There have been profound changes in both political and economic institutions in China over the last twenty years.Moreover, the pace of transition has led to variation across the country in the level of development.In this paper, we use panel data for the Chinese provinces to study the role of...

This paper shows that, counter to common perception, stock prices in China are strongly linked to firm fundamentals. Since the reforms of the early 2000s, stock prices are as informative about future profits as they are in the US. Although the market is segmented from international equity...

There have been profound changes in both political and economic institutions in China over the last twenty years. Moreover, the pace of transition has led to variation across the country in the level of development. In this paper, we use panel data for the Chinese provinces to study the role of...

This paper examines the effect of banking on economic growth in modern Russia. To overcome simultaneity and selection, we exploit regional banking variation induced by the creation of ?specialized banks? (spetsbanks) in the last years of the Soviet Union (1988-1991). Consistent with the...

This paper considers lending to finance projects in a setting where repayment enforcement appears impossible. The loan was illegal and thus legally unenforceable. Creditors were incapable of applying private coercion to force repayment. Borrowers lacked both collateral and reputation capital....

Chinese banks likely have more non-performing loans (NPLs) than officially reported. As hidden NPLs earn no interest income, loan quality problems may erode the gross interest income of banks. Using stochastic frontier analysis, we estimate the interest income of a hypothetical...

This paper adds to the literature on wealth effects on consumption by disentangling house price effects on consumption for mainland China. In a stochastic modelling framework, the riskiness, rate of increase and persistence of house price movements have different implications for the...

​China's local government debt (LGD) has recently become the focus of economic policy debates. However, information about LGD and its impact on economic growth in the Chinese economy is scarce. This paper attempts to present an empirical investigation of the impact of China's LGD on economic...

China's high income and wealth inequality has long attracted the interest of policymakers and re-searchers, yet surprisingly little has been done since 2010 on inequality trends. Given China's evolving economic structure and the government's adoption of new policy tools in recent years, we...

Beliefs about whether effort pays off govern some of the most fundamental choices individuals make. This paper uses China's Cultural Revolution to understand how these beliefs can be affected, how they impact behavior, and how they are transmitted across generations. During the Cultural...