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.
The housing boom in China has raised great concerns about capital and credit misallocation. Recent research by IMF Economist Yu Shi finds that China’s imperfect financial market and regulations in the land market have also led to a misallocation of managerial talent, dampening productivity and growth in the non-real estate sectors. Productive managers in other sectors moved to the real estate sector...
We explore a tax reform on manufacturing firms in China in order to study the impact of taxes on firm innovation. The reform switched corporate income tax collection from a local to state tax bureau and reduced the effective tax rate by 10 percent. The reform only applied to firms established after January 2002, allowing us to use a regression...
The study explores the impact of migration controls on urban fiscal policies and the intergenerational transmission of human capital accumulation in China. It shows that migrants provide large positive fiscal externalities to major cities. The study evaluates the feasibility and effectiveness of alternative migration policies that offer the potential of decreasing inequality within China, while at the same time promoting growth via increasing the aggregate level of human capital in the economy.
Gender-targeted job ads are common in many emerging economies. Using data from jobboards—which differ substantially in terms of culture, size, and user groups targeted—our empirical evidence suggests that policies that target workers’ application decisions may be at least as important as policies that target employers’ screening decisions, if not more.