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China’s Mobility Barriers and Employment Allocations

Liwa Rachel Ngai, Christopher Pissarides, Jin Wang, Mar 07, 2018

Despite reforms to the hukou household registration system and the very large rural-urban migration experienced in China, rural households are still experiencing a risk of losing their land allocation if they migrate. We argue that this risk leads to an inefficient rental market with low rents and is an impediment to migration, with consequent over-employment in agriculture and low productivity.

Human-Capital Externalities in China

Edward L. Glaeser, Ming Lu, Oct 10, 2018

This paper provides evidence of heterogeneous human-capital externality using CHIP 2002, 2007, and 2013 data from urban China. After instrumenting city-level education using the number of relocated university departments across cities in the 1950s, one additional year of city-level education increases individual hourly wages by 22.0 percent, more than twice the OLS estimate. Human-capital externality is greater for all groups of urban residents in the instrumental variables estimation.

China Needs Tighter Macro-Prudential Regulations to Loosen Capital Controls

Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi, Andrea Ferrero, Alessandro Rebucci, Nov 29, 2017

China is on a path to capital account liberalization. If the renminbi is to become an international reserve currency (e.g. Prasad, 2016), as it has started to and one day will be, China must have an open capital account. But once the capital account is open, the economy will be exposed to gyrations of the global financial cycle (Rey, 2014). This column argues that international credit supply shocks have powerful effects on real and financial variables of the receiving countries, but not all economies are affected similarly, and those that have lower loan-to-value ratios (LTVs) and limits on foreign currency borrowing (FXLs) are less vulnerable. As China lowers controls on capital flows (e.g., Benigno et al., 2016) it should consider tightening domestic macro-prudential policy regulations (e.g., Cesa-Bianchi and Rebucci (2017) to avoid excessive volatility.

The Two-Pillar Policy for the RMB from December 2015 to May 2017

Urban J. Jermann, Bin Wei, Vivian Zhanwei Yue, Aug 16, 2017

We document that since December 2015 the People’s Bank of China (PBC) has followed a “two-pillar” exchange rate policy that aims to achieve both stability and flexibility. Based on a no-arbitrage model and options price data we estimate the credibility of the policy as well as its impact on the RMB/USD exchange rate. The model was able to correctly forecast the end of the two-pillar policy in May 2017.

Chinese and Indian Multinationals: Do Their Shopping Sprees in Advanced Countries Make Them More Innovative?

Vito Amendolagine, Elisa Giuliani, Arianna Martinelli, Roberta Rabellotti, Nov 14, 2018

Chinese and Indian multinationals are continuously expanding their operations in Europe and the United States through cross-border acquisitions (CBAs), with the aim of tapping into international knowledge located in target firms and innovative hubs. Amendolagine, Giuliani, Martinelli, and Rabellotti have looked into impacts that CBAs have on...