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Unequal School Enrollment Rights and Increased Inequality: The Case of Shanghai

Muyang Zhang, Jie Chen, Jan 03, 2018

In Shanghai, housing entitlements with enrollment access to a good public primary school is associated with a 0.1-0.35 percentage point lower annual rental yield. This rental yield gap is the opportunity cost of securing such housing, which is within the affordability range of most middle-income families in Shanghai. This implies that, should there be no credit constraint for homeownership, children from middle-income families should have a higher likelihood of accessing better public education. We find, however, that the enrollment rights between homeowners and renters, together with the credit constraint to own a home, actually lowers the chance of children from middle-income families of attending better public schools relative to those children from families with high initial wealth. This resulting reduced intergeneration mobility exacerbates the social inequality in China.

“Golden Ages”: A Tale of the Labor Markets in China and the United States

Hanming Fang, Xincheng Qiu, Dec 15, 2021

We examine the Chinese growth experience in the last three decades through the lens of the labor market, focusing on evolving cross-sectional earnings distributions. We contrast the Chinese labor market with that of the United States and provide an interesting tale of the two labor markets over the last 30 years.

Industrial Clusters, Networks, and Resilience of Firms to the Covid-19 Shock in China

Ruochen Dai, Dilip Mookherjee, Yingyue Quan, Xiaobo Zhang, Jan 06, 2021

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.

Can Information Influence the Social Insurance Participation of China’s Rural Migrants?

John Giles, Xin Meng, Sen Xue, Guochang Zhao, Apr 10, 2019

We use a randomized information intervention to shed light on whether poor understanding of social insurance—in terms of both the enrollment process and the associated costs and benefits—drives the relatively low rates of participation in urban health insurance and pension programs among China's rural-urban migrants. Among workers without a contract...

Magnification of the “China Shock” Through the U.S. Housing Market

Yuan Xu, Hong Ma, Robert Feenstra, Jan 22, 2020

The “China shock” operated in part through the U.S. housing market, which is one important reason the China shock was as big as it was. If housing prices had not responded at all to the China shock, then the total employment effect would have been reduced by more than one-half. Even when fully recognizing that housing prices responded to the China shock, the independent employment effect of the China shock is still reduced by around 30%.