Abstract We examine Chinese cities' COVID-19 reopening plans as a window into governments' economic and social priorities. Early reopenings are predicted by citizen discontent, as captured by Baidu searches for terms such as “unemployment” and “protest” in the prior week. Taking a longer...

Using price discounts government officials receive when buying new housing units as a measure of corruption in China, we examine the effect of the anti-corruption campaign launched by the Xi Jinping administration in 2012. We find that the discounts decrease sharply after the campaign. On the...