China launched a new rural pension scheme (hereafter NRPS) for rural residents in 2009, now covering almost all counties with over 400 million people enrolled. This implementation of the largest social pension program in the world offers a unique setting for studying the economics of...

This paper considers how the sex of preschool-aged children can affect living arrangements and maternal labor supply. In an extended family with young children, the joint decisions of co-residence and time allocations are driven by the concern that the companionship of children is a household...

This paper explores how the relative circumstances of men and women following marital dissolution affect sex-selection behavior within marriages. China's 2001 divorce reform liberalized divorce in favor of women and secured women's property rights after separation. We use this improvement in...

The rise in education of women relative to men is an emerging worldwide phenomenon in recent decades. This paper investigates the impact of the birth control policies on teenage girls' education attainment. The estimates suggest that the policies explain 30 percent of the education increase for...

We study the impact of China's new rural pension program on promoting migration of labor by applying a regression discontinuity analysis to this new pension program. The results reveal a perceptible difference in labor migration among adult children whose parents are just above and below the age...

A sizable empirical literature relates a nation's Olympic performance to socioeconomic factors by adopting linear regression or a Tobit approach suggested by Bernard and Busse (2004). We propose an alternative model where a nation's medal share depends on its competitiveness relative to other...

We exploit a quasi-natural experiment in law-violation behaviors in response to the Clean Winter Heating Policy (CWHP) implemented in northern China from 2017 to 2019. Our results show that treated villagers were more likely to violate laws against burning agricultural waste and exhibit less...

This paper explores how the relative circumstances of men and women following marital dissolution affect sex-selection behavior within marriages. China's 2001 divorce reform liberalized divorce in favor of women and secured women's property rights after separation. We use this improvement in...