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A Tale of Tier 3 Cities

Kenneth Rogoff, Yuanchen Yang, Mar 29, 2023

This paper provides new estimates of the housing stock, construction rates, and price developments by city tier in China.

China’s Producer Price Reflation in 2016–2017: Capacity Cuts or Recovering Aggregate Demand?

Linxi Chen, Ding Ding, Rui C. Mano, Nov 23, 2018

In late 2015, the Chinese government launched a multi-year plan to reduce capacity in the coal and steel industries. Around the same time, producer price inflation in China started to pick up strongly after being trapped in negative territory for 4½ years. What is behind this broad reflation—cuts in coal and steel capacity or a strengthening of aggregate demand...

The Impact of the China Tire Safeguard

Sunghoon Chung, Joonhyung Lee, Oct 23, 2019

This column evaluates the impact of the China tire safeguard on the US tire industry. Contrary to claims made by the US government, we find that total employment and average wages in the tire industry were unaffected by the safeguard. This result is not surprising as we find that Chinese tires have been completely diverted to other exporting countries due to the strong presence of multinational corporations in the world tire market. On the other hand, US domestic tire prices increased by up to 10% during the safeguard period...

Shadow Banking in a Crisis: Evidence from Fintech During COVID-19

Zhengyang Bao, Difang Huang, Jul 14, 2021

We evaluate the performance of Chinese fintech and bank credit providers during COVID-19. Comparing samples of fintech and bank loan records across the pandemic outbreak, we find that fintech companies are more likely to expand credit access to new and financially constrained borrowers after the start of the pandemic. However, the delinquency rate of fintech loans triples after the outbreak, but there is no significant...

Faking Trade for Capital Control Evasion: Evidence from Dual Exchange Rate Arbitrage in China

Renliang Liu, Liugang Sheng, Jian Wang, Nov 25, 2020

We examine whether firms over-report international trade to evade capital controls for foreign exchange arbitrage, by specifically testing whether the aggregate bilateral trade data gap between trading partners is positively (negatively) correlated with the exchange rate spread when the spread is positive (negative). At the disaggregated level, we also employ Benford’s law to detect trade data manipulations...