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Optimising Production: Industrial Policies in Networks
Ernest Liu, Mar 13, 2019Many 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...
Impacts of Housing Policy: China’s Experiment
Kaiji Chen, Qing Wang, Tong Xu, Tao Zha, Jan 13, 2021China’s unprecedented and unexpected loosening of loan-to-value ratio (LTV) policy during 2014Q4–2016Q3 provides an ideal case to study the role of housing policy in housing booms and busts and its impacts on consumption and debt burdens among households. Evidence from three unique micro datasets shows that such a policy change disproportionately increased the share of mortgages to middle-aged and high-income homeowners in the total amount of newly issued mortgages and at the same time reduced their consumption growth...
The Data Privacy Paradox of Alipay Users
Long Chen, Yadong Huang, Shumiao Ouyang, Wei Xiong, Jul 07, 2021We find that there is no relationship between the self-stated privacy concerns of a sample of Alipay users and their number of data-sharing authorizations with third-party mini-programs on Alipay. We explain this data privacy paradox by a curious finding that users with stronger privacy concerns tend to benefit more from using mini-programs, which further suggests that consumers may develop data privacy concerns as a by-product of the process of using digital applications, not because such concerns are innate.
Panda Games: Corporate Disclosure in the Eclipse of Search
Kemin Wang, Xiaoyun Yu, Bohui Zhang, Sep 26, 2018We conduct a textual analysis and exploit an exogenous event — Google’s 2010 surprising withdrawal from the Chinese mainland — which significantly hampered domestic investors’ ability to access foreign information. Following Google’s exit, Chinese firms’ announcements concerning their foreign transactions become more bullish in comparison to similar announcements prior to the exit and to those that involve only domestic transactions. This finding suggests that firms strategically alter their disclosure behaviors when the channel to transmit information is severed.
Trends and Cycles in China’s Macroeconomy
Chun Chang, Kaiji Chen, Daniel F. Waggoner, Tao Zha, Jun 27, 2018China’s spectacular growth over the 2000s has slowed since 2013. The driving force behind the country’s growth was investment, so the key to understanding the slowdown lies in understanding what sustained investment in the past. This column shows how a preferential credit policy promoting heavy industrialisation explains the trends and cycles in China’s macroeconomy over the past two decades. This policy was not without negative consequences, particularly in terms of the distortions it introduced for business finance. Going forward, China needs to focus on creating the right incentives for banks to make loans to small productive businesses.
