A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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China’s Mobility Barriers and Employment Allocations
Rachel Ngai, Christopher Pissarides, Jin Wang, Mar 07, 2018Despite reforms to the hukou household registration system and the very large rural-urban migration experienced in China, rural households are still experiencing a risk of losing their land allocation if they migrate. We argue that this risk leads to an inefficient rental market with low rents and is an impediment to migration, with consequent over-employment in agriculture and low productivity.
In Rural China, Gift-Giving Is an Increasingly Costly Competition
Erwin Bulte, Ruixin Wang, Xiaobo Zhang, May 01, 2019Gift 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.
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...
Are the Most Aggressive Investors in China Actually Informed?
Christian T. Lundblad, Zhishu Yang, Qi Zhang, Aug 30, 2017Using a unique Chinese data set capturing the trading behavior of particularly aggressive investors, we provide new evidence that is consistent with the presence of informational advantages. Critically, an advantage of our data is that we can also directly identify several plausible channels through which such an informational advantage could arise. Specifically, return predictability around key value-relevant events is most pronounced in the presence of aggressive traders who share the same geographic location as the firms in which they trade.
The Impact of Rapid Aging and Pension Reform on Savings and the Labor Supply: the Case of China
Hui He, Lei Ning, Dongming Zhu, Jun 26, 2019Individuals can use savings and labor supply to self-insure against uncertainties over their life cycle, such as idiosyncratic income shocks and changes in longevity and pension benefits. Using China as a case study, we investigate, both empirically and quantitatively, the impact of rapid aging and pension reform on savings and the labor supply, and the roles...
