A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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In Rural China, Gift-Giving Is an Increasingly Costly Competition
Erwin Bulte, Ruixin Wang, Xiaobo Zhang, May 01, 2019Gift expenditures grow swiftly in rural China and may adversely affect people's welfare. While gift-giving helps to maintain social status and connections, gift competition may create a predicament: people must spend more and more to "keep up with the Joneses." As a result, the escalating gift expenses crowd out spending on other important consumption and become increasingly burdensome to people in rural areas, particularly to the poor.
Taking Stock of Trade Policy Uncertainty: Evidence from China’s Pre-WTO Accession
George Alessandria, Shafaat Khan, Armen Khederlarian, Dec 04, 2019We propose a method to estimate the perceived likelihood of an uncertain increase in tariffs using the rise in trade flows in advance of the uncertainty resolution. We apply this framework to the uncertainty surrounding the U.S.’s annual renewal of China’s most-favored-nation (MFN) status in the 1990s. By matching the observed rise in imports in advance of U.S. Congress votes on the renewal, we find that the probability...
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Job Creation: The Role of Global Supply Chains
Hanming Fang, Chunmian Ge, Hanwei Huang, Hongbin Li, Dec 30, 2020Using big data of more than 100 million posted jobs from China, we estimate how the COVID-19 pandemic affected local labor demand in China via global supply chains. The data reveal that the number of newly posted jobs was about 31% lower in the first 14 weeks after the Wuhan lockdown than comparable periods in 2018 and 2019. We show that COVID-19 cases abroad and foreign governments’ pandemic-control policies reduced new job creation in China by 11.7%...
The Cost of China’s IPO Regulations on the Functional Efficiency of its Financial System
Charles M. C. Lee, Yuanyu Qu, Tao Shen, Nov 01, 2017In sharp contrast with the market-and-disclosure based system in the US, IPOs in China are subject to strict regulatory rationing and control. We investigate the pricing implications of China’s IPO regulations for its publicly listed companies. We find that these regulations will give rise to significant market frictions with economic consequences for the prices, returns, and even investment decisions of China’s publicly listed companies.
The Impact of Rapid Aging and Pension Reform on Savings and the Labor Supply: the Case of China
Hui He, Lei Ning, Dongming Zhu, Jun 26, 2019Individuals can use savings and labor supply to self-insure against uncertainties over their life cycle, such as idiosyncratic income shocks and changes in longevity and pension benefits. Using China as a case study, we investigate, both empirically and quantitatively, the impact of rapid aging and pension reform on savings and the labor supply, and the roles...
