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Lessons from the Baby Bonus in South Korea: Increased Births and Restored Natural Sex Ratio

Wookun Kim, Jan 20, 2021

I study the causal effects of South Korea’s baby bonus on fertility by exploiting temporal and spatial variation in pro-natalist cash transfers provided to families with newborn babies. Based on registry records spanning the universe of births from 2000 to 2015, I find that the baby bonus increased completed fertility: in the absence of the policy, the total fertility rate in 2015 would have been lower by 3%, which is equivalent to 450,000 fewer babies born...

Black Markets for License Plates in Chinese Megacities

Oystein Daljord, Mandy Hu, Guillaume Pouliot, Junji Xiao, Jan 29, 2020

Chinese megacities ration new car sales by capping the number of license plates they issue that permit driving within city limits. Concerns regarding the fairness of this policy have led city governments to use lotteries to allocate either all or a share of the license plates. Lotteries create gains from trade that have stimulated black markets for license plates in such cities...

Gaokao, Ability, and Occupation Choice

Chong-En Bai, Ruixue Jia, Hongbin Li, Xin Wang, Jul 28, 2021

In China, the college entrance exam score is predictive for both firm success and wage-job success in the future, yet higher-score individuals are less likely to create firms.

The Real Driver of China’s Growth: Internal Economic Reform

Trevor Tombe, Xiaodong Zhu, Apr 03, 2019

Many people have attributed China’ s growth since 2001 to its accession to WTO and the resulting rapid export expansion. We provide quantitative evidence showing that internal economic reform, not export expansion, was the real driver of China’ s growth in the period after 2001. We also show that there is still large potential growth from further internal reform in China.

Capital Regulations, Bank Risk-Taking, and Monetary Policy in China

Xiaoming Li, Zheng Liu, Yuchao Peng, Zhiwei Xu, Nov 18, 2020

China implemented Basel III in 2013 and tightened bank capital regulations. Empirical evidence shows that the new regulations significantly reduced bank risk-taking following monetary policy easing. To meet the tightened capital requirements, banks respond to a balance-sheet expansion by raising the share of lending to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that are perceived as low-risk borrowers under government...