In this paper I examine the impact of firms' political connectedness on firm performance in private listed Chinese firms in the manufacturing sector, exploiting a policy shock, that is, the 4-trillion-yuan ($586-billion) economic stimulus plan in 2009 in response to the 2008 financial crisis. I...

I study the long-term impact of class identity (chengfen) on individuals' income and households' wealth in urban China using Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) data. Chinese government launched movements to make income and consumption in cities substantially homogeneous and assigned an...

In this paper I study whether social capital has an effect on household decisions to participate in Rotating Labor Associations (ROLAs) in rural China. I find that households in communities with higher levels of social capital are more likely to participate in ROLAs using household data...

This paper uses a variety of individual-level survey data from several countries to test for interactions between subjective well-being at different ages and variables measuring the nature and quality of the social context at work, at home, and in the community. While earlier studies have found...

This paper studies how individuals, particularly low-income individuals, have financed housing purchases since the housing market was privatized in urban China in the 1990s. To the surprise of many policy makers and economists, more than 80% of the households in urban China owned private housing...

This paper uses the China General Social Survey (CGSS) 2003 to evaluate the long-term consequences of a forced migration, the state's “send-down” movement (shang shan xia xiang, or up to the mountains, down to the villages) during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, on individuals' non-material...

We investigate the effects of air pollution on individuals' life satisfaction, uncovering important heterogeneity in the impact. Using self-reported life satisfaction data from South Korea, we show that individuals report, ceteris paribus, lower life satisfaction in response to worsening air...

We explore the significance of political connections vs. productivity for firms' domestic sales and export performance in developing countries, using the data from the listed firms in China's Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. We estimate firms' total factor productivity and manually build a...

This paper examines the links between early childhood development and the subjective well-being of their caregivers. Using survey data collected among 390 households in rural western China, we investigate the correlations between early child development indicators and the life evaluations,...

We investigate whether air pollution affects labor supply in South Korea. To address endogeneity in the level of local air pollution, we utilize plausibly exogenous changes in wind directions as instruments. This choice is based on the observation that air pollution in South Korea is affected by...