A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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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, 2025It’s not just about jobs. It’s also about love, status, and the marriage market.
Investor Memory and Biased Beliefs: Evidence from the Field
Zhengyang Jiang, Hongqi Liu, Cameron Peng, Hongjun Yan, Aug 20, 2025We explore how investor memory drives belief formation and trading behavior, fueling financial market volatility. Drawing on surveys of over 17,000 Chinese retail investors linked to trading records, our study finds that recollections of past returns—shaped by both salient market events in the past and current market conditions—strongly influence expectations of future returns and investors’ portfolio choices, often outweighing objective historical data. These findings suggest that memory-driven biases amplify boom-and-bust cycles, with policy implications for improving market stability by counteracting distorted recall.
Migration,Tariffs,and China’s Export Surge
Chen Liu, Xiao Ma, Oct 22, 2025China’s exports have increased dramatically in recent decades. We build a multi-sector spatial general equilibrium model and combine rich data sources to account for China’s export surge between 1990 and 2005 from three policy changes: China’s import tariffs, tariffs imposed on China’s exports, and barriers to internal migration in China. We find that the three policy changes jointly accounted for 30% of China’s export growth between 1990 and 2005 and that there is a positive interaction between tariff and migration policies.
How China’s Business Registration Reform Boosted Entrepreneurship and Productivity
Panle Jia Barwick, Luming Chen, Shanjun Li, Xiaobo Zhang, Nov 05, 2025China’s 2014 business registration reform spurred greater market dynamism by lowering entry barriers, which increased firm turnover and allowed smaller yet more productive entrepreneurs to establish new businesses, boosting overall productivity and growth.
Paying to Pollute: How Carbon Offsets Actually Raised Emissions in China
Qiaoyi Chen, Nicholas Ryan, Daniel Xu, Oct 29, 2025How do we cut carbon emissions without slowing economic growth? One way is through offset markets: markets to buy reductions in emissions from parties all over the world. Offsets are meant to incentivize projects that cut emissions. Instead of reducing emissions themselves, firms or countries can pay others to do so on their behalf. This trade in abatement can potentially lower the costs of bringing emissions down.
