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...
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.
China has become a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), a data-intensive technology with the potential to transform the global economy. We argue that the Chinese state’s collection of data and provision of data to commercial firms contribute to China’s AI leadership. We provide supportive evidence from China’s facial recognition AI sector and develop a macroeconomic model that illustrates how the Chinese state's surveillance interest aligns with promoting AI innovation, but potentially at the expense of privacy.
We provide an empirical review of the Chinese capital market, focusing on the basic return and risk characteristics of its major asset classes, as well as a comparison to the US market. All major asset classes in China have significant higher volatilities than their counterparts in the US market, but they do not always yield larger returns. Small-company stocks, short-, medium-, and long-term treasury bonds outperform their US counterparts, while large stocks underperform and long-term enterprise bonds yield similar returns.
Trademarks, which identify the source of goods and services, account for the majority of intellectual property filings worldwide. We investigate how firms adapt to the introduction of trademark institutions by exploring a historical precedent: China’s trademark law of 1923, an unanticipated and disapproved response to end foreign privileges in China.