We study credit allocation across firms and its real effects during China’s economic stimulus plan of 2009-2010 using loan-level data from the 19 largest Chinese banks matched with firm-level data on manufacturing firms. We find that the stimulus-driven credit expansion significantly affected firm borrowing, investment, and employment. The plan disproportionately favored state-owned firms and firms with a lower marginal product of capital, reversing the process of capital reallocation that characterized China’s high growth before 2008.
The shadow banking activities in China surged in 2012-2013. Prof. Zhuo Chen and Prof. Chun Liu from Tsinghua University, Prof. Zhiguo He from Chicago Booth and Prof. Jinyu Liu from the University of International Business and Economics provide empirical evidence showing that the “barbarian growth” of China’s shadow banking during this period constitute a “hangover effect” from the four trillion RMB stimulus package in 2009.
As the second largest economy, China intrigues heated debates among policymakers and researchers alike on how fast its economy will grow in the future and how truthfully the official data reflect its actual economic growth. Patrick Higgins and Tao Zha from the Atlanta Fed and Karen Zhong from Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance develop a replicable econometric model to shed light on these issues.
By exploiting the exogenous variation in air pollution caused by China’s central heating policy, we find that air pollution reduces the accumulation of executive talent and high-quality employees. We also find that firms located in polluted areas have poorer performance, especially for firms with greater dependence on human capital.
Chinese companies in the United States are generally adaptive to their host country’s legal and regulatory institutions. However, the adaptation varies in accordance with the companies’ ownership structure and the institutional distance between the two countries across different subject matter areas.