We explore the impact of wage offers on job applications, testing implications of the directed search model and trying to distinguish it from random search. We use a field experiment conducted on an online Chinese job board, with real jobs for which we randomly varied the wage offers across three ranges. We find that higher wage offers raise application rates overall, which is consistent with directed search...
Household education expenditure in China accounts for a substantial portion of household income, averaging around 17.1%, and it is inversely related to household income. As a necessity, education expenditure imposes excessively high costs on lower-income families. China needs to formulate policies to alleviate the financial burden on families, reform the school system, and enhance educational equity.
The recent cross-border regulation tensions between the US and China have exposed many US-listed China Concepts Stocks to substantial delisting risks, forcing them to pursue dual listings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
How do women’s marriage and fertility decisions respond to trade liberalization? This column finds that Chinese prefectures more exposed to the US granting of permanent normal trade relations to China have experienced a relative increase in the fraction of unmarried young women and young women without children.
China’s political leadership recently committed to expanding the proportion of middle-income groups to create a less polarised, and more ‘olive-shaped’, distribution of wealth. This column considers the potential trade-offs between reducing income polarisation and other goals, including poverty reduction.