China is on a path to capital account liberalization. If the renminbi is to become an international reserve currency (e.g. Prasad, 2016), as it has started to and one day will be, China must have an open capital account. But once the capital account is open, the economy will be exposed to gyrations of the global financial cycle (Rey, 2014). This column argues that international credit supply shocks have powerful effects on real and financial variables of the receiving countries, but not all economies are affected similarly, and those that have lower loan-to-value ratios (LTVs) and limits on foreign currency borrowing (FXLs) are less vulnerable. As China lowers controls on capital flows (e.g., Benigno et al., 2016) it should consider tightening domestic macro-prudential policy regulations (e.g., Cesa-Bianchi and Rebucci (2017) to avoid excessive volatility.
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...
China's falling marriage rate reflects a fundamental spatial mismatch: as highly educated women sort into big cities with larger service sectors and less educated men concentrate in poorer regions, persistent hypergamous norms leave both groups without suitable local partners.
Both entry of new firms and performance of incumbents were less adversely affected by the Covid-19 shock in Chinese counties with a greater presence of industrial clusters. To explain these results, we find evidence of the role of two specific attributes of clusters: reliance on informal hometown-based entrepreneur networks and spatial proximity to suppliers and customers.
The prevalent implicit guarantees provided by financial intermediaries have been a central feature of shadow banking products in China. Our theoretical investigation shows that providing implicit guarantees can be the second-best arrangement and mitigate capital misallocation.