A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
Facebook 
Twitter 
Instagram
WeChat 
Email Most Popular
Industry/Policy View The Impact of US-China Trade Tensions
Eugenio Cerutti, Gita Gopinath, Adil Mohommad, Jun 05, 2019US-China trade tensions have negatively affected consumers as well as many producers in both countries. The tariffs have reduced trade between the US and China, but the bilateral trade deficit remains broadly unchanged. While the impact on global growth is relatively modest at this time, the latest escalation could significantly dent business and financial market sentiment, disrupt global supply chains, and jeopardize the projected recovery in global growth in 2019.
Book Synopsis The Future of Cities: The Shanghai Model of Migrant Children’s Education
Yuanyuan Chen, Shuaizhang Feng, Nov 15, 2017Using a longitudinal survey conducted by the authors in Shanghai since 2010, we empirically examine the differences between migrant schools and public schools. We find that migrant students in migrant schools performed substantially worse than their counterparts in public schools in 2010, but the difference decreased by half in 2012, thanks to financial subsidies to migrant schools. We also show that even fortunate migrant students who are able to enroll in public schools tend to go to poorer quality schools; however, there is no evidence on negative peer effects of migrant children in public schools.
Mortgage Prepayment in China
Zhenyu Gao, Wenxi Jiang, Haohan Ren, Kemin Wang, Yuezhi Wu, Sep 10, 2025During the 2019–2024 monetary easing cycle, Chinese households used their savings to prepay unprecedented amounts of mortgage loans. Because refinancing was restricted, mortgage rates remained rigid, while savings returns quickly adjusted to rate cuts. The widening gap between borrowing costs and savings returns encouraged prepayment (deleveraging) and reduced consumption. Our findings suggest that the rigid mortgage rates have rendered China’s monetary easing counterproductive.
Trade-Policy Dynamics: Evidence from 60 Years of US-China Trade
George Alessandria, Shafaat Khan, Armen Khederlarian, Kim Ruhl, Joseph Steinberg, May 04, 2022International trade depends on the effects of past trade policy and expectations of future trade policy. Disentangling these two forces is difficult, but the US-China trade relationship is ideally suited for study. A large, and largely unexpected, trade liberalization in 1980 kicked off a long, gradual expansion of Chinese exports to the United States. Until China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, these low tariff rates were relatively easy to revoke, generating time-varying uncertainty over their future values.
Lessons from the Baby Bonus in South Korea: Increased Births and Restored Natural Sex Ratio
Wookun Kim, Jan 20, 2021I study the causal effects of South Korea’s baby bonus on fertility by exploiting temporal and spatial variation in pro-natalist cash transfers provided to families with newborn babies. Based on registry records spanning the universe of births from 2000 to 2015, I find that the baby bonus increased completed fertility: in the absence of the policy, the total fertility rate in 2015 would have been lower by 3%, which is equivalent to 450,000 fewer babies born...
