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Why Are So Many Young Women Moving to China’s Big Cities?

Yumi Koh, Jing Li, Yifan Wu, Junjian Yi, Hanzhe Zhang, Dec 03, 2025

It’s not just about jobs. It’s also about love, status, and the marriage market.

Beyond the Fundamentals: How Media-Driven Narratives Influence Cross-Border Capital Flows

Isha Agarwal, Wentong Chen, Eswar Prasad, Apr 02, 2025

We provide the first empirical evidence on how media-driven narratives influence cross-border institutional investment flows. Applying natural language processing techniques to 1.5 million newspaper articles, we document substantial cross-country variation in sentiment and risk indices constructed from domestic media narratives about China in 15 countries. These narratives significantly affect portfolio flows, even after controlling for macroeconomic and financial fundamentals. This impact is smaller for investors with greater familiarity or private information about China and larger during periods of heightened uncertainty. Political and environmental narratives are as influential as economic narratives. Investors react more sharply to negative narratives than positive ones.

Bonds of Love: Patriotism and the Rise of Modern Banks

Yuchen Sun, Wanda Wang, Yuchen Xu, Sep 11, 2024

This article discusses that patriotism could be an alternative source of trust in government and financial institutions, particularly during challenging times.

Interregional Barriers and Economic Growth in China

Yi Han, Mingqin Wu, Sep 25, 2024

The article discussess that China's policy reform of integrating counties into larger prefecture-level divisions (che xian she qu) significantly promoted regional economic specialization, reduced interregional market barriers, and played a crucial role in driving economic growth.The article discussess that China's policy reform of integrating counties into larger prefecture-level divisions (che xian she qu) significantly promoted regional economic specialization, reduced interregional market barriers, and played a crucial role in driving economic growth.

Free Education's Impact on Schooling Outcomes: Direct Effects and Intra-household Spillovers

Naijia Guo, Shuangxin Wang, Junsen Zhang, Mar 05, 2025

This study estimates the direct and spillover effects of a free education program on educational outcomes in rural China. We find that although the program encourages more eligible children to attend secondary school, it also leads to a decrease in high school enrollment among ineligible girls with eligible siblings, as they are more likely to choose work instead. In the long run, males exposed to free education have more years of schooling than their non-exposed counterparts. However, such effect is not found among females. This disparity suggests that a gender-neutral policy may have an asymmetric effect between males and females because of spillover effects through intra-household resource allocation.