2024

From Might to Right: Economic Analysis of Self-Help
From Might to Right: Economic Analysis of Self-Help

Huabing Li

Spanish Association of Law and Economics conference paper; Joint LLM in Law and Economics thesis

This paper examines a long-neglected remedy, self-help, using a multifaceted approach within law and economics. First, the paper discusses why self-help is chosen, noting that within the framework of remedy system, self-help is chosen primarily because of the difficulties of the settlement and the dilemmas of the litigation. Second, the paper uses game theory and behavioral economics experiments to model above theories and identifies the potential problems of self-help, namely, its application may be dangerous and under-utilised. To address these issues, the paper uses two causal inference empirical models to answer the question of whether fine-tuning self-help and optimising litigation can benefit self-help practice. The results show that refined legislation on self-help can help promote the rational use of self-help, but attempts to reduce judicial costs and improve its efficiency often tend to be less effective due to insufficient intensity. The discussion in this paper will provide a marginal contribution to a more comprehensive understanding of human's decision-making on rights remedies.

[Conference slides]

From Might to Right: Economic Analysis of Self-Help
From Might to Right: Economic Analysis of Self-Help

Huabing Li

Spanish Association of Law and Economics conference paper; Joint LLM in Law and Economics thesis

This paper examines a long-neglected remedy, self-help, using a multifaceted approach within law and economics. First, the paper discusses why self-help is chosen, noting that within the framework of remedy system, self-help is chosen primarily because of the difficulties of the settlement and the dilemmas of the litigation. Second, the paper uses game theory and behavioral economics experiments to model above theories and identifies the potential problems of self-help, namely, its application may be dangerous and under-utilised. To address these issues, the paper uses two causal inference empirical models to answer the question of whether fine-tuning self-help and optimising litigation can benefit self-help practice. The results show that refined legislation on self-help can help promote the rational use of self-help, but attempts to reduce judicial costs and improve its efficiency often tend to be less effective due to insufficient intensity. The discussion in this paper will provide a marginal contribution to a more comprehensive understanding of human's decision-making on rights remedies.

[Conference slides]

From “Light Crime but Severe Penalty” to “Punishment Fits Crime”: An Empirical Study on Embezzlement and Bribery Crime in China
From “Light Crime but Severe Penalty” to “Punishment Fits Crime”: An Empirical Study on Embezzlement and Bribery Crime in China

Huabing Li

European Master in Law and Economics Midterm Meeting conference paper; LLB in Law (minor) thesis

This paper empirically examines how a leniency legal revision from "light crime but severe punishment" to "punishment fits crime"—exemplified by the 2016 new Judicial Interpretation of embezzlement and bribery crime in China—impacts the realization of justice and deterrence purpose of criminal law. Employing a novel panel data of embezzlement crimes, bribery crimes, and misappropriation of public funds crimes in 296 Chinese cities from 2001 to 2020 and using the generalized difference-in-differences model to explore the sentence variations of these crimes before and after the Judicial Interpretation came into effect, this paper finds that the Judicial Interpretation significantly reduces the level of punishment, which is not only because the same crime activity is sentenced lower under the new standard, but also due to the fact that "punishment fits crime" can prevent offenders from engaging in opportunistic behaviour. In addition, while the Judicial Interpretation significantly increases the number of crimes, this does not imply that the efforts toward "punishment fits crime" condone corruption anddo harm to public goods, but achieve substantial improvements in the effectiveness of social governance. The conclusion suggests that the deterrence of criminal law is not necessarily diminished by a relaxation of retributivism, and may provide key evidence for similar criminal law reform of "punishment fits crime" in many countries.

[Conference slides]

From “Light Crime but Severe Penalty” to “Punishment Fits Crime”: An Empirical Study on Embezzlement and Bribery Crime in China
From “Light Crime but Severe Penalty” to “Punishment Fits Crime”: An Empirical Study on Embezzlement and Bribery Crime in China

Huabing Li

European Master in Law and Economics Midterm Meeting conference paper; LLB in Law (minor) thesis

This paper empirically examines how a leniency legal revision from "light crime but severe punishment" to "punishment fits crime"—exemplified by the 2016 new Judicial Interpretation of embezzlement and bribery crime in China—impacts the realization of justice and deterrence purpose of criminal law. Employing a novel panel data of embezzlement crimes, bribery crimes, and misappropriation of public funds crimes in 296 Chinese cities from 2001 to 2020 and using the generalized difference-in-differences model to explore the sentence variations of these crimes before and after the Judicial Interpretation came into effect, this paper finds that the Judicial Interpretation significantly reduces the level of punishment, which is not only because the same crime activity is sentenced lower under the new standard, but also due to the fact that "punishment fits crime" can prevent offenders from engaging in opportunistic behaviour. In addition, while the Judicial Interpretation significantly increases the number of crimes, this does not imply that the efforts toward "punishment fits crime" condone corruption anddo harm to public goods, but achieve substantial improvements in the effectiveness of social governance. The conclusion suggests that the deterrence of criminal law is not necessarily diminished by a relaxation of retributivism, and may provide key evidence for similar criminal law reform of "punishment fits crime" in many countries.

[Conference slides]

2023

Adaptive Improvement of Chinese Text Sentiment Analysis Dictionary: An Example Based on the Comment Data of SSE Index on East Money Website
Adaptive Improvement of Chinese Text Sentiment Analysis Dictionary: An Example Based on the Comment Data of SSE Index on East Money Website

Huabing Li

BEng in Computer Science (minor) thesis

Along with the continuous reconstruction of the traditional social science academic research paradigm by big data technology, unstructured textual data has increasingly become an important reliance for empirical research in many fields. While traditional empirical research in social sciences is mostly based on structured data such as macro statistics, questionnaires, company financial reports and stock market prices, the emergence of text sentiment analysis methods in NLP and CS has greatly expanded the data sources and research fields of empirical research in social sciences, and profoundly changed and reshaped the face of empirical research in social sciences. Currently, text sentiment analysis methods broadly include dictionary-based methods, machine-learning-based methods and deep-learning-based methods. Among them, dictionary-based methods are mostly adopted by social science researchers due to their simple computation, easy understanding, high reliability and low cost. However, as there are still few mature dictionaries for Chinese text sentiment analysis and a lack of highly specialized domain dictionaries, there is still room for further improvement in the accuracy of text sentiment analysis. How to further improve the accuracy of text sentiment analysis without introducing artificially labeled training data? In this paper, an adaptive improvement method of Chinese text sentiment analysis dictionary is described, taking the “Guba” of Shanghai Composite Index on the East Money Website as an example: First, a small batch of scoring is performed using a basic general dictionary before scoring all text subscripts against the sentiment dictionary. In order to avoid bias in text understanding by a single dictionary method, a machine learning method is used to expand the small batch of samples by supervised learning of the scored data already obtained. Following that, by constructing a TF-IDF matrix and removing duplicate words, words that are significant in the text but are not correctly identified by the basic universal dictionary can be further extracted and added to the general dictionary to form an adaptive improvement of the dictionary. Then, a complete scoring is performed using the supplemented automatically expanded dictionary to obtain text sentiment analysis results for the entire data. Then, the results of the basic dictionary measurement and the results based on various machine learning methods are tested together with the artificially labeled data, showing that the adaptively improved text sentiment analysis improves compared to the results of the basic dictionary and outperforms some of the machine learning methods. This improvement is beneficial considering various factors such as computation, comprehension, reliability and cost. In summary, the adaptive improvement method of Chinese text sentiment analysis dictionary proposed in this paper will be inspiring and valuable for Chinese text sentiment analysis, which is quite commonly used in social science research, especially for text sentiment analysis with high specialization, strong budget constraints and high robustness requirements.

Adaptive Improvement of Chinese Text Sentiment Analysis Dictionary: An Example Based on the Comment Data of SSE Index on East Money Website
Adaptive Improvement of Chinese Text Sentiment Analysis Dictionary: An Example Based on the Comment Data of SSE Index on East Money Website

Huabing Li

BEng in Computer Science (minor) thesis

Along with the continuous reconstruction of the traditional social science academic research paradigm by big data technology, unstructured textual data has increasingly become an important reliance for empirical research in many fields. While traditional empirical research in social sciences is mostly based on structured data such as macro statistics, questionnaires, company financial reports and stock market prices, the emergence of text sentiment analysis methods in NLP and CS has greatly expanded the data sources and research fields of empirical research in social sciences, and profoundly changed and reshaped the face of empirical research in social sciences. Currently, text sentiment analysis methods broadly include dictionary-based methods, machine-learning-based methods and deep-learning-based methods. Among them, dictionary-based methods are mostly adopted by social science researchers due to their simple computation, easy understanding, high reliability and low cost. However, as there are still few mature dictionaries for Chinese text sentiment analysis and a lack of highly specialized domain dictionaries, there is still room for further improvement in the accuracy of text sentiment analysis. How to further improve the accuracy of text sentiment analysis without introducing artificially labeled training data? In this paper, an adaptive improvement method of Chinese text sentiment analysis dictionary is described, taking the “Guba” of Shanghai Composite Index on the East Money Website as an example: First, a small batch of scoring is performed using a basic general dictionary before scoring all text subscripts against the sentiment dictionary. In order to avoid bias in text understanding by a single dictionary method, a machine learning method is used to expand the small batch of samples by supervised learning of the scored data already obtained. Following that, by constructing a TF-IDF matrix and removing duplicate words, words that are significant in the text but are not correctly identified by the basic universal dictionary can be further extracted and added to the general dictionary to form an adaptive improvement of the dictionary. Then, a complete scoring is performed using the supplemented automatically expanded dictionary to obtain text sentiment analysis results for the entire data. Then, the results of the basic dictionary measurement and the results based on various machine learning methods are tested together with the artificially labeled data, showing that the adaptively improved text sentiment analysis improves compared to the results of the basic dictionary and outperforms some of the machine learning methods. This improvement is beneficial considering various factors such as computation, comprehension, reliability and cost. In summary, the adaptive improvement method of Chinese text sentiment analysis dictionary proposed in this paper will be inspiring and valuable for Chinese text sentiment analysis, which is quite commonly used in social science research, especially for text sentiment analysis with high specialization, strong budget constraints and high robustness requirements.

Develop State-Owned Enterprise Governance with Chinese Characteristics: From the Perspective of the Revised Draft of Company Law
Develop State-Owned Enterprise Governance with Chinese Characteristics: From the Perspective of the Revised Draft of Company Law

Huabing Li

BBA in Financial Management (minor) thesis

Constructing China’s independent knowledge system and summarizing China’s unique experience and wisdom are key tasks and major missions to comprehensively promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. At present, a new round of deepening reform of SOEs has been fully rolled out, and the Company Law has historically received another overhaul after the 2005 revision, so it is timely to discuss the choice of governance of SOEs. This paper argues that the governance of Chinese SOEs, on the one hand, embodies universal issues that are of great concern to the classical western corporate governance system, such as insider control, principal-agent problems, tunneling, and stakeholder rights, but on the other hand, it is special and complex due to factors such as corporate shareholding structure, social responsibility, and government-enterprise relations, which require special attention and research. Following this, this paper analyzes the consideration and design of the law revision on the governance reform of SOEs from the perspective of the second review draft of the Company Law (Revised Draft), points out the important role and institutional advantages of the CPC’s leadership in the further improvement of the governance of SOEs, and makes a useful discussion on how the CPC’s leadership can be organically combined with corporate governance. The above work is conducive to rationalizing the logic of SOEs governance, improving the effectiveness of SOEs governance, and firmly establishing the path of SOEs governance with Chinese characteristics.

Develop State-Owned Enterprise Governance with Chinese Characteristics: From the Perspective of the Revised Draft of Company Law
Develop State-Owned Enterprise Governance with Chinese Characteristics: From the Perspective of the Revised Draft of Company Law

Huabing Li

BBA in Financial Management (minor) thesis

Constructing China’s independent knowledge system and summarizing China’s unique experience and wisdom are key tasks and major missions to comprehensively promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. At present, a new round of deepening reform of SOEs has been fully rolled out, and the Company Law has historically received another overhaul after the 2005 revision, so it is timely to discuss the choice of governance of SOEs. This paper argues that the governance of Chinese SOEs, on the one hand, embodies universal issues that are of great concern to the classical western corporate governance system, such as insider control, principal-agent problems, tunneling, and stakeholder rights, but on the other hand, it is special and complex due to factors such as corporate shareholding structure, social responsibility, and government-enterprise relations, which require special attention and research. Following this, this paper analyzes the consideration and design of the law revision on the governance reform of SOEs from the perspective of the second review draft of the Company Law (Revised Draft), points out the important role and institutional advantages of the CPC’s leadership in the further improvement of the governance of SOEs, and makes a useful discussion on how the CPC’s leadership can be organically combined with corporate governance. The above work is conducive to rationalizing the logic of SOEs governance, improving the effectiveness of SOEs governance, and firmly establishing the path of SOEs governance with Chinese characteristics.

Poverty Alleviation, Consumption Upgrade, and High-Quality Economic Development: An Empirical Research Based on Chinese Provincial Panel Data
Poverty Alleviation, Consumption Upgrade, and High-Quality Economic Development: An Empirical Research Based on Chinese Provincial Panel Data

Huabing Li

BEcon in Trade and Economics (major) thesis

The Communist Party of China has led Chinese people to win the battle against poverty and completely eradicate absolute poverty on the land of China after hard and sustained efforts. Against this background, it has become an increasingly important academic and practical issue to evaluate the effectiveness of the poverty alleviation, to promote the orderly connection between the poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, and to guide China’s poverty and rural work for a period of time. This paper considers that the core of the above issue is to investigate the role and contribution of poverty alleviation to China’s high-quality economic development, proposes a method to measure the level of high-quality economic development adapted to rural and poverty issues, and carries out an empirical study on the relationship between poverty alleviation and the level of high-quality economic development based on the Two-way Fixed Effect Model. The empirical results show that the steady progress of poverty alleviation and the reduction of poverty incidence significantly contribute to the high quality development of China’s economy, and that poverty eradication is economic, constructive and sustainable. Following that, this paper carries out robustness tests on the above empirical results, mitigates the endogeneity problem using topographic relief as an Instrumental Variable, and discusses the heterogeneity in terms of geographic space and effects aspects. On this basis, the paper further explores the mechanism between poverty alleviation and high-quality economic development, focusing on the role of consumption upgrading as a key, important mediator in bridging the gap from them, and conducts an empirical test. The empirical results show that the intermediary role of consumption upgrading is significant, as the reduction of poverty incidence raises the consumption level, improves the consumption structure, and alleviates social injustice, which in turn promotes consumption upgrading; consumption upgrading further improves the economic and industrial structure, promotes stable economic growth, raises people’s living standards, and empowers sustainable economic development, which ultimately plays a role in high-quality economic development. Finally, this paper also proposes a method to study poverty at a finer granularity using remote sensing data of nighttime lights, and conducts an empirical exploration. Based on the above empirical findings, the paper concludes with a series of policy recommendations for further poverty eradication, rural revitalization and consumption cultivation.

Poverty Alleviation, Consumption Upgrade, and High-Quality Economic Development: An Empirical Research Based on Chinese Provincial Panel Data
Poverty Alleviation, Consumption Upgrade, and High-Quality Economic Development: An Empirical Research Based on Chinese Provincial Panel Data

Huabing Li

BEcon in Trade and Economics (major) thesis

The Communist Party of China has led Chinese people to win the battle against poverty and completely eradicate absolute poverty on the land of China after hard and sustained efforts. Against this background, it has become an increasingly important academic and practical issue to evaluate the effectiveness of the poverty alleviation, to promote the orderly connection between the poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, and to guide China’s poverty and rural work for a period of time. This paper considers that the core of the above issue is to investigate the role and contribution of poverty alleviation to China’s high-quality economic development, proposes a method to measure the level of high-quality economic development adapted to rural and poverty issues, and carries out an empirical study on the relationship between poverty alleviation and the level of high-quality economic development based on the Two-way Fixed Effect Model. The empirical results show that the steady progress of poverty alleviation and the reduction of poverty incidence significantly contribute to the high quality development of China’s economy, and that poverty eradication is economic, constructive and sustainable. Following that, this paper carries out robustness tests on the above empirical results, mitigates the endogeneity problem using topographic relief as an Instrumental Variable, and discusses the heterogeneity in terms of geographic space and effects aspects. On this basis, the paper further explores the mechanism between poverty alleviation and high-quality economic development, focusing on the role of consumption upgrading as a key, important mediator in bridging the gap from them, and conducts an empirical test. The empirical results show that the intermediary role of consumption upgrading is significant, as the reduction of poverty incidence raises the consumption level, improves the consumption structure, and alleviates social injustice, which in turn promotes consumption upgrading; consumption upgrading further improves the economic and industrial structure, promotes stable economic growth, raises people’s living standards, and empowers sustainable economic development, which ultimately plays a role in high-quality economic development. Finally, this paper also proposes a method to study poverty at a finer granularity using remote sensing data of nighttime lights, and conducts an empirical exploration. Based on the above empirical findings, the paper concludes with a series of policy recommendations for further poverty eradication, rural revitalization and consumption cultivation.

2022

How the Digital Economy Helps Poor Rural Villages Upgrade into Manufacturing Power Countries: A Case Study of Rural E-Commerce in Suining County, Jiangsu Province
How the Digital Economy Helps Poor Rural Villages Upgrade into Manufacturing Power Countries: A Case Study of Rural E-Commerce in Suining County, Jiangsu Province

Jianuo Gai, Huabing Li, Chengmeng Ding

Chinese Development Economics Research conference paper

How to achieve high-quality and high-efficiency development of rural economy and promote rural revitalization is both an important academic topic and a major issue to be solved in China. Based on the new era and new national conditions, the 14th Five-Year Plan and the outline of the 2035 Vision put forward "accelerating digital development" and "building digital China" for the first time, which are undoubtedly new ideas and new methods to solve rural problems. Therefore, this paper focuses on the furniture e-commerce industry in Shaji Town, Suining County, Jiangsu Province, and explores the influence mechanism of digital economy on the transformation and upgrading of rural industrialization and farmers' income increase by tracing its development history. This paper goes deep into the grass-roots countryside and summarizes the overall history of industrial development in Shaji Town through field research, and further summarizes the laws from data, cases and interviews to summarize the experience and inspiration of the digital economy in promoting industrialization development. The development history of e-commerce in Shaji Town is roughly divided into five stages, namely: from scratch, gradual replication, fission and expansion, crisis and transformation and upgrading, and the typical characteristics and development trend of each stage are explained in detail. On this basis, this paper discusses in detail the key issues that may arise in the future development of Shaji town and the key points that need to be focused on, and puts forward summary and policy suggestions to provide theoretical nutrients and practical references to help the digital economy achieve rural revitalization.

How the Digital Economy Helps Poor Rural Villages Upgrade into Manufacturing Power Countries: A Case Study of Rural E-Commerce in Suining County, Jiangsu Province
How the Digital Economy Helps Poor Rural Villages Upgrade into Manufacturing Power Countries: A Case Study of Rural E-Commerce in Suining County, Jiangsu Province

Jianuo Gai, Huabing Li, Chengmeng Ding

Chinese Development Economics Research conference paper

How to achieve high-quality and high-efficiency development of rural economy and promote rural revitalization is both an important academic topic and a major issue to be solved in China. Based on the new era and new national conditions, the 14th Five-Year Plan and the outline of the 2035 Vision put forward "accelerating digital development" and "building digital China" for the first time, which are undoubtedly new ideas and new methods to solve rural problems. Therefore, this paper focuses on the furniture e-commerce industry in Shaji Town, Suining County, Jiangsu Province, and explores the influence mechanism of digital economy on the transformation and upgrading of rural industrialization and farmers' income increase by tracing its development history. This paper goes deep into the grass-roots countryside and summarizes the overall history of industrial development in Shaji Town through field research, and further summarizes the laws from data, cases and interviews to summarize the experience and inspiration of the digital economy in promoting industrialization development. The development history of e-commerce in Shaji Town is roughly divided into five stages, namely: from scratch, gradual replication, fission and expansion, crisis and transformation and upgrading, and the typical characteristics and development trend of each stage are explained in detail. On this basis, this paper discusses in detail the key issues that may arise in the future development of Shaji town and the key points that need to be focused on, and puts forward summary and policy suggestions to provide theoretical nutrients and practical references to help the digital economy achieve rural revitalization.

Tolerance in Prudence: A Dual-Examination of Legislation and Justice of Self-Help Based on AI-Assisted Adjudication and Interdisciplinary Perspective
Tolerance in Prudence: A Dual-Examination of Legislation and Justice of Self-Help Based on AI-Assisted Adjudication and Interdisciplinary Perspective

Siyi Yu, Huabing Li, Jinjin Chen, Wei Long

“Innovation Cup” Academic Competition first prize paper

The implementation of the Civil Code in 2021 formally marks the era of self-help from past theoretical discussions and practical explorations to the era of law-based article culture. On the one hand, self-help has certain characteristics of public remedies, and on the other hand, it has distinctive characteristics of private remedies, and is commonly applied by the public in social life because of its flexibility and convenience, which has also given rise to many new situations and problems. The study calls for a re-examination of self-help behavior in the "post civil law era". This study starts from the analysis of the private remedy of self-help, and proves that the legislation should uphold a prudent attitude to avoid the proliferation of private remedies. The legislation follows the judiciary, and the judicial attitude affects the implementation of the legislative will and the ecology of self-help practice. It seems to be the right thing to be cautious in legislation and in judiciary, but this paper finds that the two do not naturally need a unified directional arrangement by sorting out the logic of interaction between legislation and judiciary. By establishing a contingent judicial attitude and re-adjudicating 3579 judgments with artificial intelligence-assisted adjudication technology, this paper finds that the existing judicial practice is too cautious in determining self-help behaviors, which is not conducive to the realization of the relief value of self-help behaviors. Through the multidisciplinary perspective of sociology of law and economics of law, we believe that self-help behavior has its meaning and value within the existing remedy system in terms of cultural tradition, normative expectations, and efficiency and risk, and should not be discarded hastily. The prudence of the legislation has set clear boundaries for self-help behavior, and the judiciary can only achieve the optimal utility of self-help relief by being "tolerant in prudence".

Tolerance in Prudence: A Dual-Examination of Legislation and Justice of Self-Help Based on AI-Assisted Adjudication and Interdisciplinary Perspective
Tolerance in Prudence: A Dual-Examination of Legislation and Justice of Self-Help Based on AI-Assisted Adjudication and Interdisciplinary Perspective

Siyi Yu, Huabing Li, Jinjin Chen, Wei Long

“Innovation Cup” Academic Competition first prize paper

The implementation of the Civil Code in 2021 formally marks the era of self-help from past theoretical discussions and practical explorations to the era of law-based article culture. On the one hand, self-help has certain characteristics of public remedies, and on the other hand, it has distinctive characteristics of private remedies, and is commonly applied by the public in social life because of its flexibility and convenience, which has also given rise to many new situations and problems. The study calls for a re-examination of self-help behavior in the "post civil law era". This study starts from the analysis of the private remedy of self-help, and proves that the legislation should uphold a prudent attitude to avoid the proliferation of private remedies. The legislation follows the judiciary, and the judicial attitude affects the implementation of the legislative will and the ecology of self-help practice. It seems to be the right thing to be cautious in legislation and in judiciary, but this paper finds that the two do not naturally need a unified directional arrangement by sorting out the logic of interaction between legislation and judiciary. By establishing a contingent judicial attitude and re-adjudicating 3579 judgments with artificial intelligence-assisted adjudication technology, this paper finds that the existing judicial practice is too cautious in determining self-help behaviors, which is not conducive to the realization of the relief value of self-help behaviors. Through the multidisciplinary perspective of sociology of law and economics of law, we believe that self-help behavior has its meaning and value within the existing remedy system in terms of cultural tradition, normative expectations, and efficiency and risk, and should not be discarded hastily. The prudence of the legislation has set clear boundaries for self-help behavior, and the judiciary can only achieve the optimal utility of self-help relief by being "tolerant in prudence".

2021

More Papers? Contact me!
More Papers? Contact me!

Huabing Li

Currently, only some of my papers are included on this webpage, and some earlier research and research that is not appropriate to publicize is not presented. If you have any need or interest in these contents, you are welcome to contact me by e-mail at any time.

More Papers? Contact me!
More Papers? Contact me!

Huabing Li

Currently, only some of my papers are included on this webpage, and some earlier research and research that is not appropriate to publicize is not presented. If you have any need or interest in these contents, you are welcome to contact me by e-mail at any time.