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Interregional Barriers and Economic Growth in China
Yi Han, Mingqin Wu, Sep 25, 2024The article discussess that China's policy reform of integrating counties into larger prefecture-level divisions (che xian she qu) significantly promoted regional economic specialization, reduced interregional market barriers, and played a crucial role in driving economic growth.The article discussess that China's policy reform of integrating counties into larger prefecture-level divisions (che xian she qu) significantly promoted regional economic specialization, reduced interregional market barriers, and played a crucial role in driving economic growth.
Investor Memory and Biased Beliefs: Evidence from the Field
Zhengyang Jiang, Hongqi Liu, Cameron Peng, Hongjun Yan, Aug 20, 2025We explore how investor memory drives belief formation and trading behavior, fueling financial market volatility. Drawing on surveys of over 17,000 Chinese retail investors linked to trading records, our study finds that recollections of past returns—shaped by both salient market events in the past and current market conditions—strongly influence expectations of future returns and investors’ portfolio choices, often outweighing objective historical data. These findings suggest that memory-driven biases amplify boom-and-bust cycles, with policy implications for improving market stability by counteracting distorted recall.
Sowing Seeds of Mobility: The Uneven Impact of Land Reform
Ting Chen, Jiajia Gu, Rachel Ngai, Jin Wang, Jul 16, 2025Land market frictions due to incomplete property rights are a major form of mobility barrier in many developing countries, where rural households risk losing land if they stop cultivating it. This implicit barrier is made explicit through China’s Hukou system. Using two land reforms that reduce these barriers, we construct a novel county-level reform index and argue that these reforms have contributed to improvement in agricultural productivity and have uneven impact across gender. They improve rural women’s transition to non-agriculture relative to rural men, but at the same time, increasing gender gap among the urban population.
Bilateral Economies of Scope in International Trade
Yao Amber Li, Sichuang Xu, Stephen R. Yeaple, Tengyu Zhao, Jan 15, 2025This paper presents evidence that firms’ export and import decisions within the same foreign market are complementary, due to bilateral economies of scope that allow substantial cost savings when engaging in both activities. By quantifying these savings through a structural model, we show that bilateral economies of scope significantly enhance firms’ participation in international trade and amplify the effects of trade liberalization, offering new insights for policymakers and researchers.
Horizon Risk in Rental Housing: Evidence from a PropTech Rental Platform
Jiayin Hu, Maggie R. Hu, Shangchen Li, Yingguang Zhang, Zheng Zhang, Jul 10, 2024This article discussing that landlords in areas with faster housing price growth tend to offer shorter-term contracts and are less likely to renew expired contracts.
