By analysing the evolution of local governments' roles in different periods of China's growth in transition, this paper explores local fiscal incentives to use subsidised land and infrastructure as key instruments in regional competition for manufacturing investment since the mid 1990s. Local...

Democratic governance is believed to improve government responsiveness to citizens' demand for public goods. In China, villagers' committee elections represent a major progress in China's development toward good governance. We develop a rational model to explain villagers' participation....

Given its nonperforming loan ratio of over 20 percent in 2007 and its concentration on poorer areas, the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) seemed an unlikely candidate for a successful initial public offering. The major capital injection the bank received in November 2008 was preceded by signs of...

The 2009 surge in bank lending in China was accompanied by allegations that substantial funds had been funneled into the nation's stock and property markets. Using data from 1999 to 2011, possible linkages between lending activity, real estate prices, stock prices, and inflation are examined. We...

Based on the theoretical literature of fiscal decentralization, we discuss the political economy of inter-governmental fiscal arrangements in China and examine how a transfer-based decentralization impacts on local public employment. A theoretical model is built to show that compared to their...

Drawing on a survey of migrants in 12 cities across four major urbanising areas in China, this paper analyses rural migrants’ intention for permanent urban settlement. We focus on one sizeable but often overlooked group of rural migrants, that is, the self-employed. Our hypothesis is that...

type="main" <p>This essay draws on an original cross-sectional survey of 1,010 children and their guardians in highly migratory regions of Anhui and Jiangxi provinces located in China's interior. It uses propensity score matching, a technique that mitigates endogenity, to examine the impact of...</p>