Using a sample of apartment transactions during 2004-2006 in Chengdu, China, we investigate the impact of superstitions in the Chinese real estate market. Numerology forms an important component of Chinese superstitious lore, with the numbers 8 and 6 signifying good luck, and the number 4 bad...

This paper examines both leadership choice and welfare consequences of privatisation in an endogenous timing mixed multi‐product oligopoly. It shows that a multi‐product firm undermines the welfare‐maximising efforts of a public firm by cross‐subsidising. The paper demonstrates that a...

This paper investigates the making of optimal regulatory standard in a game theoretical model. We demonstrate that the optimal regulatory standard is robust and irrelevant to interest group pressure under different market structures. Stated differently, the source of rulemaking outcome variation...

We explore the overlooked issue of how certain strategic-level, interindustry diversification options might increase consumer utility. Discussions of inter-industry diversification typically focus on producer synergies obtainable from economies of scope or from skill transfer across business...

This paper investigates the impact of trade liberalization on firm productivity by using both Chinese manufacturing firm-level data and highly disaggregated Chinese import data from 1998-2002. We construct a measure of firms' total factor productivity (TFP) by adopting an augmented Olley-Pakes...