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The Impact of Intranational Trade Barriers on Exports: Evidence from a Nationwide VAT Rebate Reform in China

Jie Bai, Jiahua Liu, Feb 19, 2020

It is well known that various forms of non-tariff trade barriers exist within a country. Empirically, it is difficult to measure these barriers as they can take many forms. We take advantage of a nationwide VAT rebate policy reform in China as a natural experiment to identify the existence of these intranational barriers due to local protectionism and study the impact...

Foreign Business Exposure, Policy Uncertainty, and Capital Flight from Home: Evidence from China

Dongxu Li, Xiaoxue Hu, Sep 22, 2021

Using subsidiary-level data of 3,863 Chinese nonfinancial firms from 2000 to 2019, we show that the multinationals have 5.3% higher capital expenditures than the domestic firms relative to the average. The multinational firms’ offshore investment increases with policy uncertainty about the domestic markets. Our analysis suggests that in the face of domestic uncertainty, multinational firms switch to...

Trade Policy Uncertainty and Firm Innovation

Qing Liu, Hong Ma, May 12, 2021

This study proposes a novel channel through which trade liberalization may induce innovation through the reduction of trade policy uncertainties (TPU) in destination markets. To verify this link, we utilize the significant reduction of TPU engendered by China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 as a quasi-natural experiment. We find that reduction in TPU significantly encourages firms' patent applications and that firms' innovation responses to TPU reduction vary by productivity, ownership, exporting status, and the irreversibility of investment.

Credit Constraints and Fraud Victimization: Evidence from a Representative Chinese Household Survey

Nan Gao, Yuanyuan Ma, Lixin Colin Xu, Jun 09, 2021

How and why do household credit constraints affect fraud victimization when households face fraud schemes? Using the urban sample of a novel nationally representative data set on fraud victimization and household finance, we find that households facing credit constraints are associated with a higher probability of becoming fraud victims and suffer from higher economic losses from frauds than households...

Outward FDI and Domestic Input Distortions: Evidence from Chinese Firms

Cheng Chen, Wei Tian, Miaojie Yu, Sep 08, 2021

A recent study shows that domestic input distortions faced by private firms in China have generated extra incentives for those firms to invest and produce abroad. This finding helps explain an astonishing increase in China’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) flows since the financial crisis.