A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
Facebook 
Twitter 
Instagram
WeChat 
Email Most Popular
How China’s Business Registration Reform Boosted Entrepreneurship and Productivity
Panle Jia Barwick, Luming Chen, Shanjun Li, Xiaobo Zhang, Nov 05, 2025China’s 2014 business registration reform spurred greater market dynamism by lowering entry barriers, which increased firm turnover and allowed smaller yet more productive entrepreneurs to establish new businesses, boosting overall productivity and 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.
Rural Road Stimulus and the Role of Matching Mandates on Economic Recovery in China
Anthony Howell, Oct 30, 2024The findings show that the temporary cost share exemption boosts short-term income growth, increases local investment in infrastructure, and promotes entrepreneurial activities, particularly among returning migrants.
Migration,Tariffs,and China’s Export Surge
Chen Liu, Xiao Ma, Oct 22, 2025China’s exports have increased dramatically in recent decades. We build a multi-sector spatial general equilibrium model and combine rich data sources to account for China’s export surge between 1990 and 2005 from three policy changes: China’s import tariffs, tariffs imposed on China’s exports, and barriers to internal migration in China. We find that the three policy changes jointly accounted for 30% of China’s export growth between 1990 and 2005 and that there is a positive interaction between tariff and migration policies.
Government reform and innovation performance in China
Min Zhang, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, Nov 26, 2025This column exploits the staggered implementation of government agency reforms in China to examine the impact of institutions on innovation. It finds that the regions which pioneered these reforms have reaped the rewards of reduced bureaucratic friction and enhanced regulatory efficiency, manifesting in marked gains in innovation performance. The dividends of institutional reform are most pronounced in city-regions already endowed with robust innovation infrastructure and intellectual capital.
