Using an extensive data set on foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) in the Chinese mainland, we compare the sensitivities of the location choice of foreign direct investment (FDI) from six major source countries/areas (Hong Kong, Taiwan, US, EU, Japan and Korea) toward the variation in the...

Property rights protection has been found to promote economic growth at the macro level, and affect the incentive for investment at the micro level. What is not clear is whether and how property rights protection affects a firm's allocation of investment across industries for a given size of...

Theoretical and empirical research in the past decades has advanced our understanding of what determines the vertical boundary of a firm. An equally important but much less understood issue is the impacts of vertical integration on firm performance, mainly because the decision on vertical...

This paper investigates the relevance of the two leading theories for city-industry growth (i.e., specialization and diversity theories) in accounting for the fast yet uneven growth of industries in China's cities. Using the data set of 29 two-digit manufacturing industries in 231 China's cities...

This study addresses the apparent puzzle that China achieved spectacular economic performance despite weak institutions. Using a World Bank survey of 1,566 manufacturing enterprises in 18 Chinese cities, we investigated whether property rights protection mattered for enterprise performance. We...

Agglomeration brings costs (e.g., intensified local competition) as well as benefits (e.g., knowledge spillover). It is important to examine the net impact of agglomeration to understand the geographic distribution of economic activities. In this study, we use firm markup (defined as the ratio...

Using China Customs data that cover monthly transactions of all Chinese exporters, we investigate how Chinese exporters respond to U.S. antidumping investigations during the 2000-2006 period. Our difference-in-differences analysis uncovers a number of findings: the substantial trade-dampening...

This paper empirically studies union effects on the performance of, and employment relations in, China's private enterprises. The study finds a positive and statistically significant union effect on labor productivity, but not on profitability. It further finds that unions lead to better...