When a society wants to control aggregate emission under a certain target, is it more desirable to impose a tax or a nontradable regulatory standard on emission? We answer this question by focusing on the role of productivity heterogeneity across a continuum of plants. The plants are...

This paper explores how financial frictions and financial shocks can contribute to jobless recoveries. We incorporate financial frictions and financial shocks into a real business cycle model in which firms determine not only their investment in capital and employment of workers, but also...

We investigate how the shift in private pension coverage from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) retirement plans since the 1980s has contributed to the substantial rise in labor force participation of older Americans. We develop a life cycle model of retirement that captures...

We document that following a turnover of the Party Secretary or mayor of a city in China, firms (especially private firms) headquartered in that city significantly increase their "perk spending." Both the instrumental-variable-based results and heterogeneity analysis are consistent with the...

We incorporate emission into a general equilibrium model with rich dispersion in productivity among monopolistically competitive plants. Emission is modeled as a by-product from goods production. An abatement technology is available to the plants for reducing emission. We compare an emission tax...

We study how secular culture affects firm behavior when formal institutions fall short. We find that firms more exposed to alcohol-related sin culture exhibit more earnings management and lean their operations more toward local business partners. Tests using latitude and snow/temperature as...

Under the background of Chinese market segmentation, whether government-led administrative division adjustments can promote regional economic integration is a practical issue. Taking interregional firms’ stock price comovement as a micro measurement of regional integration, this paper...

This study investigates the predictability of a fixed uncertainty index (UI) for realized variances (volatility) in the international stock markets from a high-frequency perspective. We construct a composite UI based on the scaled principal component analysis (s-PCA) method and demonstrate that...