Throughout the imperial era, defensive walls surrounded Chinese cities. Although most city walls have vanished, the cities have survived. We analyze a sample of nearly 300 prefectural-level cities in China, among which about half historically had city walls. We document that cities that had...

The end of the Cold War has put the world in a new stage of reevaluation. A new world order is needed, mostly because everyone wants to identify on which side he is going to be. The main actors of this are United States of America and China. But European Union, Japan and Rusia have their own...

China has long aimed to restrict population growth in large cities but encourages growth in small and medium-sized cities. At the same time, various government policies favor large cities. We conjecture that larger cities in China have more urban amenities and a better quality of life. We thus...

Since Chinese government initiated economic reform in the late 1970s, entrepreneurship and private sectors have emerged gradually and played an increasingly important role in promoting economic growth. However, entrepreneurship is distributed unevenly in China. Using micro data from 2008...

Rural-urban migrants in China appear to prefer nearby destination cities. To gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, we build a simple model in which migrants from rural areas choose among potential destination cities to maximize utility. The distance between a migrant's home village and...

Rural-urban migrants in China appear to prefer nearby destination cities. To gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, we build a simple model in which migrants from rural areas choose among potential destination cities to maximize utility. The distance between a migrant's home village and...

China has long aimed to restrict population growth in large cities but encourages growth in small and medium-sized cities. At the same time, various government policies favor large cities. We conjecture that larger cities in China have more urban amenities and a better quality of life. We thus...

This paper focuses on the question whether public infrastructure capital matters for labor productivity in China, both over time and across regions. It finds that public infrastructure is a significant determinant of variations in labor productivity across provinces, but the contribution of...

We use high-frequency data from location-based mobile phone records to measure domestic air travel patterns of the Chinese population during the Covid-19 pandemic. The travel and tourism industry is a key driver of China's domestic economy and data from this industry helps serve as an objective...

We analyze the effects of the unprecedented rise in trade between Germany and the East - China and Eastern Europe - in the period 1988-2008 on German local labor markets. Using detailed administrative data, we exploit the cross-regional variation in initial industry structures and use trade...