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Internal Capital Markets in Business Groups and the Propagation of Credit Supply Shocks
Yu Shi, Robert Townsend, Wu Zhu, Sep 25, 2019Using business registry data from China, we show that internal capital markets in business groups can propagate corporate shareholders' credit supply shocks to their subsidiaries. An average of 16.7% local bank credit growth where corporate shareholders are located would increase subsidiaries investment by 1% of their tangible fixed asset value, which accounts for 71% (7%) of the median (average) investment rate among these firms...
Housing Booms and Shirking
Quanlin Gu, Jia He, Wenlan Qian, Oct 03, 2018Our research studies the incentive costs of China’s housing booms . We use the type and actual time stamps of 9.3 million credit card transactions by over 200,000 cardholders to detect non-work-related behavior during work hours. Employees respond to positive house price shocks with an immediate and permanent increase in their propensity to use work hours to attend to personal needs. Our estimate implies an elasticity of shirking propensity with respect to house price of 1.6. The effect is driven by homeowners, especially among owners with higher housing wealth. Further analyses point to negative productivity implications of the increased shirking.
Building Tall, Falling Short: An Empirical Assessment of Chinese Skyscrapers
Ziyang Chen, Ting Chen, Yatang Lin, Jin Wang, Jun 04, 2025Amid debates around state-led urbanization in developing countries, we analyze the causes and consequences of China’s skyscraper boom. We find that local governments often subsidize these projects through discounted land prices, motivated by political incentives. However, we find that such subsidies offer minimal long-term benefits, largely due to a mismatch with local conditions.
The Impact of Migration Controls on Urban Fiscal Policies and the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in China
Holger Sieg, Chamna Yoon, Jipeng Zhang, Oct 07, 2020The study explores the impact of migration controls on urban fiscal policies and the intergenerational transmission of human capital accumulation in China. It shows that migrants provide large positive fiscal externalities to major cities. The study evaluates the feasibility and effectiveness of alternative migration policies that offer the potential of decreasing inequality within China, while at the same time promoting growth via increasing the aggregate level of human capital in the economy.
Improving State Effectiveness by Discouraging Civil Servants from Flattering Their Leaders
Alain de Janvry, Guojun He, Elisabeth Sadoulet, Shaoda Wang, Qiong Zhang, Mar 11, 2020Evaluation of public employees performance is essential to induce higher work efforts. We use an experiment in two provinces of china to explore how to design such evaluation. Results show that the incentive effect of evaluation can be larger if the employee does not know ex-ante who the evaluator will be, thus reducing attempts at personally influencing the evaluator and enhancing instead job achievements.
