
Insights / Research Brief•Aug 16, 2023
Housing, Household Debt, and the Business Cycle: An Application to China and Korea
Amir Sufi
While neither China nor South Korea appears at risk of a near-term severe financial crisis, consumer spending in both countries could be quite weak in the years ahead; for China, the biggest risk comes from the property market, where growth may stumble following years of boom-driving production distortions.

Insights / Research Brief•Feb 01, 2023
Homemade Foreign Trading
Zhiguo He, Yuehan Wang, Xiaoquan Zhu
This work offers new insights into foreign investment in China, offering evidence for the presence of homemade “foreign” investors who are likely mainland insiders who conceal themselves behind northbound flows.
Topics:
Financial Markets

Insights / Research Brief•Nov 16, 2022
Subjective Performance Evaluation, Influence Activities, and Bureaucratic Work Behavior: Evidence From China
Alain de Janvry, Guojun He, Elisabeth Sadoulet, Shaoda Wang, Qiong Zhang
Grassroots civil servants devote substantial effort to impressing/pleasing their evaluator, rather than working toward organizational goals; introducing uncertainty about the evaluator’s identity improves work performance.
Topics:
Employment & Wages

Insights / Research Brief•Nov 02, 2022
When Information Conflicts with Obligations: The Role Of Motivated Cognition
Shaoda Wang, Ao Wang, Xiaoyang Ye
To effectively disseminate important information on polarized issues such as climate change, vaccination, etc., it is crucial to first identify and intervene against the underlying fundamental values that might prevent individuals’ accurate digestion of the high-stakes information.
Topics:
Higher Education & Workforce Training
Insights / Research Brief•Aug 01, 2022
Non-Tariff Trade Barriers in the U.S.-China Trade War
Tuo Chen, Chang-Tai Hsieh, Zheng (Michael) Song
Non-tariff trade barriers reduced Chinese imports from the US by 50% during the height of the US-China trade war in 2018 and 2019, while imposing $40 billion in costs to Chinese consumers.

Insights / Research Brief•Jul 06, 2022
Investing With the Government: A Field Experiment in China
Emanuele Colonnelli, Bo Li, Ernest Liu
The average firm in the venture capital and private equity market in China dislikes investors with government ties, indicating that the benefits of political connections are small compared to the cons of having the government as an investor.
Topics:
Financial Markets
Insights / Research Brief•Feb 15, 2022
Is There an Industrial Land Discount in China? A Public Finance Perspective
Zhiguo He, Scott Nelson, Yang Su, Anthony Lee Zhang, Fudong Zhang
Local Chinese governments face a trade-off between supplying residential or industrial land, and this work reveals the importance of taxes and revenue streams over time in shaping those choices.
Topics:
Financial Markets
Insights / Research Brief•Jan 13, 2022
Share Pledging in China: Funding Listed Firms or Funding Entrepreneurship?
Zhiguo He, Bibo Liu, Feifei Zhu
This analysis shows that natural person shareholders increased their entrepreneurial activities significantly following the 2013 launch of the exchange market, relative to legal entity shareholders; additionally, shareholders with better access to share pledging invested more heavily in industries with above-median growth potential.
Topics:
Financial Markets