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China’s Import Demand for Agricultural Products: The Impact of the Phase One Trade Agreement

Robert Feenstra, Chang Hong, Aug 19, 2020

This paper shows that the most efficient way for China to fulfill its committed import purchases from the United States under the Phase One trade agreement is to mimic the effect of an import subsidy. The effective subsidies would divert China’s agricultural imports from other countries. We find that this trade diversion is especially strong for Australia and Canada, followed by Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The Long-term Persistence of Informal Finance in China

Jinyan Hu, Chicheng Ma, Bo Zhang, Jan 24, 2018

By using data on 137 counties in north China, we find that the density of financial institutions (Qianzhuang and Diandang) in the late Qing period has a significant positive effect on the number and total assets of small loan companies, a dominant institution of informal finance today. The persistent effect of historical financial institutions can be explained by Confucian culture, which instills integrity, lineage solidarity and acquaintance networks.

No Winners but Only Losers in the China-US Trade War

Marlene Amstad, Leonardo Gambacorta, Chao He, Dora Xia, Mar 31, 2021

Trade tensions between China and the United States have played an important role in swinging global stock markets, but the effects are difficult to quantify. Using a comprehensive database constructed by Wisers, we develop a novel trade sentiment index (TSI) based on textual analysis that assesses the positive or negative tone of Chinese media coverage of the China-US trade situation and evaluates the TSI’s capacity to...

Optimising Production: Industrial Policies in Networks

Ernest Liu, Mar 13, 2019

Many developing countries adopt industrial policies favoring upstream sectors. Liu (2018) shows these policies might enhance aggregate production efficiency. When sectors form a production network, market imperfections generate distortions that compound through input demand linkages, accumulating into upstream sectors and creating an incentive for...

In-Consumption Social Listening with Moment-to-Moment Unstructured Data

Qiang Zhang, Wenbo Wang, Yuxin Chen, Jan 03, 2019

Major video and live streaming platforms in China have recently introduced a live commenting feature that allows viewers to post comments in real time during video content consumption. Building on the rich live comment data, this research proposes a novel approach for in-consumption social listening to extract live consumption experience. The approach is demonstrated in the context of online movie watching...