Background: China has five layers of government including the central government. Recently, some prefectural governments meet fiscal distress. Methods: We investigate the effects of urban and rural populations and area sizes on the expenditures of the prefecture-level local government by...

Background: China has five layers of government including the central government. Recently, some prefectural governments meet fiscal distress. Methods: We investigate the effects of urban and rural populations and area sizes on the expenditures of the prefecture-level local government by...

This paper proposes a possible framework for identifying excessive investment. Based on this method, it finds evidence that some types of investment are becoming excessive in China, particularly in inland provinces. In these regions, private consumption has on average become more dependent on...

In this paper, we study the effect of collaboration network structure on editors' contribution behavior in Wikipedia. Collaboration in Wikipedia is organized around articles, and any two editors co-editing an article have a collaborative relationship. Based on economic theories about network...

China is undergoing its long-awaited industrial revolution. There is no shortage of commentary and opinion on this dramatic period, but few have attempted to provide a coherent, in-depth, politicaleconomic framework that explains the fundamental mechanisms behind China’s rapid...

Since 1998, housing policies in urban China have gone through a series of reforms that transformed housing allocation from a centralized welfare housing system to a market-oriented housing system. Through the process welfare dwelling residents are eligible to purchase their existing dwelling at...

We investigate the effects of urban and rural populations and area sizes on the expenditures of the prefecture-level local government. We found the following three results. The first relates to the expenditure for urban populations. At around 220,000 people, per capita local government...

This paper studies how transport infrastructure investments affect a bidding war for a firm between two asymmetric countries within a region in a context of imperfect competition, where transport infrastructure investments play the role of a global public good, leading to a reduction in the unit...

This paper estimates peer effects on student achievement using a panel data set from a middle school in China. Unique features of the organization of Chinese middle schools (Grades 7 to 9) and panel data allow us to overcome difficulties that have hindered the separation of peer effects from...

Economists have come to understand that human choices are not only driven by self-interest but also “social preferences” – a person’s concern over resources allocated to other people. Moreover, such preferences may be affected by the environment in which such choices are made, especially...