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FDI and Firm Productivity in Host Countries: The Role of Financial Constraints

Wontae Han, Jian Wang, Xiao Wang, Mar 03, 2021

Using 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...

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Job Creation: The Role of Global Supply Chains

Hanming Fang, Chunmian Ge, Hanwei Huang, Hongbin Li, Dec 30, 2020

Using big data of more than 100 million posted jobs from China, we estimate how the COVID-19 pandemic affected local labor demand in China via global supply chains. The data reveal that the number of newly posted jobs was about 31% lower in the first 14 weeks after the Wuhan lockdown than comparable periods in 2018 and 2019. We show that COVID-19 cases abroad and foreign governments’ pandemic-control policies reduced new job creation in China by 11.7%...

Currency Carry Trade by Trucks: The Curious Case of China’s Massive Imports from Itself

Xuepeng Liu, Heiwai Tang, Zhi Wang, Shang-Jin Wei, Apr 13, 2022

Capital controls are common in many developing countries. With capital controls, the standard financial market transactions needed for currency carry trade are hard to implement. Yet, as long as there is a big difference between domestic and foreign interest rates, the incentive to engage in currency carry trade is present.

Brain Drain to the State Sector: Job Preferences and Outcomes for China’s College Graduates

Hongbin Li, Lingsheng Meng, Yanyan Xiong, Sinclair Cook, Feb 28, 2024

Despite private enterprises dominating China’s labor market, college-educated workers are still highly concentrated in the state sector. Using data from the Chinese College Student Survey, we find that 64% of students in the sample expressed a strong preference for state-sector employment.

Ownership and Productivity in Vertically Integrated Firms in China

Loren Brandt, Feitao Jiang, Yao Luo, Yingjun Su, May 27, 2020

This paper studies differences in the internal configuration and productivity in vertically integrated steel facilities in China using equipment-level information on inputs and output for each of the main stages in the value chain. At the facility level, we do not find statistically significant differences in productivity by ownership. This conceals important differences in the value chain: private firms outperform in pig iron...