A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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Input Trade Liberalization and Firm Labor Market Power in China
Illenin O. Kondo, Yao Amber Li, Wei Qian, Jul 30, 2025More trade, more jobs? Or fewer? China’s accession to the WTO has catalyzed a rich research agenda on the labor market consequences of trade liberalization. Departing from the assumptions of perfectly competitive labor markets, we ask whether Chinese firms exercised more or less labor market power when input tariffs fell with China’s WTO accession? We show that input trade liberalization reduced labor monopsony power in China, especially for skill-intensive firms and in markets with more labor supply growth.
VoxChina Covid-19 Forum (First Edition): Public Health and Public Policy
VoxChina, Apr 11, 2020Covid-19 poses unprecedented challenges to the global health and global economy. We are pleased to initiate a series of Covid-19 Public Health and Public Policy Virtual Forums to discuss the impact and policy responses to Covid-19.
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.
Robots as Guardians: How Automation Has Made Chinese Workplaces Safer
Wei Luo, Lixin Tang, Yaxin Yang, Xianqiang Zou, Feb 03, 2026Industrial robots are often discussed primarily in terms of their employment effects. New evidence from China shows that automation has also delivered substantial improvements in workplace safety, with sharp reductions in accidents and fatalities.
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.
