A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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Does Good Luck Make People Overconfident? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in China
Huasheng Gao, Donghui Shi, Bin Zhao, Aug 01, 2018We find that retail investors who win an allotment for an IPO subscription subsequently become more overconfident relative to retail investors who do not have an allotment. The former group subsequently trades more frequently and loses more money. Overall, our evidence indicates that the experience of good luck makes people more overconfident about their prospects.
School Enrollment Restriction on Migrant Children and Human Capital Losses
Zibin Huang, Nov 24, 2021In China, migrant children are at a disadvantaged and sometimes cannot enroll in public schools in migration destinations due to policy restrictions. Some migrant workers then have to leave their children behind in their hometowns, which causes the left-behind children problem. This study finds that if the enrollment restriction on migrant children is relaxed, migration of parents and children will increase, and the average human capital in the society will also increase. Low-skill families from small cities benefit most.
What Do a Billion Observations Say about Distance and Relationship Lending?
Haoyu Gao, Hong Ru, Xiaoguang Yang, Nov 07, 2018Using big data of the locations of bank branches and borrowers in China, we document a non-trivial amount of distant lending. The inter-firm network helps banks collect soft information which facilitates the distant lending. We also use novel data of monthly internal loan rating changes to directly measure soft information and find that banks have better soft information and predict delinquent events more accurately for borrowers connected via the inter-firm network.
Hayek, Local Information, and the Decentralization of Chinese State-owned Enterprises
Lixin Colin Xu, May 23, 2018Hayek (1945) predicts that where local information is important, the organization of production should be decentralized. This prediction is tested and supported in the context of the decentralization of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). SOEs are more likely to decentralize with increasing distance from the seat of the oversight government. This likelihood is especially strong when performance heterogeneity is greater and/or transportation costs are higher.
The Effect of Pollution and Heat on the Productivity of High-Skill Public Sector Workers in China
Matthew E. Kahn, Pei Li, May 22, 2019The quality of governance depends on public sector worker productivity. We use micro data from China to document that judges are less productive on polluted days. We find that public sector productivity elasticities are larger than the published estimates of private sector productivity elasticities with respect to pollution.
