Based on a survey of 1,268 firms in 12 Chinese cities, this paper empirically studies the effects of unions on three aspects of workers welfare, namely, hourly wages, monthly working hours, and pension coverage. Our baseline results show that unionization increases hourly wage rates by 5.6%,...

This paper studies the impacts of village elections on the accountability of the village committee, local fiscal sharing, and state taxation in rural China using data of 48 villages for the period of 19862002. Elections are found to substantially increase the share of public expenditures in the...

"It's clear that China is the world's next economic superpower. But what isn't so clear is how China will get there by the middle of this century. It now faces tremendous challenges such as fostering innovation, dealing with an ageing population, and coping with a less accommodative global...