A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
Facebook 
Twitter 
Instagram
WeChat 
Email Most Popular
When History Matters Little: Political Hierarchy and Regional Development in China, AD 1000-2000
Ying Bai, Ruixue Jia, Jan 09, 2019Regime changes in China between AD 1000 and 2000 systematically altered the relative importance of different regions in the political hierarchy of that time. The evolution of Chinese provincial capitals and economic activities during this period throws light on how political factors shape economic geography. Employing a panel dataset...
Assessing and Addressing the Coronavirus-Induced Economic Crisis: Evidence from 1.5 Billion Sales Invoice
Zhuo Chen, Pengfei Li, Li Liao, Zhengwei Wang, Aug 31, 2022We probe the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent containment policies on business activities in China by exploiting big data on 1.5 billion sales invoices. The average drop in sales was between 23% and 35%, depending on firm size, for the 12-week period after the Wuhan lockdown.
Reluctant Entrepreneurs: Evidence from China’s SOE Reform
Hanming Fang, Ming Li, Zenan Wu, Yapei Zhang, Oct 09, 2023In this column, we examine how the presence of state-owned enterprises (SOE) affects the private sector by influencing the allocation of skills across SOEs, private sector waged employment and entrepreneurship.
The Reference Effect of Government Bonds on Corporate Borrowing Costs
Mark J. Flannery, Claire Yurong Hong, Baolian Wang, May 29, 2019It has been widely argued that government bonds can be used as a reference point for pricing corporate bonds. This “reference” role can reduce the cost of corporate borrowing. The authors study this question by examining a unique experiment in China. China issued two sovereign bonds denominated in U.S. dollars (USD) in October 2017, the first...
Does VAT Have Higher Tax Compliance Than a Turnover Tax? Evidence from China
Jianjun Li, Xuan Wang, Jan 15, 2020We study the effects of compliance with the value-added tax (VAT) by exploiting the reform that replaced business tax (BT) with VAT in China beginning in 2012. We find that replacing the BT with VAT significantly increases the reported sales and costs for treated firms, and the impact is much stronger for business-to-business (B2B) transactions than for business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions. Buyers in B2B transactions...
