The literature on aid and growth has not found a convincing instrumental variable to identify the causal effects of aid. In this paper we exploit an instrumental variable based on the fact that since 1987, a major criterion for IDA (International Development Association) eligibility has been...

Around the turn of the century, China experienced perhaps the largest labour restructuring program in the world. This paper uses a new dataset of Chinese industrial enterprises to examine what leads to downsizing, and tries to understand the effects of labour downsizing on firms' technical...

This paper examines the patterns and determinants of the labor restructuring process in China using two large firm-level datasets for the period between 1998 and 2002. We find that the public sector has undergone substantial labor retrenchment. The removal of employment guarantees for state...

Weak institutions impede foreign direction investment (FDI), yet China attracts massive FDI despite global media spotlighting its institutional infirmities. Standard institutional quality variables poorly track rapid transformations, like China's regime shift following Den Xiaoping's 1993...

Entertainment and Travel Costs (ETC) is a standard expenditure item for Chinese firms with an annual amount equal to about 20 percent of total wage bills. We use this objective accounting measure as a basis to analyze the composition of ETC and the effect of ETC on firm performance. We rely on...

Reform aimed at decentralizing ownership and control rights seems to work when it creates incentives for managers and employees to learn and to work hard - for example, by decentralizing the right to control wages, make production decisions, and appoint new managers. The empirical literature on...