A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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Do CEOs Know Best? Evidence from China
Nicholas Bloom, Hong Cheng, Mark Duggan, Hongbin Li, Franklin Qian, Jan 30, 2019Using data from the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES), a recent survey of Chinese manufacturing firms, we analyze the extent to which employees of differing levels are able to assess their firms’ management practices. Our study finds that of CEOs, managers, and workers, CEOs tend to have the most accurate appraisals of their firms. Additionally, we find that firms with higher levels of disagreement...
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, 2022We 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.
Trends and Cycles in China’s Macroeconomy
Chun Chang, Kaiji Chen, Daniel F. Waggoner, Tao Zha, Jun 27, 2018China’s spectacular growth over the 2000s has slowed since 2013. The driving force behind the country’s growth was investment, so the key to understanding the slowdown lies in understanding what sustained investment in the past. This column shows how a preferential credit policy promoting heavy industrialisation explains the trends and cycles in China’s macroeconomy over the past two decades. This policy was not without negative consequences, particularly in terms of the distortions it introduced for business finance. Going forward, China needs to focus on creating the right incentives for banks to make loans to small productive businesses.
Why Are So Many Young Women Moving to China’s Big Cities?
Yumi Koh, Jing Li, Yifan Wu, Junjian Yi, Hanzhe Zhang, Dec 03, 2025It’s not just about jobs. It’s also about love, status, and the marriage market.
Human-Capital Externalities in China
Edward L. Glaeser, Ming Lu, Oct 10, 2024This 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.
