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Throwing Good Money after Bad: Zombie Lending and the Supply Chain Contagion of Firm Exit

Yun Dai, Xuchao Li, Dinghua Liu, Jiankun Lu, Jan 19, 2022

Zombie lending to downstream firms does not reduce the exit likelihood of upstream firms. Worse, it distorts efficiency-based firm exit in upstream industries. The exit distortion effect works through the trade credit chain and is more profound in industries with stricter financial constraints and tighter supply chain connections

Improving Regulation for Innovation: Evidence from China’s Pharmaceutical Industry

Ruixue Jia, Xiao Ma, Jianan Yang, Yiran Zhang, Mar 06, 2024

In 2015, China revamped its pharmaceutical regulations, drawing inspiration from the US, to accelerate drug approvals. Using data at the drug and firm levels during 2011–2021, this study reveals three key outcomes.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Consumption: Learning from High Frequency Transaction Data

Haiqiang Chen, Wenlan Qian, Qiang Wen, May 26, 2021

Based on daily transaction data in 214 cities and the difference-in-differences method, we document that daily offline consumption fell by 32%, or 18.57 million RMB per city, during the twelve-week period after China’s COVID-19 outbreak in late January 2020. This implies that China’s offline consumption decreased by over 1.22 trillion RMB in the three-month post-outbreak period, or 1.2% of China’s 2019 GDP. Our estimates suggest a significant economic benefit...

The Value of Childhood Vaccination in China

Hamid Reza Oskorouchi, Alfonso Sousa-Poza, David Bloom, Sep 09, 2020

Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) we estimated the effect of childhood vaccination on later-life schooling and cognitive abilities of elderly Chinese. We found that being vaccinated in childhood increases schooling by one year and improves numeracy and episodic memory scores by 6 percent on average. These encouraging results confirm the powerful and long-lasting benefits of childhood vaccination.

Empowered Young Women: Trade Liberalization and Women’s Family Decisions in China

Difei Ouyang, Weidi Yuan, Yuan Zi, Mar 08, 2023

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.