A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”: Evidence of Directed Search from a Field Experiment
Haoran He, David Neumark, Qian Weng, Jun 16, 2021We explore the impact of wage offers on job applications, testing implications of the directed search model and trying to distinguish it from random search. We use a field experiment conducted on an online Chinese job board, with real jobs for which we randomly varied the wage offers across three ranges. We find that higher wage offers raise application rates overall, which is consistent with directed search...
Homemade Foreign Trading
Zhiguo He, Yuehan Wang, Xiaoquan Zhu, Jul 26, 2023Our recent study provides evidence that Chinese mainland insiders tend to evade see-through surveillance by round-tripping via the Stock Connect program.
Financing Micro-entrepreneurship in Online Crowdfunding Markets: Local Preference versus Information Frictions
Jian Ni, Yi Xin, Sep 30, 2020Crowdfunding has become an important financing alternative for micro-entrepreneurship. We study to what extent bias toward local entrepreneurs is prevalent in crowdfunding markets, determine the main driving forces for such bias, and examine how crowdfunding platforms and policymakers can leverage these forces to stimulate micro-entrepreneurship. Even though online crowdfunding platforms are designed to overcome geographic barriers, we find evidence of strong local bias induced by both informational frictions and local preference, with the former being more important.
Excessive Issuance of New Funds in China and Implications for Investor Protection
Shuai Ye, Jinfan Zhang, Kaixuan Zheng, Jun 25, 2025The Chinese mutual fund industry is only one-tenth the size of its US counterpart, but the number of funds in China has surpassed that of the US. Our study shows that such a large number of funds is unhealthy: managers issue new funds repetitively with different custodian banks, resulting in the average manager overseeing 2.7 funds. Managers shift profits to new funds in order to attract more flows. Among funds under the same manager, new funds have higher returns than old funds, spurring concerns over investor protection.
Labor Market Discrimination against Family Responsibilities: A Correspondence Study with Policy Change in China
Haoran He, Sherry Xin Li, Yuling Han, Jan 24, 2024China shifted its controversial one-child policy (1979–2015) to a two-child policy in 2016. We take advantage of the unexpected timing of this policy change and the heterogeneities in the pre-change environment to investigate labor market discrimination against expected family responsibilities.
