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Book Synopsis Why Does China Need a New Breed of Companies?

Qiao Liu, Sep 06, 2017

Understanding corporate China and its future dynamics is the key to understanding the Chinese economy and its undergoing transformation. The intellectual framework proposed in this work can be summarized by a simple identity: Growth Rate = Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) X Investment Rate. To successfully achieve China’s economic transition without losing a lot of growth at the same time, China needs to improve ROIC at the aggregate level.

Book Synopsis How Reform Worked in China: The Transition from Plan to Market

Yingyi Qian, May 02, 2018

The general lesson from this book is this: for a reform to be successful, it is important to use the universal principles, even if they are not enough by themselves, and it is equally important to find specific ways to implement the reform by fully incorporating the initial historical conditions as well as contemporary constraints. The perspective of reform provided by this book’s analysis on China can also be useful beyond China, precisely because it emphasizes that to make reform work, it is not enough to understand why reform works, but also how reform works.

Regional Variation of GDP per Head within China, 1080–1850: Implications for the Great Divergence Debate

Stephen Broadberry, Hanhui Guan, Sep 28, 2022

We provide the first regional breakdown of GDP per head for China from the Song dynasty to the Qing, so that regions of similar size can be compared between Europe and Asia to establish the timing of the Great Divergence of living standards.

Industry/Policy View Derisking Real Estate in China’s Hybrid Economy

Wei Xiong, Jun 28, 2023

We investigate the relationship between the allocation of government subsidies and total factor productivity for Chinese listed firms.

Production Networks and Firm Value: Evidence from the US-China Trade War

Yi Huang, Chen Lin, Sibo Liu, Heiwai Tang, Mar 25, 2020

This paper discusses the effects on the financial markets of the several rounds of tariff hikes during the 2018–19 US-China trade war. It illustrates that US firms that are more dependent on exports to and imports from China have lower stock prices around the announcement date, while the expectation of weakened Chinese import competition due to US tariffs plays an economically minimal role. Firms with indirect exposure to US-China trade through domestic supply chains also...