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The Unintended Impacts of Agricultural Fires: Human Capital in China

Joshua S. Graff Zivin, Tong Liu, Yingquan Song, Qu Tang, Peng Zhang, Dec 25, 2019

The practice of burning agricultural waste is ubiquitous around the world, yet the external human capital costs from those fires have been underexplored. Using data from the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) and agricultural fires detected by high-resolution satellites in China from 2005 to 2011, this paper investigates the impacts of fires on cognitive performance...

Ownership and Productivity in Vertically Integrated Firms in China

Loren Brandt, Feitao Jiang, Yao Luo, Yingjun Su, May 27, 2020

This paper studies differences in the internal configuration and productivity in vertically integrated steel facilities in China using equipment-level information on inputs and output for each of the main stages in the value chain. At the facility level, we do not find statistically significant differences in productivity by ownership. This conceals important differences in the value chain: private firms outperform in pig iron...

Impacts of Monetary-Fiscal Policy Interaction

Kaiji Chen, Haoyu Gao, Patrick Higgins, Daniel F. Waggoner, Tao Zha, Dec 02, 2020

China’s 2009 stimulus presents an ideal case for exploring the impacts of monetary-fiscal interaction on credit allocation and investment. During this stimulus period, monetary stimulus itself did not favor SOEs over non-SOEs in credit access. Fiscal expansion, however, enhanced the monetary transmission to bank credit that was allocated to local government financing vehicles...

Verifying China’s COVID-19 Recovery Using the FRBSF China CAT

Remy Beauregard, John G. Fernald, Mark M. Spiegel, Dec 23, 2020

Using the FRBSF China Cyclical Activity Tracker, we confirm the robustness of China’s recovery from the COVID-19 downturn. The FRBSF “China CAT” estimates that first quarter 2020 China GDP plunged 6.4 standard deviations below its detrended level a year earlier, but by the end of the third quarter, China economic activity had recovered to only 0.1 standard deviations below trend. As such, the FRBSF China CAT index validates the accuracy...

Sex and the City: Demographics, Spatial Sorting, and the Marriage Market

Min Fang, Zibin Huang, Yushi Wang, Yu Alan Yang, Apr 28, 2026

China's falling marriage rate reflects a fundamental spatial mismatch: as highly educated women sort into big cities with larger service sectors and less educated men concentrate in poorer regions, persistent hypergamous norms leave both groups without suitable local partners.