Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) from 1991–2015, we decompose the income inequality among old Chinese and compare the income inequality between old households and young households. We develop an OLG model and a new empirical method to test how initial socioeconomic differences transmit to income inequality in the working years and then in old age. We find that the urban-rural gap and educational differences...
To what extent and through which mechanisms are couples influenced by others when choosing their own family size? Recent research exploits exemptions in China’s family planning policies to show that conformism and competition drove the diffusion of small families, and hence accelerated the fertility transition in China.
Health systems globally face increasing morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases, yet many — especially in low- and middle-income countries — lack strong primary care. Among recent contributions to understanding how economic incentives can be harnessed to address this challenge is a study in which we analyze China’s efforts to promote primary care management for rural residents with chronic disease...
We 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.
We find that retail investors who win an allotment for an IPO subscription subsequently become more overconfident relative to retail investors who do not have an allotment. The former group subsequently trades more frequently and loses more money. Overall, our evidence indicates that the experience of good luck makes people more overconfident about their prospects.