The rapid expansion in Russia of the virtual economy, a system characterized by a network of barter, has recently received much attention. This article analyzes the origin, the nature, efficiency and welfare implication, of the virtual economy. While the system is criticized by many economists...

The Chinese economy has been reasonably stable during the Asian financial crisis. However, there is a widespread speculation about the prospect of the stability of RMB, the Chinese currency. While the Chinese government has repeatedly promised the stability of RMB, many oversea economists have...

The rapid expansion in Russia of the virtual economy, a system characterized by a network of barter, has recently received much attention. This article analyzes the origin, the nature, efficiency and welfare implication, of the virtual economy. While the system is criticized by many economists...

The paper studies the effect of tariff reduction on employment in China. Using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis, a model simulates the structural adjustment in the Chinese economy as a result of tariff cuts and predicts their quantitative impacts on structural unemployment during...

Many studies of regional disparity in China have focused on the preferential policies received by the coastal provinces. We decomposed the location dummies in provincial growth regressions to obtain estimates of the effects of geography and policy on provincial growth rates in 1996-99. Their...

Many studies of regional disparity in China have focused on the preferential policies received by the coastal provinces. We decomposed the location dummies in provincial growth regressions to obtain estimates of the effects of geography and policy on provincial growth rates in 1996?99. Their...

It is commonly believed that China began the socialist era as a very under-urbanized country relative to its level of development and that it has been eliminating this urbanization gap during the post-1978 period as a result of its economic reforms. Our reexamination of the relationship between...

This paper conducts a quantitative estimation for the equilibrium value of the Chinese currency, the RMB. After controlling for heteroskedasticity, we find that the RMB was undervalued by 22.5% in 2001, with a p-value of 0.286. These findings confirm that the RMB was undervalued, although the...

This study investigates the geographic effects on regional economic growth in China under market reforms. We develop a model for the regional growth pattern of the Chinese economy during the period, characterized by foreign direct investment (FDI) and mobilization of rural surplus labor. The FDI...

China's income disparity has been widening during the reform period, as the Gini coefficient of China rose from a low level of 0.33 in 1980 to 0.46 in 2000. Will this trend of widening income gap continue? This article makes the following arguments: First, China's income disparity is alarmingly...