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The Value of Childhood Vaccination in China

Hamid Reza Oskorouchi, Alfonso Sousa-Poza, David Bloom, Sep 09, 2020

Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) we estimated the effect of childhood vaccination on later-life schooling and cognitive abilities of elderly Chinese. We found that being vaccinated in childhood increases schooling by one year and improves numeracy and episodic memory scores by 6 percent on average. These encouraging results confirm the powerful and long-lasting benefits of childhood vaccination.

Developing Credit Markets in Provinces Improves Innovation among Firms in the People’s Republic of China

Hua Shang, Quanyun Song, Yu Wu, Mar 28, 2018

Our recent research finds that provincial credit market development, through improving credit allocation, enhances firms’ product innovation incentives and outcomes in the People’s Republic of China. We further show that firms’ credit constraints and performance are two channels through which credit market development affects the innovative capacities of firms. We suggest that in order to further promote firms’ innovations, China should encourage financial institutions to actively screen those firms who have good performance but face credit constraints.

A Biological Clock Explanation for the Gender Gap in Earnings: Import Competition Increases Female Fertility

Wolfgang Keller, Hâle Utar, Apr 15, 2020

Rising import competition from emerging countries such as China, which are increasingly integrated in the global economy, have led to lower labor market opportunities in many high-income countries, especially for middle-class manufacturing workers (see Keller and Utar, 2019). This article shows that the implications of rising import competition go beyond the labor market and also affect family size and structure.

Throwing Good Money after Bad: Zombie Lending and the Supply Chain Contagion of Firm Exit

Yun Dai, Xuchao Li, Dinghua Liu, Jiankun Lu, Jan 19, 2022

Zombie lending to downstream firms does not reduce the exit likelihood of upstream firms. Worse, it distorts efficiency-based firm exit in upstream industries. The exit distortion effect works through the trade credit chain and is more profound in industries with stricter financial constraints and tighter supply chain connections

High-Speed Rail and China's Electric Vehicle Adoption Miracle

Hanming Fang, Ming Li, Long Wang, Yang Yang, Mar 19, 2025

We investigate whether high-speed rail (HSR) connectivity influences electric vehicle (EV) adoption, using a quasi-natural experiment from China’s HSR expansion and several identification strategies. Our findings consistently show that, by alleviating range anxiety, the expansion of HSR can account for up to one third of the increase in EV market share and EV sales in China during our sample period from 2010 to 2023, with effects particularly pronounced in cities served by faster HSR lines. These results suggest that transportation infrastructure can play a complementary role in accelerating the transition to electric mobility.