A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
Facebook 
Twitter 
Instagram
WeChat 
Email Most Popular
Rural Road Stimulus and the Role of Matching Mandates on Economic Recovery in China
Anthony Howell, Oct 30, 2024The findings show that the temporary cost share exemption boosts short-term income growth, increases local investment in infrastructure, and promotes entrepreneurial activities, particularly among returning migrants.
A New Method for Estimating Product-Level Emission Intensities and Implications for EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism
Ohyun Kwon, Hao Zhao, Min Qiang Zhao, May 14, 2025We develop a new method for estimating product-level emission intensities (PLEI) by combining firm-level emissions with firm-product output data. This methodological innovation produces highly granular emission measures that are essential for both academic research and climate policy design. Applying the method to Chinese manufacturing data, we uncover stark heterogeneity: the top 10% of emission-intensive products account for 75% of emissions but only 4% of exports. We incorporate our PLEI estimates into a general equilibrium trade model to assess the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Our simulations demonstrate that, at the same carbon price, product-level CBAM achieves substantially greater emissions reductions than sector-level CBAM, while causing markedly less trade disruption. These results underscore the importance of product-level emission intensity data in designing targeted and cost-effective climate policies.
Sowing Seeds of Mobility: The Uneven Impact of Land Reform
Ting Chen, Jiajia Gu, Rachel Ngai, Jin Wang, Jul 16, 2025Land market frictions due to incomplete property rights are a major form of mobility barrier in many developing countries, where rural households risk losing land if they stop cultivating it. This implicit barrier is made explicit through China’s Hukou system. Using two land reforms that reduce these barriers, we construct a novel county-level reform index and argue that these reforms have contributed to improvement in agricultural productivity and have uneven impact across gender. They improve rural women’s transition to non-agriculture relative to rural men, but at the same time, increasing gender gap among the urban population.
Visible Hands: Professional Asset Managers’ Expectations and the Stock Market in China
John Ammer, John Rogers, Gang Wang, Yang Yu, Jun 11, 2025Mutual funds have become an important type of private institutional investor in Chinese security markets, with assets under management exceeding $3 trillion. We study how Chinese fund managers’ growth expectations affect their equity investment decisions, and in turn, the effects on stock prices. We identify a strong short-run causal effect of growth expectations on stock returns. We also find that fund investment helps bring prices in line with firms’ longer-run earnings prospects.
Do Chinese Cultures Spawn Family Businesses
Joseph P. H. Fan, Qiankun Gu, Joyce Xin Yu, Jun 18, 2025Using a sample of Chinese private-sector firms that went public, we find that founders from the country’s regions with stronger collectivist cultures engage more family members as managers, retain more firm ownership within the family, and share the controlling ownership with more family members. Our study suggests that the collectivist culture boosts the formation of family businesses because the collectivist culture reduces information asymmetry, shirking problems, and associated monitoring costs among family members.
