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In Rural China, Gift-Giving Is an Increasingly Costly Competition

Erwin Bulte, Ruixin Wang, Xiaobo Zhang, May 01, 2019

Gift expenditures grow swiftly in rural China and may adversely affect people's welfare. While gift-giving helps to maintain social status and connections, gift competition may create a predicament: people must spend more and more to "keep up with the Joneses." As a result, the escalating gift expenses crowd out spending on other important consumption and become increasingly burdensome to people in rural areas, particularly to the poor.

Tournament-Style Political Competition and Local Protectionism: Theory and Evidence from China

Hanming Fang, Ming Li, Zenan Wu, Feb 22, 2023

Inter-jurisdictional competition in a regionally decentralized authoritarian regime distorts local politicians’ incentives in resource allocation among firms from their own city and a competing city.

The Long-Run Trend of Residential Investment in China

Ding Ding, Weicheng Lian, Oct 09, 2019

Residential investment has been a key growth engine for China in the last two decades. Total housing investment grew from about 4 percent of GDP in 1997 to a peak of 15 percent of GDP in 2014, with residential investment accounting for more than two-thirds of it. Our analysis indicates that structural changes in the Chinese economy that led to rebalancing toward consumption...

Tax Policy and Lumpy Investment Behavior: Evidence from China’s VAT Reform

Zhao Chen, Xian Jiang, Zhikuo Liu, Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato, Daniel Yi Xu, Apr 01, 2020

To stimulate investment and promote production efficiency, the Chinese government has undertaken a series of value-added tax (VAT) reforms. One of those reforms, in 2009, reduced not only the purchasing price of equipment, but also investment frictions, i.e., the price gap imposed by the pre-reform VAT system between new and used equipment. We find that this reform increased equipment investment by 36%...

A Summary of Retail Investors and Momentum

Jun Du, Dashan Huang, Jane Yu Liu, Yushui Shi, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Huacheng Zhang, Oct 26, 2022

We explore the link between momentum and retail investing via an identification strategy in China, where retail investors dominate. We propose that due to a round lot restriction, small retail investors are less likely to hold and trade stocks with high nominal prices, and find supporting evidence.