In our recent work (Couture et al., 2018), we combine an experiment that we implement across Chinese villages with a new collection of survey and administrative microdata to provide evidence on the potential of e-commerce integration to foster economic development in the countryside. We also explore the underlying channels and the distribution of the gains from e-commerce across households and villages.
The 2019 Bank for International Settlements Triennial Foreign Exchange Survey reveals two different trends in RMB trading in 2016–2019 compared to the previous three year interval—a slowdown both in growth and in geographic diffusion. Regarding the first trend, we argue the rapid growth of RMB trading into 2014 relied on a gradual appreciation trend that encouraged a one-sided RMB internationalization. Global trading in RMB resumed its growth in 2017...
International borrowing by Chinese nationals has increased rapidly over the past 10 years. Some of this borrowing seems to be motivated by carry trade activities. Regulatory arbitrage may have played a role in this trend.
The announcement on May 17, 2013 that CPC’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) would start to conduct several rounds of inspections of provincial governments, may serve as a rare natural experiment to examine the equilibrium consequences of corruption on firms. Professors Haoyuan Ding of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Hanming Fang of the University of Pennsylvania, and Shu Lin and Kang Shi, both of The Chinese University of Hong Kong exploit event studies to show that the stock market overall reacted positively to the CCDI announcement, and they also show that there is interesting heterogeneity across firms in their reactions to the news. They argue that the CCDI announcement on May 17, 2013 has likely triggered an expectation of norms change of bureaucratic behavior.
The Mandarin model is defined by two key features of the Chinese economy. First, the government takes a central role in driving the economy through its active investment in infrastructure. Second, the agency problems between the central and local governments can lead to a rich set of phenomena in the Chinese economy--not only rapid economic growth propelled by the tournament among local governors, but also short-termist behaviors of local governors that directly affect China’s economic and financial stability.