the rules are implemented) matters. The purpose of this r...
Article
This paper presents an investigation of the relationship between home country institutional quality and EMNE investments in tax havens. We develop a conceptual framework that adapts the institutional escapism framework, whereby EMNEs expand globally to escape any home country institutional hazards, together with the institutional leverage framework...
Article
Uncertainty over future tariff schedules and customs arrangements is a key factor in defying firms’ participation in international markets. This paper investigates firm heterogeneity in the effects of trade policy uncertainty on the margins of trade, exploiting the Brexit process as a quasi-natural experiment and using transaction-level trade data...
Article
This paper offers a detailed review of the UK’s trade performance during the COVID-19 crisis and reflects on how this may be revived. During 2020, UK goods exports contracted more sharply than those of its international peers. Statistics suggest that UK had a deeper decline and slower recovery than Germany, Italy, Spain, and the US. Further, the tr...
Article
Full-text available
This study distinguishes entrepreneurs’ cognitive financial constraints from financial supply constraints and assesses their relative importance to small business growth. Drawing from the literature on cognitive styles and institutional theory, we argue that small businesses’ financial constraints derive not only from financial market failures but...
Article
Full-text available
Small groups of fast-growth firms contribute disproportionately to job creation, yet little is known about their broader impact on the economy. This paper provides the first evidence of the agglomeration externalities of fast-growth firms, examining their economic impact on non-fast-growth firms operating within the same region (NUTS-2) and industr...
Preprint
Full-text available
Trade Diversion and Brexit Uncertainties
Chapter
At a time of extraordinary challenges confronting the world, this book analyses some of the profound changes occurring in the development of cities and regions. It discusses the uncertainties associated with the stalling of hyper-globalization and asks whether this creates opportunities for resurgent regional economies driven by local capabilities,...
Book
At a time of extraordinary challenges confronting the world, this book analyses some of the profound changes occurring in the development of cities and regions. It discusses the uncertainties associated with the stalling of hyper-globalization and asks whether this creates opportunities for resurgent regional economies driven by local capabilities,...
Article
Full-text available
Local governance and business performance in Vietnam: the transaction costs’ perspective. Regional Studies. This paper adopts a transaction costs’ perspective to explain why the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) may vary across regions of an emerging economy. Furthermore, it is argued that young and small firms gain more from the...
Article
Full-text available
Regional Studies celebrates its 50th anniversary with this special issue. This introductory article reflects back on developments since the journal was started and offers signposts for urban and regional research looking ahead. It outlines the changing global context for regional studies and identifies some of the ways in which the need for regiona...
Article
Intermittent exporting is something of a puzzle. In theory, exporting represents a major commitment, and is often the starting point for further internationalization. However, intermittent exporters exit and subsequently re-enter exporting, sometimes frequently. We develop a conceptual model to explain how firm characteristics and market conditions...
Article
Full-text available
Intermittent exporting is something of a puzzle. In theory, exporting represents a major commitment, and is often the starting point for further internationalization. However, intermittent exporters exit and subsequently re-enter exporting, sometimes frequently. We develop a conceptual model to explain how firm characteristics and market conditions...
Article
Entrepreneurs in emerging market economies operate in weak institutional contexts, which can imply different types of government. In some countries (e.g., Russia), the government is predatory, and the main risk faced by (successful) entrepreneurs relates to expropriation. In other countries (like China) this kind of risk is lower; nevertheless the...
Article
Selection in privatization is the decision-making process of choosing state-owned enterprises (SOEs), prioritizing and sequencing privatization events, and determining the extent of private ownership in partial privatization. We investigate this process in the important but rarely studied case of China. Using the SOE population for 1998-2008, we tr...
Article
This paper is motivated by the recent debate on the existence and scale of China’s ‘Guo Jin Min Tui’ phenomenon, which is often translated as ‘the State sector advances and the Private sector retreats’. We argue that the profound implication of an advancing state sector is not the size expansion of the state ownership in the economy per se, but the...
Article
Full-text available
This issue marks the handover of Regional Studies to a new editorial team. Taking over the reins appeared somewhat less daunting because the journal is in robust health with a generous stock of papers and special issues in the pipeline. Special thanks go to Arnoud Lagendijk who led a group of highly committed editors and ensured a smooth transition...
Article
Full-text available
There is considerable evidence that high-growth firms (HGFs) contribute significantly to employment and economic growth. However, the literature so far does not adequately explore the link between HGFs and productivity. This paper investigates the empirical link between total factor productivity (TFP) growth and HGFs, defined in terms of sales grow...
Chapter
This chapter contributes to the understanding of technology transfer between inward investors and the host country economy at the micro level. The focus here is on the innovation of host country firms directly, rather than through the indirect lens of productivity.
Article
Using data from 65,485 Chinese private small and medium-sized enterprises over the period 2000–2006, we examine the extent to which firms can improve access to debt by adopting strategies aimed at building social capital, namely entertaining and gift giving to others in their social network, and obtaining political affiliation. We find that althoug...
Article
Using a comprehensive firm-level data set from China spanning the period 1998–2005, this study investigates the relationship between firm size, financing sources, and total factor productivity growth. Controlling for the endogeneity of financing sources, we find that firm size plays an important role in the way financial structure affects the growt...
Article
This article examines cost economies, productivity growth and cost efficiency of the Chinese banks using a unique panel dataset that identifies banks’ four outputs and four input prices over the period of 1995–2001. By assessing the appropriateness of model specification, and making use of alternative methodologies in evaluating the performance of...
Article
Using a unique firm level data, this paper analyses the role of political connections in the post-entry performance of private start-up companies in China. It documents robust evidence that political affiliation enhances firms' survival and growth prospects. But interestingly politically neutral start-ups enjoy faster productivity improvements cond...
Article
I modify the uniform-price auction rules in allowing the seller to ration bidders. This allows me to provide a strategic foundation for underpricing when the seller has an interest in ownership dispersion. Moreover, many of the so-called "collusive-seeming" equilibria disappear.
Article
This paper is the first paper to present findings evaluating the consequences for employees of full and partial privatization using difference-in-differences combined with propensity score matching. We find: (1) partial privatization causes job creation in contrast to full privatization, which destroys jobs, (2) full privatization causes higher lab...
Article
Using a unique dataset which provides information on the financial structure of start-up companies in the Chinese manufacturing industry, this paper documents robust evidence that access to formal financing channels has beneficial effects on firm size, these effects being more marked as we move up the entry size distribution. By contrast we find ne...
Article
This paper considers the relationship between innovation, ownership and profitability for a panel of manufacturing plants in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Previous literature suggests that innovators are persistently more profitable than non-innovators, but little is known about how this link is moderated by external versus domestic ownership. We c...
Article
Full-text available
Using a comprehensive firm-level dataset spanning the period 1998-2005, this paper provides a thorough investigation of the relationship between firm size, total factor productivity growth and financial structure in China, controlling for the endogeneity of the latter. Generally, it finds financing source matters for firms of different size, and th...
Article
Using recent data from Chinese manufacturing industry and the generalised propensity score, this paper establishes economically significant causal effects of foreign acquisition on domestic and export market dynamics. Copyright 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Article
Using a comprehensive firm-level dataset spanning the period 1998-2005, this paper depicts a detailed picture of China's financial sectors and industrial firms' financing pattern, and provides a thorough investigation of the relationship between financing source and firm growth. We take into account firm surviving selectivity and reverse causality...
Article
Full-text available
Innovation events - the introduction of new products or processes - represent the end of a process of knowledge sourcing and transformation. They also represent the beginning of a process of exploitation which may result in an improvement in the performance of the innovating business. This recursive process of knowledge sourcing, transformation and...
Article
Using a large panel dataset of Chinese manufacturing enterprises during 1999-2005, which accounts for over 90% of China’s industrial output, and robust econometric procedures we show that the Chinese banking system has helped to support the growth of both firm value added and TFP. We find that access to bank loans is positively correlated with futu...
Article
This paper examines the relationship between multinationality and firm performance. The analysis is based on a sample of over 400 UK multinationals, and encompasses both service sector and manufacturing sector multinationals. This paper confirms the non-linear relationship between performance and multinationality that is reported elsewhere in the l...
Article
Using a rich panel data set, we provide a rigorous analysis of the relationship between access to external finance, foreign direct investment and the exports of private enterprises in China. We conclude that, in order to foster the exports of indigenous enterprises, the elimination of financial discrimination against private firms is likely to be a...
Article
Full-text available
Notions of open innovation, and increasing empirical evidence, suggest the importance of boundary spanning links to firms' innovation; while discussion of absorptive capacity has stressed the complementary importance of firms' internal capabilities. Something of a gap exists, however, in our understanding of the specific pathways through which know...
Article
Studies of the determinants and effects of innovation commonly make an assumption about the way in which firms make the decision to innovate, but rarely test this assumption. Using a panel of Irish manufacturing firms we test the performance of two alternative models of the innovation decision, and find that a two-stage model (the firm decides whet...
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines the relationship between the transfer of ownership between the public and private sectors of Chinese industry, and its impacts on performance. We link ownership changes to productivity growth, and demonstrate that privatisation contributes significantly. We offer an extension that is generally ignored in the literature, in looki...
Article
Using a rich panel data set, we provide a rigorous analysis of the relationship between access to external finance, foreign direct investment and the exports of private enterprises in China. We conclude that, in order to foster the exports of indigenous enterprises, the elimination of financial discrimination against private firms is likely to be a...
Article
This paper analyses the role of political connections in the post-entry performance of private start-up companies in China. It documents robust evidence that political affiliation enhances firms’ survival and growth prospects, even if politically neutral start-ups enjoy faster productivity improvements. In addition, the benefits of political connec...
Article
Full-text available
Innovation events - the introduction of new products or processes - represent the end of a process of knowledge sourcing and transformation. They also represent the beginning of a process of exploitation which may result in an improvement in the performance of the innovating business. This recursive process of knowledge sourcing, transformation and...
Article
Full-text available
Using a comprehensive micro dataset spanning the period 1998-2005, this paper provides a systematic investigation of the relationship between financial structure and firm growth in China, controlling for the endogeneity of the former. It finds that financial structure does matter for firm growth in China, although this does not tell the whole story...

Network

Cited By