I study how environmental regulation, or the COD reduction mandates during Chinese eleventh five-year plan (2006-2010), affects firm dynamics: entry, exit, and (aggregate) productivity. While most existing literature on environmental regulation focuses on the effects on incumbent firms...

Government intervention and firm dynamics are crucial for long-run growth. In this paper, we study the persistent effects of one of the largest state-led industrialization projects in human history---namely the Third-Front (TF) construction project---on firm dynamics: entry, exit, and...

In this paper, we study the effects of entry deregulation on firm innovation, using the business registration reform in China as a case in point. Entry deregulation has negative impacts on patent applications, and the effects are more pronounced for larger firms and older firms. Firms spend more...

In this paper, I examine the effects of China's civil examination system (keju) on modern-day innovation and firm dynamics. Using the variation in the density of jinshi (the highest exam qualification) and using the distance to the printing ingredients (pine and bamboo) as the instrumental...

In this paper, I document three stylized facts on leaders, institutions, and re-election incentives, using cross-country data: (1) in democracies, the positive relationship between leaders' performance and their capability is significantly less pronounced in their last term, when they do not...

In this paper, I document two stylized facts on leaders, institutions, and economic development: (1) leaders in democracies have more experience than those in non-democracies; and (2) more experienced leaders lead to better economic performance in democracies and higher regime stability in...

In this paper, I study a principal-multiagent model where the principal adopts the relative performance evaluation (RPE) as the compensation strategy, and where agents are connected in an information network. The ability of each agent is private information, but adjacent agents in the...

This paper studies how the carbon emission trading system (ETS) pilot policy announced in 2011 affects firm dynamics, including entry, exit, and innovation. Using a difference-in-difference-in-differences empirical strategy, we find that in pilot cities, in targeted sectors, and after the policy...

I study the optimal compensation scheme in organizations in Shi (2020), in which agents connected in a network are endowed with the same ability, and work collectively to produce a team output. Connected agents can help neighbors to reduce the disutility of working. For any given network...