This paper examines the role of teacher gender in education production. We extend student outcomes from traditionally focused academic achievement to noncognitive outcomes. Drawing on a representative survey of middle-school students and teachers in China, we focus on schools in which...

This paper, by using annual surveys of manufacturing firms from 1998 to 2005 in China, first documents a positive correlation between industrial agglomeration and firm size, which is previously found in developed economies. Next, by using the instrumental variable estimations, we identify that...

The investigation of the value of political connections has attracted economists' interests in the recent years. This paper, by using a survey of Chinese private firms in 2004, empirically studies the impact of political connections (measured as the deputy to the Chinese People's Congress) on...

This paper explores the European Union (EU) regulatory regime for Traditional Chinese Médicine and its legal, cultural, economic , and international trade implications. The controversial Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products (THMPD) amended the European Community Code for medicinal...

The spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused school closures in most countries, affecting over 90% of the world’s student population. School closures can widen learning inequalities and disproportionately hurt vulnerable students. We collected data on the exam scores of...

The communist revolution brought unprecedented changes to China. Yet there is no consensus on its role in the history of China’s modern economic growth. We investigate whether local communist party membership affected developmental outcomes from 1957–78 (the Maoist period) and 1978–85 (the...

We use a unique data set of Chinese villages to investigate whether access to telecommunications, in particular, landline phones, increases the likelihood of outmigration. By using regional and time variations in the installation of landline phones, our difference-in-differences (DID) estimation...

A central question in human development is what causes health inequalities over the life cycle. We link a harsh environment in the teen years to individuals' health conditions almost 40 years later, and employ Regression Discontinuity Design to make a causal inference between adolescent...

Information on the quality of healthcare gives providers an incentive to improve care, and this incentive should be stronger in more competitive markets. We examine this hypothesis by studying Pennsylvanian hospitals during the years 1995-2004 to see whether those hospitals located in more...

Human skills are formed throughout multiple stages over the life cycle. Different types of skills are manipulable at different ages. This paper investigates whether and how the adolescent environment affects individuals' noncognitive skills. We exploit the "Up to the Mountains and Down to the...