Although previous research has demonstrated the health benefits of water treatment programs, relatively little is known about the effect of water treatment on education. This paper examines the educational benefits to rural youth in China of a major drinking water treatment program started in...

Government subsidies to the manufacturing sector are popular in developing countries. This paper studies the long-run effects of a large-scale regional industrialization campaign in China, known as the “Third Front" (TF) construction. Motivated by national defense considerations, the TF...

This paper estimates the labor market impacts of parenthood in China. We find that becoming a mother has negative impacts on women’s labor outcomes. But the impacts are smaller and recover sooner than what have been found in other countries. A decomposition exercise suggests that parenthood...

This paper provides the first delineation of China’s commuting-based metropolitan areas (MAs) using a new source of commuting flow data at fine geographic levels. We show that commutes in China are overwhelmingly short and largely confined by administrative boundaries. Consequently,...

Over the last three decades, China's product, labor, and capital markets have become gradually more integrated within its borders, although integration has been significantly slower for capital markets. There remains a significant urban-rural divide, and Chinese cities tend to be under-sized by...