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Trade Policy Uncertainty and New Firm Entry: Evidence from China

Chuantao Cui, Leona Shao Zhi Li, Sep 20, 2023

Exploiting China’s WTO accession as a quasi-natural experiment, this study finds that reduced trade policy uncertainty (TPU) in a major destination market promotes domestic entrepreneurial activities in China

The Impact of Health Insurance on the Wellbeing of Older Chinese

Sisi Yang, Katja Hanewald, Aug 12, 2020

Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) in 2011, 2013 and 2015, we analyze whether the universal health insurance system in China increases the life satisfaction of middle-aged and older adults and to what extent the type of health insurance affects their life satisfaction. We find that the life satisfaction of middle-aged and older adults does not depend on having any health insurance...

Human Mobility Restrictions and the Spread of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China

Hanming Fang, Long Wang, Yang Yang, Jun 03, 2020

We provide a rigorous examination of the causal impact of human mobility restrictions, particularly the lockdown of the city of Wuhan on January 23, 2020, on the containment and delay of the spread of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China. We employ various difference-in-differences strategies to disentangle the lockdown effect on human mobility reductions from other confounding effects, including a panic effect, a virus deterrence effect, and a Spring Festival effect...

Did the US-China Tariff War Affect China’s Economy? Evidence from Night Lights

Davin Chor, Bingjing Li, Dec 08, 2021

We infer the impact of the US-China tariff war on China’s economy, using high-frequency satellite data on nighttime luminosity. Through a grid-level panel analysis, we find evidence that the US tariffs levied between 2018–2019 on China’s exports had a negative impact on income per capita and manufacturing employment that was very skewed across locations within China. By contrast, China’s retaliatory tariffs on imports from the United States did not have a discernible impact on economic outcomes at the local level.

The Effect of Pollution and Heat on the Productivity of High-Skill Public Sector Workers in China

Matthew E. Kahn, Pei Li, May 22, 2019

The quality of governance depends on public sector worker productivity. We use micro data from China to document that judges are less productive on polluted days. We find that public sector productivity elasticities are larger than the published estimates of private sector productivity elasticities with respect to pollution.