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Gender Differences in Reactions to Failure in High-Stakes Competition: Evidence from the National College Entrance Exam Retakes

Le Kang, Ziteng Lei, Yang Song, Peng Zhang, Jun 05, 2024

This article discussing the different reactions between male and female students when facing failure in the context of the National College Entrance Exam in China.

The Unintended Impacts of Agricultural Fires: Human Capital in China

Joshua Graff Zivin, Tong Liu, Yingquan Song, Qu Tang, Peng Zhang, Dec 25, 2019

The practice of burning agricultural waste is ubiquitous around the world, yet the external human capital costs from those fires have been underexplored. Using data from the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) and agricultural fires detected by high-resolution satellites in China from 2005 to 2011, this paper investigates the impacts of fires on cognitive performance...

GDP Management to Meet or Beat Growth Targets

Changjiang Lyu, Kemin Wang, Frank Zhang, Xin Zhang, Oct 24, 2018

We apply the discontinuity methodology from the accounting literature to a political economy setting of GDP reporting and examine whether Chinese local governments manage regional GDP numbers. We find strong evidence of discontinuities around zero in the distribution of actual minus target GDP growth rates. The frequencies of just meeting or beating GDP growth targets are about five (four) times the frequencies of just missing targets at the prefecture (province) level. The results are stronger for governors with longer tenures and those without political connections to higher-level officials as well as for local governments with more resources under their control.

The Hidden Cost of Trade Liberalization: Input Tariff Shocks and Worker Health in China

Haichao Fan, Faqin Lin, Shu Lin, Jun 24, 2020

Can intermediate input trade liberalization affect worker health in a developing country like China, and if so, how? Do the impacts differ between skilled and unskilled workers? What are the welfare implications of input tariff reductions once health factors are considered? Professors Haichao Fan of Fudan University, Faqin Lin of China Agricultural University, and Shu Lin of the Chinese University of Hong Kong develop...

Local Government Implicit Debt and the Pricing of LGFV Bonds

Laura Xiaolei Liu, Yuanzhen Lyu, Fan Yu, Jun 22, 2022

To examine the implicit guarantee provided by Chinese local governments to local government financing vehicles (LGFV), we create a proxy for local governments’ implicit debt ratio and find it correlated with the credit spread of LGFV bonds.