This paper, by using annual surveys of manufacturing firms from 1998 to 2005 in China, first documents a positive correlation between industrial agglomeration and firm size, which is previously found in developed economies. Next, by using the instrumental variable estimations, we identify that...

Disclosure by firms would seem to reduce the informational asymmetry that is a cause of investment inefficiency in firms. However, the effect of disclosure is subtle, especially when the link between disclosure and firm value is endogenous and depends on incentives within the firm. We analyze...

Skill content varies enormously across industries and over time. This paper shows that import competition can explain a significant portion of the variation in various skill measures across manufacturing industries. Industries that face more intense import competition employ more nonroutine...

This paper proposes a theory of competition and customization. When firms allocate their production to both custom-made and standardized products, the fraction of sales from the former will increase in the face of increased competition. Recent surveys conducted by the World Bank on Chinese firms...

We estimate that a one-standard-deviation increase in a firm's import penetration ratio raises its likelihood of having engaged in an incremental innovation by 4.48% using a random-sampled firm survey in China. The estimate is close to those in Gorodnichenko, Svejnar and Terrell (2010). A number...

Aggressive legalism, a trade policy-making strategy targeted at actively utilizing WTO rules to defend trade interests, has greatly benefited major Eastern Asian countries in past years. This paper examines whether this strategy should be promoted around greater Asia in this era. First, this...