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Internal Capital Markets in Business Groups and the Propagation of Credit Supply Shocks

Yu Shi, Robert Townsend, Wu Zhu, Sep 25, 2019

Using business registry data from China, we show that internal capital markets in business groups can propagate corporate shareholders' credit supply shocks to their subsidiaries. An average of 16.7% local bank credit growth where corporate shareholders are located would increase subsidiaries investment by 1% of their tangible fixed asset value, which accounts for 71% (7%) of the median (average) investment rate among these firms...

Lucky Dragons

Chih Ming Tan, Xiao Wang, Xiaobo Zhang, Feb 21, 2024

This article explores the intriguing connection between Chinese zodiac signs and parental investment in children’s development. Particularly, parents invest more in children born under the “lucky” sign of the dragon, potentially impacting their cognitive and noncognitive skills alike.

Debt Management and Strategic Interactions in Top-down Bureaucracy: Evidence from China

Xi Qu, Zhiwei Xu, Jinxiang Yu, Apr 30, 2025

The 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.

The Productivity Consequences of Pollution-Induced Migration in China

Gaurav Khanna, Wenquan Liang, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Ran Song, Apr 07, 2021

Severe air pollution induces workers to move from productive to unproductive regions, reducing their contribution to the aggregate productivity in China. In this paper, we quantify the productivity and welfare consequences of this important new pattern of migration. We find that the productivity losses from pollution through the indirect migration channel are approximately as much as the direct health costs of pollution.

How Did the US-China Trade War Affect American Communities?

Michael E. Waugh, Apr 22, 2020

The US-China trade war—the unprecedented tit-for-tat increase in tariffs by the US and China—provided a unique laboratory to study and understand how changes in trade policy can redistribute the gains from trade. I argue that the trade war induced concentrated losses in consumption and employment for American communities most exposed to Chinese retaliatory tariffs.