A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
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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.
Quarters of Birth Matter for Girls: How Agricultural Seasonality Shapes Gender Inequality in China
Xuezheng Qin, Junjian Yi, Haochen Zhang, Oct 08, 2025We find that people born in the fourth quarter tend to have better lifecycle outcomes than others in China. More importantly, this birth quarter effect is significantly larger for females than for males. Such a gendered pattern is likely driven by seasonal variations in household resources induced by agricultural seasonality, which may exert gender-differentiated effects on intrahousehold neonatal investment due to son preference. These findings have meaningful implications for the role of economic development in reducing gender inequality through the (gender-neutral) increase in household resources.
Paying to Pollute: How Carbon Offsets Actually Raised Emissions in China
Qiaoyi Chen, Nicholas Ryan, Daniel Xu, Oct 29, 2025How do we cut carbon emissions without slowing economic growth? One way is through offset markets: markets to buy reductions in emissions from parties all over the world. Offsets are meant to incentivize projects that cut emissions. Instead of reducing emissions themselves, firms or countries can pay others to do so on their behalf. This trade in abatement can potentially lower the costs of bringing emissions down.
Rural-Urban Migration and Market Integration
Dennis Egger, Benjamin Faber, Ming Li, Wei Lin, Nov 19, 2025Reductions in rural-to-urban migration barriers have led to economic gains for both rural origins and urban destinations by reducing information frictions and facilitating the flow of goods and investments between cities and the countryside.
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.
