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Will robots replace workers? Lessons from China

Osea Giuntella, Yi Lu, Tianyi Wang, Aug 06, 2025

Robot adoption has skyrocketed in China in the last decade. New research finds that this exposure has led to a decline in employment and wages, influencing workers’ training and retirement decisions. How can developing countries prepare themselves for the artificial intelligence revolution?

The Fertility Consequences of Air Pollution in China

Xuwen Gao, Ran Song, Christopher Timmins, Sep 07, 2022

We incorporate pollution exposure into Becker’s Quantity-Quality (Q-Q) model of fertility and evaluate how air pollution distorts individuals’ fertility behaviors in China. We find that increased pollution over time negatively affects the fertility of ethnic Han people, but does not affect the fertility of ethnic minorities. China’s One-Child Policy increased Han people’s demand for child quality (e.g., health status and education achievement), which can explain the negative association between pollution and fertility for Han people.

Lucky Dragons

Chih Ming Tan, Xiao Wang, Xiaobo Zhang, Feb 21, 2024

This article explores the intriguing connection between Chinese zodiac signs and parental investment in children’s development. Particularly, parents invest more in children born under the “lucky” sign of the dragon, potentially impacting their cognitive and noncognitive skills alike.

Picking Winners? Government Subsidies and Firm Productivity in China

Lee G. Branstetter, Guangwei Li, Mengjia Ren, Jun 21, 2023

We investigate the relationship between the allocation of government subsidies and total factor productivity for Chinese listed firms.

Foreign-Invested Enterprises and the Transmission of Global Financial Uncertainty: Evidence from China

Shujie Wu, Haichun Ye, Jul 21, 2021

How are global financial uncertainty shocks transmitted across borders? What is the role of nonfinancial multinational companies in the cross-border shock transmission? Using Chinese firm-level data, we find that rising global financial uncertainty has a significantly larger contractionary effect on real investment for foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) than their local counterparts. The differential responses to global financial uncertainty are more pronounced for firms...