Rising import competition from emerging countries such as China, which are increasingly integrated in the global economy, have led to lower labor market opportunities in many high-income countries, especially for middle-class manufacturing workers (see Keller and Utar, 2019). This article shows that the implications of rising import competition go beyond the labor market and also affect family size and structure.
Electric 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....
We explore how China’s shift toward interest-rate-based monetary policy faces an inherent trade-off. When non-state banks turn to wholesale funding, monetary policy easing is transmitted more effectively to productive firms, but the banking system also becomes more fragile in economic downturns. Our findings suggest that China’s regulators must strike a careful balance between achieving policy effectiveness and safeguarding financial stability.
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.
This paper analyzes the effect of China's 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization on structural transformation at the local level, exploiting cross-sectional variation in tariff uncertainty faced by county economies pre-2001. Using a new panel of 1,800 Chinese counties from 1996 to 2013, we find that counties more exposed to the reduction in tariff uncertainty post-accession are characterized by increasing exports...