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Growing like China: Firm Performance and GVC Position

Davin Chor, Kalina Manova, Zhihong Yu, Apr 14, 2021

We use firm-level customs and manufacturing survey data, together with Input-Output tables for China, to examine how Chinese firms position themselves in global production lines. We document a sharp rise in the upstreamness of China’s imports, while the positioning of its exports has remained relatively stable, over the 1992-2014 period. Participation in global value chains thus appears to have facilitated an...

Physician-Induced Demand: Evidence from China’s Drug Price Zero-Markup Policy

Hanming Fang, Xiaoyan Lei, Julie Shi, Xuejie Yi, Aug 11, 2021

We exploit the staggered rollout of China’s drug price zero-markup policy (ZMP) to study physician-induced demand in healthcare. Our results show that the drug expenses in the treatment hospitals dropped by 63 log points (47 percent) compared with those of the control group; however, the expenses for non-drug services were 28 log points (32 percent) higher in the treatment group than in the control group. Our results provide robust evidence for physician-induced demand.

Going Green in China: Firms’ Responses to Stricter Environmental Regulations

Haichao Fan, Joshua Graff Zivin, Zonglai Kou, Xueyue Liu, Huanhuan Wang, Apr 29, 2020

Evidence from China shows that firms respond to stricter enforcement of the emission reduction target by reducing their pollution. This effect is stronger for firms in industries with higher pollution intensity. Stricter environmental regulations also lead to sharp declines in firms’ profits, capital, and labor. A sequence of tests of the underlying mechanisms reveals...

Impacts of Housing Policy: China’s Experiment

Kaiji Chen, Qing Wang, Tong Xu, Tao Zha, Jan 13, 2021

China’s unprecedented and unexpected loosening of loan-to-value ratio (LTV) policy during 2014Q4–2016Q3 provides an ideal case to study the role of housing policy in housing booms and busts and its impacts on consumption and debt burdens among households. Evidence from three unique micro datasets shows that such a policy change disproportionately increased the share of mortgages to middle-aged and high-income homeowners in the total amount of newly issued mortgages and at the same time reduced their consumption growth...

Do CEOs Know Best? Evidence from China

Nicholas Bloom, Hong Cheng, Mark Duggan, Hongbin Li, Franklin Qian, Jan 30, 2019

Using data from the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES), a recent survey of Chinese manufacturing firms, we analyze the extent to which employees of differing levels are able to assess their firms’ management practices. Our study finds that of CEOs, managers, and workers, CEOs tend to have the most accurate appraisals of their firms. Additionally, we find that firms with higher levels of disagreement...