In developed countries, aggregate employment has a strong positive correlation with aggregate output, and it is almost as volatile as output. In China, the correlation of aggregate employment and output is close to zero, and the volatility of aggregate employment is very low. We argue that the key to understanding the stability of aggregate employment in China is labor reallocation between the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, and that the declining relative demand...
There was a bubble in the prices of put warrants traded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges during the summer of 2007. We use investor trading records from a large securities firm to show that put warrant investors engaged in a particular form of feedback trading. This feedback trading exacerbated an initial run-up in put warrant prices caused by a change in the stock transaction tax, and created the bubble.
China is aiming to become a technological innovation powerhouse by 2050, with Premier Li Keqiang recently announcing an increase in R&D investments by 7% for the next five years. But greater R&D investment is no guarantee of success. This column examines the effects of R&D investments by Chinese firms on aggregate productivity and growth.
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 emergence of third-party online platforms in intermediating financial products has been a new and exciting development in FinTech. We find that, in China post-platform, fund flows become markedly more sensitive to fund performance, and the net flow to the top 10 percent–performing funds more than triples their pre-platform level. In response, fund managers increase their risk taking to enhance...