This paper investigates how politicians' patronage connections affect privatizations in China. The connections to top political leaders (i.e., Central Committee of the Communist Party of China) make local politicians engage more in rent-seeking by selling state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at...

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...

Through a unique database on daily activities of municipal party secretaries, we find that they spend a significant part of their work time on political and propaganda activities, including organizing various meetings to promote the central government's spirit ideology. We find that officials...

I present a study of ownership of firms under government rent seeking. Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such a government rent seeking activity leads to a typical hold-up problem. Government ownership is shown...

This paper proposes the new hypothesis that the loss of innovative efficiency is greater than the loss of productive efficiency in Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). SOE reform in China has been able to achieve substantial improvements in SOE productive efficiency by using supervision and...

Through comparison with the computer industry this paper examines whether government intervention has facilitated development in the Chinese automobile industry. Chinese computer firms operate in a largely laissez-faire market environment, with relatively free entry and exit, whilst the...

Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such government rent-seeking activity leads to a typical hold-up problem. Government ownership serves as a second-best commitment mechanism, through which the government agency...

Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such government rent-seeking activity leads to a typical hold-up problem. Government ownership serves as a second-best commitment mechanism, through which the government agency...

This paper presents the results of an empirical study of attitudes toward bribe taking in the largest economies on four continents – the USA, Brazil, Germany and China. The authors use the Human Beliefs and Values Survey data to examine several demographic variables, including gender, age,...

In this paper, I provide an empirical and theoretical analysis on whether and how in-utero negative health shocks affect politicians' human capital and career and governance outcomes, using Chinese Great Famine (1959-1961) and Chinese city Party Secretaries as a case in point. Using a...