Most Popular

Relocating or Redefined: A New Perspective on Urbanization in China

Li Gan, Qing He, Ruichao Si, Daichun Yi, Mar 18, 2020

We study the urbanization process in China during the past decade by deconstructing different sources of new urban residents. We find that around one-third of urban population growth in the past decade has consisted of redefined migrants from communities that have been reclassified from rural to urban, though they do not actually move. We further find evidence that failing to consider the number of redefined migrants and their housing behaviors leads to a high housing vacancy rate in China’s urban areas.

Rise of Bank Competition: Evidence from Banking Deregulation in China

Haoyu Gao, Hong Ru, Robert Townsend, Xiaoguang Yang, Aug 17, 2019

This paper documents a novel trade-off of banking deregulation in the context of China by using loan-level big data. We find that following a deregulation in the form of geographically lowered bank entry barriers, the potential benefits such as the lower interest rates for borrowers were mitigated adversely by the worsening credit allocation. The soft budget constraint...

The Economic Toll of China’s Tutoring Ban

Zibin Huang, Yinan Liu, Mingming Ma, Leo Yang Yang, Aug 27, 2025

China's 2021 “Double Reduction'' policy, which banned for-profit K12 academic tutoring, triggered an abrupt contraction in the education-services labor market. Using real-time job-posting and firm-registration data, we estimate over three million job openings lost in four months and at least 11 billion RMB in value-added tax (VAT) revenue losses within 18 months, alongside unintended negative spillovers to untargeted arts and sports training.

China’s Producer Price Reflation in 2016–2017: Capacity Cuts or Recovering Aggregate Demand?

Linxi Chen, Ding Ding, Rui C. Mano, Nov 23, 2018

In late 2015, the Chinese government launched a multi-year plan to reduce capacity in the coal and steel industries. Around the same time, producer price inflation in China started to pick up strongly after being trapped in negative territory for 4½ years. What is behind this broad reflation—cuts in coal and steel capacity or a strengthening of aggregate demand...

A Tale of Tier 3 Cities

Kenneth Rogoff, Yuanchen Yang, Mar 29, 2023

This paper provides new estimates of the housing stock, construction rates, and price developments by city tier in China.