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FDI and Firm Productivity in Host Countries: The Role of Financial Constraints
Wontae Han, Jian Wang, Xiao Wang, Mar 03, 2021Using the Chinese firm-level data, we find that FDI firms may have even lower cutoff productivity than local firms, although FDI firms are still, on average, more productive than their local counterparts. In addition, these findings are more pronounced in financially more vulnerable sectors. We argue that easy access to international financial markets by FDI firms has played an important role in driving our empirical findings...
Debt Management and Strategic Interactions in Top-down Bureaucracy: Evidence from China
Xi Qu, Zhiwei Xu, Jinxiang Yu, Apr 30, 2025The Chinese central government implemented a series of measures to establish a top-to-bottom debt ceiling management system starting in 2015. Under this regulatory framework, public debt issuance for a prefecture city is subject to a ceiling (quota) determined through a hierarchical procedure. Based on a comprehensive dataset, we investigate what factors determine the allocations of debt ceiling to prefectural cities in China after the debt management reform. We find that the distributional outcome of the debt ceilings relies on the bilateral interactions of local and their superior governments. We also estimate the effect of ceiling allocation on the real economy, as well as the potential risk associated with implicit debt accumulation.
Verifying China’s COVID-19 Recovery Using the FRBSF China CAT
Remy Beauregard, John G. Fernald, Mark M. Spiegel, Dec 23, 2020Using the FRBSF China Cyclical Activity Tracker, we confirm the robustness of China’s recovery from the COVID-19 downturn. The FRBSF “China CAT” estimates that first quarter 2020 China GDP plunged 6.4 standard deviations below its detrended level a year earlier, but by the end of the third quarter, China economic activity had recovered to only 0.1 standard deviations below trend. As such, the FRBSF China CAT index validates the accuracy...
Do Interest Rates Play a Major Role in Monetary Policy Transmission in China?
Gunes Kamber, Madhusudan Mohanty, Aug 17, 2018We explore the role of interest rates in monetary policy transmission in China in the context of its multiple instrument setting. In doing so, we construct a new series of monetary policy surprises using information from high frequency Chinese financial market data around major monetary policy announcements. We find that a contractionary monetary policy surprise increases interest rates and significantly reduces inflation and economic activity. Our findings provide further support to recent studies suggesting that monetary policy transmission in China has become increasingly similar to that in advanced economies.
From Fog to Smog: The Value of Pollution Information
Panle Jia Barwick, Shanjun Li, Liguo Lin, Eric Zou, Feb 05, 2020During 2013–2014, China launched a nation-wide real-time air quality monitoring and disclosure program, which was a watershed moment in the history of its environmental regulations. We present the first empirical analysis of this natural experiment by exploiting its staggered introduction across cities. The program substantially expanded public access to pollution information, and in turn, triggered a cascade...
