Research Papers

Cross-border Marriage Costs and Marriage Behavior: Theory and Evidence

(2018)

Yoram Weiss, Junjian Yi, Junsen Zhang

This paper analyzes cross-border marriages between mainland China and Hong Kong (HK). We examine the effects of a reduction in cross-border marriage costs following an increase in marriage-migration quotas and the handover of HK to China. We find that cross-border marriages mainly involve men from the...

Exchange Rate Volatility and Trade: The Role of Credit Constraints

(2018)

Kang Shi, Shu Lin, Haichun Ye

This study examines the role of credit constraints in determining the trade effect of exchange rate volatility. We first develop a small open economy general equilibrium model with credit constraints. In our model, constrained firms respond to real depreciations and appreciations in an asymmetric way,...

Sharing High Growth across Generations: Pensions and Demographic Transition in China

(2015)

Zheng (Michael) Song, Kjetil Storesletten, Yikai Wang, Fabrizio Zilibotti

We analyze intergenerational redistribution in emerging economies with the aid of an overlapping generations model with endogenous labor supply. Growth is initially high but declines over time. A version of the model calibrated to China is used to analyze the welfare effects of alternative pension...

Identifying Capital Misallocation

(2015)

Zheng (Michael) Song, Guiying Laura Wu

Resource misallocation lowers aggregate productive effi ciency. The existing literature often infers the magnitude of misallocation from the dispersion of average revenue products. However, the methodology is subject to several identification issues.

Grasp the Large, Let Go of the Small: The Transformation of the State Sector in China

(2015)

Chang-Tai Hsieh, Zheng (Michael) Song

Starting in the late 1990s, China undertook a dramatic transformation of the large number of firms under state control. Small state-owned firms were privatized or closed. Large state-owned firms were corporatized and merged into large industrial groups under the control of the Chinese state. The state...

Demographic Age Structure and Economic Development: Evidence from Chinese Provinces

(2015)

Haifeng Zhang, Hongliang Zhang, Junsen Zhang

In this paper, we examine the economic implications of demographic age structure in the context of regional development in China. We extend the development accounting framework by incorporating age structure and apply it to a panel data set of 28 Chinese provinces. We find that changes in age structure,...

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