China's consumption rate is widely believed to be too low. In this paper, we show that official statistics have significantly underestimated Chinese household consumption. First, housing consumption is grossly underestimated due to the construction cost-based method. Second, a lot of private...

This paper uses data from a large survey of Chinese firms to investigate whether local government efforts to facilitate market development improve firm efficiency. Both government provision of information about products, markets, and innovation and government assistance in arranging loans are...

This paper develops a self-enforcing contract model to show that better economic fundamentals can help when there is weak rule of law -- but with order -- to attract foreign direct investment, whereas lowering taxes does not necessarily help. Using a cross-region Chinese dataset, the analysis...

As an extension of Wang & Zhu (2005), this short paper shows that the popular 51:49 equity structure can be optimal. This equity structure in joint ventures (JVs) has puzzled economists the world over. We find that, when the two parties are highly asymmetric in their abilities to acquire private...

This paper develops a self-enforcing contract model to show that better economic fundamentals can help when there is weak rule of law -- but with order -- to attract foreign direct investment, whereas lowering taxes does not necessarily help. Using a cross-region Chinese dataset, the analysis...

Using a large panel dataset of Chinese industrial firms, the authors examine the determinants of access to loans from formal financial intermediaries and extension of trade credit. Poorly performing state-owned enterprises were more likely to redistribute credit to firms with less privileged...

We use data from a large survey of Chinese firms to investigate whether local government efforts to facilitate market development improve firm efficiency. Both government provision of information about products, markets, and innovation and government assistance in arranging loans are positively...

Using a large panel dataset of Chinese industrial firms, we find that poorly performing SOEs were more likely to redistribute credit to firms with less privileged access to loans via trade credit. While that could be consistent with the efficient redistribution of credit, it is more likely that...