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The Great Chinese Inequality Turnaround

Ravi Kanbur, Yue Wang, Xiaobo Zhang, Jul 26, 2017

This paper argues that after a quarter century of sharp and sustained increase, Chinese inequality is now plateauing and even turning using various data sources and inequality perspectives. The evolution of inequality is further examined through decomposition by income sources and subgroups. Some preliminary explanations are provided for these trends in terms of shifts in policy and the structural transformation of the Chinese economy.

BigTech Lending as a New Form of Financial Intermediation

Jon Frost, Leonardo Gambacorta, Yi Huang, Hyun Song Shin, Pablo Zbinden, Jun 19, 2019

BigTech firms, i.e. large technology firms whose primary business is digital services, are entering finance. Their entry into finance started with payments. Increasingly, they have expanded beyond payments into the provision of credit, insurance, and toward savings products, either directly or in partnership with incumbent financial institutions...

Connections and Buildings collapse in the Sichuan Earthquake

Yiming Cao, May 24, 2023

This study investigates the factors contributing to building damage during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

Shadow Banking in a Crisis: Evidence from Fintech During COVID-19

Zhengyang Bao, Difang Huang, Jul 14, 2021

We evaluate the performance of Chinese fintech and bank credit providers during COVID-19. Comparing samples of fintech and bank loan records across the pandemic outbreak, we find that fintech companies are more likely to expand credit access to new and financially constrained borrowers after the start of the pandemic. However, the delinquency rate of fintech loans triples after the outbreak, but there is no significant...

Leverage-Induced Fire Sales and Stock Market Crashes

Jiangze Bian, Zhiguo He, Kelly Shue, Hao Zhou, Dec 03, 2018

The authors find that margin investors heavily sell their holdings when their account-level leverage edges toward the maximum leverage limits. Stocks that are disproportionately held by accounts close to leverage limits experience high selling pressure and abnormal price declines that subsequently reverse over the next 40 trading days. Unregulated shadow-financed margin accounts contributed more to the market crash even though these shadow accounts had higher leverage limits and held a smaller fraction of market assets.