China's growing transactions of urban land-use rights (LURs) and the resultant rampant illegal land use since the 2000s have raised concerns about whether LURs are appropriately used to advance the public interest. In response to such concerns, beginning in the 2000s, the Chinese central...

In the literature on urban studies, the size distribution of cities has been attributed to a random growth process where transportation externalities, congestion costs, and capital formation all play a crucial role. However, the classic economics models do not fully capture the impact of...

Conventional wisdom suggests that corruption has a negative effect on growth although the mechanisms are subject to debate. We take an alternate approach to challenge this wisdom by testing the economic effects of anti-corruption measures. Using panel data (1999-2016) from 31 provinces in China...

This study seeks to explore intra-provincial fiscal disparities at the county level in Henan province and the extent to which the undesirable fiscal inequalities can be traced to the provincial fiscal transfer system. It tests the equalization effects of provincial-local transfers by decomposing...

This study attempts to understand how China's municipal governments select procurement methods in PPP projects and what factors influence their decisions. In particular, we focus on municipal management capacity, investigating the relationship between municipal management capacity and PPP...

This study examines the use and spending effects of land-transfer revenues in Chinese local governments. It tests the effects of such revenues on local revenue and expenditure structures using city-level budgetary data, and also the effects on the performance of public spending on economic and...

This study tries to determine to what extent the Chinese bureaucracy is merit-based. By triangulating quantitative and qualitative survey data from a sample of Chinese cadres (n=286), the authors aim to answer the research question: “What is the behavioural impact of the incentive structure...