This paper uses a multiple indicators and multiple causes (MIMIC) model and estimates the extent of corruption in 30 Chinese provinces from 1995 to 2015. Treating corruption as an unobserved latent variable, the MIMIC results show that both government size and public investment have significant...

This paper uses a multiple indicators and multiple causes (MIMIC) model and estimates the extent of corruption in 30 Chinese provinces from 1995 to 2015. Treating corruption as an unobserved latent variable, the MIMIC results show that both government size and public investment have significant...

We present a novel account of China's recent move to decentralize legislation through amending the Law on Legislation (LL). Conventional wisdom pervading both Chinese political discourse and social scientific scholarship on China portrays law as incompatible with experimentation and as only...

Although a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol has not materialised yet, the 2009 Copenhagen meeting underlined the importance of China in international debates on climate and energy. This is not only based on China’s current climate emissions, but also on its expected energy use and economic...

The consequences of granting democratic rights to citizens in otherwise authoritarian regimes has been extensively studied. Much less is know about the implications of retracting these rights when a government wants to recentralize power. Autonomous governance in rural China, introduced in the...

Chinese state capitalism has been treated as essentially synonymous with state-owned enterprises (“SOEs”). But drawing a stark distinction between SOEs and privately owned enterprises (“POEs”) misperceives the reality of China's institutional environment and its impact on the formation...

In this research, we emphasize the importance of studying the gap in redistributive preference between political elites and the public because of the strategic roles played by the former in policy processes. We use China as a case study, wherein the fulfillment of surging demands for...

This paper examines how fiscal incentives affect the policy choices of local governments in the context of China. Based on exogenous changes in the intergovernmental revenue sharing scheme, we construct a simulated instrumental variable to resolve the endogeneity problem. We find evidence that...

Full implementation of an intergovernmental transfer system based on revenue capacities and expenditure needs could significantly improve both redistribution and equity objectives of the Chinese authorities. This was envisaged in the 1994 fiscal reforms, but the authorities were unable to...

This paper investigates the impact of inequality in the geographic distribution of fiscal resources on regional economic growth under fiscal decentralization policy in the context of China’s experience, using panel data for 28 provinces over the period 1987–2010. In the recent past, the...