This paper provides a theory to explain the paradoxical features of the great housing boom in China — the persistently faster-than-GDP housing price growth, exceptionally high capital returns, and excessive vacancy rates. The expectation that high capital returns driven mainly by resource...

We develop a theory of corporate liquidity demand, capturing the fact that a firm's borrowing capacity depends on news on future investment profitability. In our model, bad news on future investment profitability reduces a firm's borrowing capacity and therefore increases the need for internal...

Lending standards are a direct measure of credit conditions. We use the micro data merged from three separate sources to construct this measure and document that an uncertain macroeconomic outlook, rather than banks' balance sheet positions, was an important reason that a majority of banks...

The Chinese economy has undergone three major phases: the 1978-1997 period marked as the SOE-led economy, the 1998-2015 phase as the investment-driven economy, and the new normal economy since 2016. All three economies have been shaped by the government's financial policies, defined as a set of...

We study the impacts of the 2009 monetary stimulus and its interaction with infrastructure spending on credit allocation. We develop a two-stage estimation approach and apply it to China's loan-level data that covers all sectors in the economy. We find that except for the manufacturing sector,...

Lending standards are a direct measure of credit conditions. We use the micro data merged from three separate sources to construct this measure and document that an uncertain macroeconomic outlook, rather than banks' balance sheet positions, was an important reason that a majority of banks...

Using three unique micro datasets, we find that an unexpected and unprecedented loosening of China's LTV policy for non-primary houses fueled the entire mortgage boom during 2014Q4-2016Q3. The mortgage expansion disproportionately increased the share of mortgages to middle-aged homeowners with...

We estimate the quantity-based monetary policy system in China. We argue that China's rising shadow banking was inextricably linked to banks' balance-sheet risk and hampered the effectiveness of monetary policy on the banking system during the 2009-2015 period of monetary policy contractions. By...

We develop a new empirical framework to identify and estimate the effects of monetary stimulus on the real economy. The framework is applied to the Chinese economy when monetary policy in normal times was switched to an extraordinarily expansionary regime to combat the impact of the 2008...

We argue that China's rising shadow banking was inextricably linked to potential balance-sheet risks in the banking system. We substantiate this argument with three didactic findings: (1) commercial banks in general were prone to engage in channeling risky entrusted loans; (2) shadow banking...