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Digital Dividends? Rural E-Commerce and the Urban-Rural Income Gap
Lei Wang, Yongming Sun, Oct 15, 2025We examine the impact of China’s Rural E-Commerce Comprehensive Demonstration (RECD) project on the urban-rural income gap. Using county-level data from 2006 to 2022 and a time-varying difference-in-differences design, we find that participation in the RECD project led to a significant reduction in urban-rural income disparity. The effects were especially pronounced in less-developed regions, poverty-designated counties, and areas with weaker digital infrastructure and gains were disproportionately concentrated among rural households. These “biased” digital dividends contrast with market-driven e-commerce development, such as Taobao Villages, which tended to exacerbate inequality.
Cash in the Darkness
Haohan Ren, Kemin Wang, Bohui Zhang, Fan Zhang, Jan 12, 2024Relying on a large dataset on cash withdrawals of over 165 million bank cards from China, we find a higher ratio of cash withdrawals late at night is associated with criminal activity.
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.
Superstition Everywhere
Jeffrey (Jinfan) Chang, Huancheng Du, Mar 09, 2022In Chinese culture, digit 8 (4) is taken as lucky (unlucky). We find that the numerological superstition has a profound impact across China’s stock, bond and foreign exchange markets, affecting asset prices in both the primary and secondary markets. The superstition effect, i.e., the probability of asset price ending with a lucky (unlucky) digit far exceeds (falls short of) what would be expected by chance, is everywhere.
Input-Trade Liberalization, Female Skill Intensity, and Fertility in China
Feng Chen, Renliang Liu, Miaojie Yu, Apr 09, 2025The interplay between trade liberalization and demographic behavior illuminates the challenges of reconciling career and family. This paper examines how gender-specific trade liberalization influences fertility, leveraging a Bartik-style shift-share instrumental variable strategy that incorporates female skill intensity into input tariff exposure. We find that input-trade liberalization significantly reduces fertility, particularly among highly educated women, private sector employees, and first-time mothers—groups experiencing the steepest career-family trade-offs. Mechanism analysis shows that enhanced labor market prospects raise the opportunity cost of childbearing, delaying or reducing family formation. These findings underscore the socioeconomic implications of trade policy for demographic trends.
