This paper argues that after a quarter century of sharp and sustained increase, Chinese inequality is now plateauing and even turning using various data sources and inequality perspectives. The evolution of inequality is further examined through decomposition by income sources and subgroups. Some preliminary explanations are provided for these trends in terms of shifts in policy and the structural transformation of the Chinese economy.
In our recent work (Gu et al., 2019), we combine a difference-in-differences approach with a novel road speed dataset from Baidu Maps to provide evidence on the effect of subways on road congestion. We explore heterogeneous effects with respect to road characteristics. Guided by a conceptual framework of transportation mode choices, we shed light on the welfare impact of subways, using Beijing as an example.
The authors find that margin investors heavily sell their holdings when their account-level leverage edges toward the maximum leverage limits. Stocks that are disproportionately held by accounts close to leverage limits experience high selling pressure and abnormal price declines that subsequently reverse over the next 40 trading days. Unregulated shadow-financed margin accounts contributed more to the market crash even though these shadow accounts had higher leverage limits and held a smaller fraction of market assets.
In 2005, the Chinese government launched the landmark “36 Clauses” reform, marking a critical step toward forging a more favorable market environment.
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...