A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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Drive Down the Cost: Learning by Doing and Government Policies in the Global EV Battery Industry
Panle Jia Barwick, Hyuk-soo Kwon, Shanjun Li, Nahim Bin Zahur, Apr 16, 2025Electric vehicle (EV) battery costs have fallen over 90% in the last decade. This study examines how learning-by-doing (LBD) drives this decline and interacts with government policies such as consumer EV subsidies and local content requirements. Leveraging rich data on EV models and battery suppliers from 13 countries with largest EV sales that account for 95% of global EV sales, we develop a structural model of the EV industry that incorporates consumer choices and pricing strategies by EV producers and battery suppliers....
Does ESG Travel around the World? Evidence from Multinational Firms in China
Dongxu Li, Xiaoxue Hu, Oct 20, 2021Using a sample of 3,770 Chinese listed firms during 2015–2020, we find that firms’ ESG ratings increase with foreign sales ratios. The higher-rated multinationals have more foreign subsidiaries located in countries with better ESG conditions, and their equity shares are held to a greater extent by institutional investors, especially by foreign institutions. The multinationals’ higher ESG ratings can be justified by...
Clean Air as an Experience Good in Urban China
Matthew E. Kahn, Weizeng Sun, Siqi Zheng, Oct 14, 2020If clean air is a valued experience good, then the short-term reduction in pollution in the spring of 2020 due to the COVID-19 shutdown could have persistent medium-term effects on reducing urban pollution levels as cities adopt new “blue sky” regulations to maintain recent pollution progress. Using data from 144 cities in China, we find that the largest experience good effect should take place for cities featuring a high pollution-sensitive population and where air quality has sharply improved during the pandemic. The residents...
Opening Up in the 21st Century: A Quantitative Accounting of Chinese Export Growth
Loren Brandt, Kevin Lim, Apr 12, 2023China’s rapid export growth has spurred extensive research investigating its effects on other economies. However, the exact causes of the boom as well as the slowdown in Chinese exporting after 2007 are less well understood.
The Quiet Revolution in Women’s Human Capital and the Gender Earnings Gap in the People’s Republic of China
Zhengyang Li, Guochang Zhao, Jul 08, 2020Since the 1980s, girls’ educational attaintment increased more quickly than boys’. As a result, the gender education gap decreased and even reversed in China. How does the gender earnings gap change in the face of increasing female human capital? What are the implications for the Chinese gender earnings gap in the future? This column will shed light on this interesting topic within and across cohorts.
