Latest
Bilateral Economies of Scope in International Trade Yao Amber Li, Sichuang Xu, Stephen R. Yeaple, Tengyu Zhao, Jan 15, 2025 This paper presents evidence that firms’ export and import decisions within the same foreign market are complementary, due to bilateral economies of scope that allow substantial cost savings when engaging in both activities. By quantifying these savings through a structural model, we show that bilateral economies of scope significantly enhance firms’ participation in international trade and amplify the effects of trade liberalization, offering new insights for policymakers and researchers.
Digital Distractions with Peer Influence: The Impact of Mobile App Usage on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes Panle Jia Barwick, Siyu Chen, Chao Fu, Teng Li, Jan 08, 2025 We present the first comprehensive evidence of how app usage affects academic performance and early career outcomes. App usage is contagious: a one standard deviation (around 3.5 hours per day) increase in roommates’ app usage raises an individual’s own app usage by 5.8%, with substantial heterogeneity across students. A one standard deviation increase in app usage reduces GPAs by 36.2% of a within-cohort-major standard deviation and lowers wages by 2.3%. The effect of roommates’ app usage is over half the size of an individual’s own usage effect. High-frequency GPS data reveal that high app usage crowds out time in study halls and increases late arrivals at and absences from lectures.
Firm-to-Firm Referrals Jing Cai, Wei Lin, Adam Szeidl, Dec 25, 2024 Referring suppliers to clients reshaped the supplier-client network and improved business performance.
Industrial Policy: Lessons from Shipbuilding Panle Jia Barwick, Myrto Kalouptsidi, Nahim Bin Zahur, Dec 18, 2024 The article discusses that although China's industrial policy (IP) in the shipbuilding industry significantly increased domestic shipbuilding production and global market share, it had limited effects on improving domestic welfare and led to inefficient allocation of resources.
How Do Public Pensions Affect Eldercare Mode and Son Preference? An Empirical Study on the New Rural Pension Scheme in China Naijia Guo, Wei Huang, Ruixin Wang, Dec 11, 2024 How do public pension schemes reshape eldercare and social norms with son preference? Using variations in the timing of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) across rural Chinese counties..
Overpricing in Municipal Bond Markets and the Unintended Consequences of Regulatory Measures: Evidence from China Laura Xiaolei Liu, Qiao Liu, Xiaoyu Liu, Ni Zhu, Dec 03, 2024 Chinese municipal bonds are considerably overpriced in the primary market, leading regulators to set a lower bound on the issuance yield spread. This paper investigates the underlying reasons for this overpricing and evaluates the effects of implementing restrictions on yield spreads. Our findings indicate that underwriters may inflate prices to receive undisclosed benefits from local governments, such as local treasury cash deposits. We further show that the lower bounds severely impede price discovery in the primary municipal bond market. Even bonds not restricted by the lower limit are priced at the reference spread, exacerbating overpricing of riskier bonds. Local governments exploit these fixed prices by increasing the bond issuance amount and extending bond maturity. Our findings suggest that regulatory interference in pricing can have unintended consequences for pricing efficiency and that attempts to rectify mispricing may result in even more severe mispricing.
Let a Small Bank Fail: Implicit Non-guarantee and Financial Contagion Liyuan Liu, Xianshuang Wang, Zhen Zhou, Nov 27, 2024 The research findings indicate that after the failure of a small bank, regulatory authorities did not fully bail out all creditors as had been the norm, and this policy shift affected the funding costs and market confidence of banks with lower systemic importance (SU).
How Does Salient Academic Rank Affect Student Performance? Insights from a Chinese Middle School Study Rigissa Megalokomomou, Yi Zhang, Nov 20, 2024 This article reveals interesting insights into the effects and mechanisms of achievement rank when it becomes salient to students and their parents.
How House Prices Affected China’s Birth Rate Decline Ziqian Liu, Yu Zhang, Nov 13, 2024 The article discusses how house prices have affected China's birth rate and explores the implications for the country's housing market and demographic future.
Government as Venture Capitalists in AI Martin Beraja, Wenwei Peng, David Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Nov 06, 2024 This article discusses that government venture capital funds in China are more geographically dispersed than private venture capital, particularly in inland and less developed areas, and they are more inclined to invest in AI companies with weaker ex-ante productivity signals.
Recent
How Liberalizing Trade with China Led to a Boom in International Students in the US Gaurav Khanna, Kevin Shih, Ariel Weinberger, Mingzhi Xu, Miaojie Yu, Aug 16, 2023 Focusing on China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, we show that Chinese cities with more exposure to trade liberalization sent more students to US universities.
Regional Variation of GDP per Head within China, 1080–1850: Implications for the Great Divergence Debate Stephen Broadberry, Hanhui Guan, Sep 28, 2022 We provide the first regional breakdown of GDP per head for China from the Song dynasty to the Qing, so that regions of similar size can be compared between Europe and Asia to establish the timing of the Great Divergence of living standards.
Combating Cross-Border Externalities Shiyi Chen, Joshua Graff-Zivin, Huanhuan Wang, Jiaxin Xiong, Sep 21, 2022 China implemented a pioneering policy in 2011, the Ecological Compensation Initiative (ECI), which establishes side payments between upstream and downstream provinces in the Xin’an River Basin.
Assessing and Addressing the Coronavirus-Induced Economic Crisis: Evidence from 1.5 Billion Sales Invoice Zhuo Chen, Pengfei Li, Li Liao, Zhengwei Wang, Aug 31, 2022 We probe the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent containment policies on business activities in China by exploiting big data on 1.5 billion sales invoices. The average drop in sales was between 23% and 35%, depending on firm size, for the 12-week period after the Wuhan lockdown.
Industrial Land Discount in China: A Public Finance Perspective Zhiguo He, Scott Nelson, Yang Su, Anthony Lee Zhang, Fudong Zhang, Jul 25, 2022 Local governments, which serve as monopolistic land sellers in China, face a trade-off when deciding to supply residential land versus industrial land. This trade-off is determined by the different time profiles of revenues from industrial and residential land sales, local governments’ financial constraints, and the extent of local governments’ tax revenue sharing with other levels of government.
Industry/Policy View Omnia Juncta in Uno: Foreign Powers and Trademark Protection in Shanghai’s Concession Era Laura Alfaro, Cathy Ge Bao, Maggie X. Chen, Junjie Hong, Claudia Steinwender, Jul 20, 2022 Trademarks, which identify the source of goods and services, account for the majority of intellectual property filings worldwide. We investigate how firms adapt to the introduction of trademark institutions by exploring a historical precedent: China’s trademark law of 1923, an unanticipated and disapproved response to end foreign privileges in China.
Dollar Funding Stresses in China Laura Kodres, Leslie Sheng Shen, Darrell Duffie, Jul 13, 2022 The need for US dollar funding during the financial stresses of March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic shocked markets, was evident in a number of countries (Avdjiev, Eren, and McGuire 2020; Bahaj and Reis 2020).
Serial Entrepreneurship in China Loren Brandt, Ruochen Dai, Gueorgui Kambourov, Kjetil Storesletten, Xiaobo Zhang, Jul 06, 2022 New firms have been an important engine of growth in the Chinese economy (Brandt, Van Biesebroeck, and Zhang 2012). Drawing on data on the universe of all firms in China, we study entrepreneurship and the creation of new firms in China through the lens of entrepreneurs who operate a series of firms over their lifetime, i.e., serial entrepreneurs (SE).
An Empirical Overview of Chinese Capital Market Grace Xing Hu, Jun Pan, Jiang Wang, Jun 29, 2022 We provide an empirical review of the Chinese capital market, focusing on the basic return and risk characteristics of its major asset classes, as well as a comparison to the US market. All major asset classes in China have significant higher volatilities than their counterparts in the US market, but they do not always yield larger returns. Small-company stocks, short-, medium-, and long-term treasury bonds outperform their US counterparts, while large stocks underperform and long-term enterprise bonds yield similar returns.
Share Pledging in China: Funding Listed Firms or Funding Entrepreneurship? Zhiguo He, Bibo Liu, Feifei Zhu, Jun 01, 2022 Our recent study analyzes the use of share pledging funds in the context of China. Survey evidence shows that a majority of the largest shareholders (67.3%) used pledging funds outside their listed firms, including financing their entrepreneurial activities.