We study how government control affects the roles of the media as an information intermediary and a corporate monitor. Comparing a large sample of news articles written by state-controlled and market-oriented Chinese media, we find that articles by the market-oriented media are more critical, more accurate, more comprehensive, and timelier than those by the state-controlled media. Moreover, only articles by the market-oriented media have a significant corporate governance impact. Subsample analyses, interviews with journalists, and a survey of university students suggest that the market-oriented media’s superior effects are explained by their operating efficiency and independence.
The quality of governance depends on public sector worker productivity. We use micro data from China to document that judges are less productive on polluted days. We find that public sector productivity elasticities are larger than the published estimates of private sector productivity elasticities with respect to pollution.
Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) in 2011, 2013 and 2015, we analyze whether the universal health insurance system in China increases the life satisfaction of middle-aged and older adults and to what extent the type of health insurance affects their life satisfaction. We find that the life satisfaction of middle-aged and older adults does not depend on having any health insurance...
The 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.
We examine the Chinese growth experience in the last three decades through the lens of the labor market, focusing on evolving cross-sectional earnings distributions. We contrast the Chinese labor market with that of the United States and provide an interesting tale of the two labor markets over the last 30 years.