Most Popular

Employment Protection and Corporate Cash Holdings: Evidence from China’s Labor Contract Law

Chenyu Cui, Kose John, Jiaren Pang, Haibin Wu, Oct 13, 2021

We examine whether and how employment protection influences corporate cash holdings using Chinese firm-level data. Our empirical results show that labor-intensive firms in China significantly increased their cash holdings following the enactment of China’s Labor Contract Law. Further analyses suggest that the results are generally consistent with a “labor adjustment costs” channel: employment protection...

Structural Change and the Stability of Aggregate Employment in China

Wen Yao, Xiaodong Zhu, Oct 27, 2021

In developed countries, aggregate employment has a strong positive correlation with aggregate output, and it is almost as volatile as output. In China, the correlation of aggregate employment and output is close to zero, and the volatility of aggregate employment is very low. We argue that the key to understanding the stability of aggregate employment in China is labor reallocation between the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, and that the declining relative demand...

Exporting out of Agriculture: The Effects of the China Shock in China

Jessica Leight, Jan 01, 2020

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...

Good Finance, Bad Finance, and Resource Misallocation: Evidence from China

Jiapin Deng, Qiao Liu, Apr 03, 2024

The development of finance driven by Chinese local governments exacerbates the problem of resource misallocation, whereas market-driven finance significantly improves allocative efficiency. This highlights the policy implication that modern finance in China should prioritize the efficient utilization of resources rather than mere expansion in scale.

Financial Reporting and Disclosure Practices in China

Hai Lu, Jee-Eun Shin, Mingyue Zhang, Jul 04, 2024

This article discussing that Chinese firms tend to emphasize the stability of financial performance in their reports. In contrast to U.S. firms, their financial disclosures are significantly swayed by non-shareholder stakeholders and do not leverage voluntary disclosures to mitigate capital costs.