We study how the 2004 reform of minimum wage rules in China has affected the survival, average wage, employment and productivity of local firms. To identify the causal effect of minimum wage growth, we use firm-level data for more than 160,000 manufacturing firms active in 2003 and complement...

This work investigates the motivations behind the Chinese fiscal policy on exports. It relies on very detailed product level (HS 6 digit) data over the period 2002-12 covering both export tax and export VAT rebate. It aims to uncover the respective importance of the various policy motivations...

During the last decade, the Chinese government has frequently changed the value added tax (VAT) refund levels offered to exporters. Indeed, China's VAT system is not neutral, in particular because the exporters may not receive complete refund of the domestic VAT paid on their inputs. This paper...

We investigate how the export performance of firms in China is influenced by credit constraints. Using panel data from Chinese customs for 1997-2007, we show that credit constraints restrict international trade flows and affect the sectoral composition of firms’ activity. We confirm that...

In order to study the costs/benefits of a monetary union between Germany and France, we attempt to go beyond a mere focus on asymmetries and examine what each country would have lost or gained had there been a common monetary policy. We try to identify the macroeconomic effects of such a change...

What are the prospects that risk sharing in EMU will ever attain the levels in the US? So far as the risk sharing in the US depends on interregional transfers through the budget of the federal government, those prospects are poor. So far as the risk sharing in the US takes place though market...

This paper employs worldwide data on output and bilateral trade in order to identify optimum currency areas (OCA’s) on a global basis. By retaining only two of the many criteria that have been mentioned in the literature on OCA’s, it has been possible to use computer programming to do the...

This paper seeks to integrate more closely the theory of optimum currency areas with the theory of international trade. The currency area is considered as a continuous variable ranging from zero to one: zero if there is no enlargement, and some positive value otherwise, corresponding exactly to...

In order to assess the costs of a European Monetary Union, we use a structural VAR approach based on the long-run identifying scheme pioneered by Blanchard and Quah and extended by others. We then apply the approach to as many EU members as data limitations permit: namely, Germany, Spain,...

In contrast to conventional analyses of monetary union between two particular countries or sets of countries, this paper treats the possible expansion of a given currency area as a continuous variable ranging from zero to one; zero if there is no expansion and one if all sources of imports and...