Since the 1990s, China's real estate market has experienced a dramatic and long-lasting boom across China. This boom has led to substantial concerns in both academic and policy circles that the rising housing prices might have developed into a gigantic housing bubble, which might eventually...

We examine window dressing phenomenon in the public sector by studying the strategic responses of Chinese local officials to the compulsory education promotion program launched by the central government in the 1990s. According to this program, the Chinese counties should receive inspections on...

Recent research has found that the Taylor-rule fundamentals have power to forecast changes in U.S. dollar exchange rates out of sample. Our work casts some doubt on that claim. However, we find strong evidence of a related in-sample anomaly. When we include U.S. inflation in the well-known...

This paper empirically examines the role of radical grain yield targets in triggering China's Great Famine (1959-1961), one of the largest man-made catastrophes in human history. Starting from 1958, the Chinese central government assigned different grain yield targets to most counties based on...

We provide a new perspective to the multiple directorships literature, which focuses on outside directors. Inside directors, however, are important both in the boardroom and day-to-day operations of the firm. We find that any negative effect of director busyness is more pervasive for inside...

We investigate whether firms restructure board composition to align with changes in their contracting environment. Board size and independence increase with firm complexity, consistent with theoretical predictions. However, the hypothesized negative relationship between board independence and...

International travel is a key channel of international knowledge diffusion and has been hypothesized to shape large cross-country differences in productivity and income. However, evidence supporting this hypothesis, especially from developing countries, remains scarce. This paper examines the...