A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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Combating Cross-Border Externalities
Shiyi Chen, Joshua Graff-Zivin, Huanhuan Wang, Jiaxin Xiong, Sep 21, 2022China implemented a pioneering policy in 2011, the Ecological Compensation Initiative (ECI), which establishes side payments between upstream and downstream provinces in the Xin’an River Basin.
The Demand for Reverse Mortgages in China
Katja Hanewald, Hazel Bateman, Hanming Fang, Shang Wu, May 15, 2019Reverse mortgages are financial products that allow older homeowners to live in their property and receive income for as long as they live; repayment is made from the proceeds of the property sales upon the homeowners’ death. A recent pilot program in China by Happy Life Insurance found almost no takeup of such products. We investigate whether, if reverse...
The Effect of Computer-Assisted Learning on Students’ Long-Term Development
Nicola Bianchi, Yi Lu, Hong Song, Feb 17, 2021We examine the effect of computer-assisted learning on students’ long-term development. We explore the implementation of the largest ed-tech intervention in the world to date, which connected China’s best teachers to more than 100 million rural students through satellite internet. Exposure to the program improved students’ academic achievement, labor performance, and computer usage for at least ten years after program implementation. These findings indicate...
Decoding China’s Industrial Policies
Hanming Fang, Ming Li, Guangli Lu, Jul 02, 2025Industrial policy is often discussed through high-level narratives and flagship initiatives, yet its implementation—particularly at the subnational level—remains opaque. We leverage large language models (LLMs) to systematically analyze over three million government documents from 2000 to 2022, extracting structured policy information to decode China’s industrial policy at various levels of government. Combining these newly constructed granular industrial policy data with micro-level firm data, we document four sets of facts on China’s industrial policies, including the economic and political rationality of the choice of the target sectors, the dynamics of the policy tools, the diffusion and similarity of policies, and the effects on firm entry and productivity.
A New Perspective on China’s Credit Boom
Kinda Hachem, Michael Zheng Song, Jun 20, 2017What caused the enormous credit boom in China? This column by Kinda Hachem and Michael Song offers an unexpected explanation of stricter liquidity regulations on banks leading to a credit boom through competition between small and big banks and their heavy use of shadow banking investment instruments.
