A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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The Fertility Consequences of Air Pollution in China
Xuwen Gao, Ran Song, Christopher Timmins, Sep 07, 2022We incorporate pollution exposure into Becker’s Quantity-Quality (Q-Q) model of fertility and evaluate how air pollution distorts individuals’ fertility behaviors in China. We find that increased pollution over time negatively affects the fertility of ethnic Han people, but does not affect the fertility of ethnic minorities. China’s One-Child Policy increased Han people’s demand for child quality (e.g., health status and education achievement), which can explain the negative association between pollution and fertility for Han people.
Do Multinationals Transfer Culture? Evidence on Female Employment in China
Heiwai Tang, Yifan Zhang, Nov 10, 2021In our recent paper (Tang and Zhang 2021), we investigate the global diffusion of culture through multinationals. We study specifically how foreign affiliates serve as a vehicle to diffuse gender norms from their countries of origin to China. Based on Chinese manufacturing firm-level data, we find that foreign affiliates in China tend to employ proportionally more female workers than local Chinese firms within the same industry...
Digital Distractions with Peer Influence: The Impact of Mobile App Usage on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes
Panle Jia Barwick, Siyu Chen, Chao Fu, Teng Li, Jan 08, 2025We present the first comprehensive evidence of how app usage affects academic performance and early career outcomes. App usage is contagious: a one standard deviation (around 3.5 hours per day) increase in roommates’ app usage raises an individual’s own app usage by 5.8%, with substantial heterogeneity across students. A one standard deviation increase in app usage reduces GPAs by 36.2% of a within-cohort-major standard deviation and lowers wages by 2.3%. The effect of roommates’ app usage is over half the size of an individual’s own usage effect. High-frequency GPS data reveal that high app usage crowds out time in study halls and increases late arrivals at and absences from lectures.
Competition and Quality: Evidence from High-Speed Railways and Airlines
Hanming Fang, Long Wang, Yang Yang, Aug 05, 2020This paper investigates whether competition spurs quality improvement using the entry of Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail (HSR) as an exogenous increase in competition to affected flights to destination cities along the HSR line. We find that competition from the entry of HSR leads to significant reductions in the mean and variance of travel delays on the affected airline routes and that these improvements are mainly driven by reductions in departure delays and the duration of taxi-in time at the destination airport.
Innovation versus imitation: Where all that Chinese R&D is going
Michael König, Zheng (Michael) Song, Kjetil Storesletten, Fabrizio Zilibotti, Jan 26, 2022China 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.
