A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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Omnia Juncta in Uno: Foreign Powers and Trademark Protection in Shanghai’s Concession Era
Laura Alfaro, Cathy Ge Bao, Maggie X. Chen, Junjie Hong, Claudia Steinwender, Jul 09, 2025Trademarks, which identify the source of goods and services, account for the majority of intellectual property filings worldwide. We investigate how firms adapt to the introduction of trademark institutions by exploring a historical precedent: China’s trademark law of 1923, an unanticipated and disapproved response to end foreign privileges in China.
Brain Drain: The Impact of Air Pollution on Firm Performance
Shuyu Xue, Bohui Zhang, Xiaofeng Zhao, Feb 12, 2020By exploiting the exogenous variation in air pollution caused by China’s central heating policy, we find that air pollution reduces the accumulation of executive talent and high-quality employees. We also find that firms located in polluted areas have poorer performance, especially for firms with greater dependence on human capital.
Rise of Bank Competition: Evidence from Banking Deregulation in China
Haoyu Gao, Hong Ru, Robert Townsend, Xiaoguang Yang, Aug 17, 2019This paper documents a novel trade-off of banking deregulation in the context of China by using loan-level big data. We find that following a deregulation in the form of geographically lowered bank entry barriers, the potential benefits such as the lower interest rates for borrowers were mitigated adversely by the worsening credit allocation. The soft budget constraint...
How Liberalizing Trade with China Led to a Boom in International Students in the US
Gaurav Khanna, Kevin Shih, Ariel Weinberger, Mingzhi Xu, Miaojie Yu, Aug 16, 2023Focusing on China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, we show that Chinese cities with more exposure to trade liberalization sent more students to US universities.
Faking Trade for Capital Control Evasion: Evidence from Dual Exchange Rate Arbitrage in China
Renliang Liu, Liugang Sheng, Jian Wang, Nov 25, 2020We examine whether firms over-report international trade to evade capital controls for foreign exchange arbitrage, by specifically testing whether the aggregate bilateral trade data gap between trading partners is positively (negatively) correlated with the exchange rate spread when the spread is positive (negative). At the disaggregated level, we also employ Benford’s law to detect trade data manipulations...
