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Interest rates and exchange rates when the money supply goes up

Saleem Bahaj, Ricardo Reis, May 21, 2025

The power of monetary policy to affect interest rates and exchange rates depends on the downward slope of the demand function. This column uses the Chinese experiment with parallel currencies to study the impact of sudden increases in money supply. The authors find causal evidence that increases in money supply lead to currency depreciations, and use this to quantify the interest elasticity of reserve demand. The results can be used to understand how the People’s Bank of China maintained the peg between the mainland and parallel currencies.

The Economic Impact of Distributing Financial Products on Third-Party Online Platforms

Claire Yurong Hong, Xiaomeng Lu, Jun Pan, Feb 26, 2020

The emergence of third-party online platforms in intermediating financial products has been a new and exciting development in FinTech. We find that, in China post-platform, fund flows become markedly more sensitive to fund performance, and the net flow to the top 10 percent–performing funds more than triples their pre-platform level. In response, fund managers increase their risk taking to enhance...

Increasing government transparency reduced pollution violations and improved air quality in China

Mengdi Liu, Mark Buntaine, Sarah Anderson, Bing Zhang, Sep 03, 2025

Government transparency helps bridge gaps between environmental laws and actual practices, improving health and environmental quality broadly.

Empowering through Courts: Judicial Centralization and Municipal Financing in China

Jiayin Hu, Wenwei Peng, Yang Su, Aug 28, 2024

This article discusses that the judicial centralization reform gradually implemented in China since 2014 has enhanced the independence of the judicial system, limited the intervention of local governments, and reduced court biases in favor of local governments.

Demand for Retirement Insurance: What Do People Want?

Cheng Wan, Hazel Bateman, Hanming Fang, Katja Hanewald, Oct 02, 2024

This article discusses the diversity and preference variations in the demand for retirement insurance among urban residents in China, particularly the high demand for health-related insurance such as critical illness (CI) and long-term care (LTC) insurance, and how individual financial circumstances, risk appetites, and bequest motives significantly influence their choice of retirement insurance products.