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China’s Rise, Changing Stripes, and Global Implications of a Potential Slowdown

Shaghil Ahmed, Feb 14, 2018

China’s remarkable economic rise over the past three decades has yielded many benefits to its own citizens and to people all around the globe. But the export-led growth model that underpinned China’s success and its increased role in the global economy has also led over time to the development of some serious imbalances in its economy. How China deals with these imbalances will have important implications for the rest of the world going forward—in particular, the quantitative analysis reported here suggests that were China to experience a financial crisis, the hit to the rest of the world would be substantial.

The Reference Effect of Government Bonds on Corporate Borrowing Costs

Mark J. Flannery, Claire Yurong Hong, Baolian Wang, May 29, 2019

It has been widely argued that government bonds can be used as a reference point for pricing corporate bonds. This “reference” role can reduce the cost of corporate borrowing. The authors study this question by examining a unique experiment in China. China issued two sovereign bonds denominated in U.S. dollars (USD) in October 2017, the first...

QR Code-Based Mobile Payments and Financial Inclusion

Thorsten Beck, Leonardo Gambacorta, Yiping Huang, Zhenhua Li, Han Qiu, Nov 09, 2022

By means of a unique dataset of around half a million Chinese firms, we investigate the link between the use of a QR code-based mobile payment system and financial inclusion.

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...

The Dynamic Effects of Computerized VAT Invoices on Chinese Manufacturing Firms

Haichao Fan, Yu Liu, Nancy Qian, Jaya Wen, Aug 08, 2018

This investigation uses a balanced panel of large manufacturing firms to provide novel evidence on the dynamic effects of computerizing VAT invoices on tax revenues and firm behavior in China, 1998-2007. We find that computerization increases cumulative VAT revenues and increases the effective average tax rate. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that the effects of computerization change over time: tax revenue gains are likely to be smaller in the long run. Meanwhile, firms reduce output and input, and increase productivity monotonically over time.