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The “Trusted-assistant” Loan in Nineteenth Century China
Meng Miao, Guanjie Niu, Thomas Noe, Nov 08, 2017In this paper, we analyze “trusted-assistant loans,” which were loans issued (typically) by Shanxi Banks during the Qing period to finance newly appointed scholar-officials. Even though creditors lacked legal rights and, in fact, lacked every repayment enforcement mechanism advanced by economic contract theory, repayment rates on these loans were relatively high and they constituted a large and profitable portion of many banks’ loan portfolios. This paper develops a theory of “resource-based” debt contract enforcement that rationalizes repayment and tests the hypothesis of this theory using data from scholar-officials’ diaries and nineteenth century Chinese bank records.
Anxiety or Pain? The Impact of Tariffs and Uncertainty on Chinese Firms in the Trade War
Felipe Benguria, Jaerim Choi, Deborah Swenson, Mingzhi Xu, Nov 04, 2020We analyze the firm-level impacts of the US-China trade war since it is of great economic importance to understand how the unprecedented and dramatic increases in the import and export tariffs confronting Chinese firms affected the firm-level policy environment and firm operational outcomes. To contribute to this effort, we study how increases in US tariffs and Chinese retaliatory tariffs raised Chinese firms’ trade policy...
China’s Rebalancing and Gender Inequality
Mariya Brussevich, Era Dabla-Norris, Bin Grace Li, Jun 23, 2021This study documents women’s declining relative wages and labor force participation in China over the last two decades, in contrast with the predictions of the structural transformation literature, suggesting that rising service sector share is associated with narrowing gender gaps. We show that women’s labor supply elasticity to spouse’s wages increased dramatically between 1995 and 2013, which is consistent with a U-shaped relationship between economic development and women’s...
Taking Stock of Trade Policy Uncertainty: Evidence from China’s Pre-WTO Accession
George Alessandria, Shafaat Khan, Armen Khederlarian, Dec 04, 2019We propose a method to estimate the perceived likelihood of an uncertain increase in tariffs using the rise in trade flows in advance of the uncertainty resolution. We apply this framework to the uncertainty surrounding the U.S.’s annual renewal of China’s most-favored-nation (MFN) status in the 1990s. By matching the observed rise in imports in advance of U.S. Congress votes on the renewal, we find that the probability...
China’s Rebalancing: Recent Progress, Prospects, and Policies
Rui C. Mano, Jiayi Zhang, Mar 20, 2019While China’s growth gathered momentum in 2017, rebalancing was uneven and decelerated along many dimensions reflecting the temporary factors behind the growth pickup. Going forward, rebalancing is expected to proceed as these temporary factors recede, but elevated income inequality and leverage will remain a challenge. The authorities are...
