The US administration launched a trade war against China in response to what it sees as unfair trade practices—especially the requirement that foreign firms entering “restricted” sectors partner with a Chinese firm. New research from an international team of economists gauges whether the requirement has the intended effect of diffusing technology transfer in these sectors, and finds the answer is a resounding yes.
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The idea of creating transfer schemes to compensate the losers from international trade yet still preserve some of the gains faces a myriad of implementation problems. But a progressive tax system can deliver many of the same benefits, Lyon and Waugh of NYU’s Stern School argue in new research.
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The Chinese government has invested heavily in surveillance systems that exploit information on social media. This column shows that these systems are very effective, even in their simplest form. From the government’s point of view, social media, although unattractive as a potential outlet for organised social protest, is useful as a method to surveil protests, monitor local officials, and disseminate propaganda.
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In 1933 the United States launched its Silver Purchase program, which raised silver prices worldwide, drained China’s silver stock, and caused credit to Chinese firms to contract sharply. In a new paper, economists at Tilburg and Bocconi universities use the incident as a natural experiment to examine whether economic shocks can trigger labor unrest and boost support for fringe political parties.
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Are anti-corruption reforms effective in reducing economic rent seeking and constraining the influence of special interests? New research from Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance finds that anti-corruption investigations in China are associated with credit reallocation from less productive state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to more productive non-SOEs. The series of investigations constitute staggered events to identify the causal impact of anti-corruption reforms on bank financing.
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If, as California political legend Jesse M. Unruh once quipped, “money is the mother’s milk of politicians,” it’s reasonable to expect that countries might wield their financial power for geopolitical purposes on the world stage. Accordingly, a fascinating new paper slated to be presented at the upcoming Stigler Center Political Economy of Finance conference tracks how China punishes countries whose heads of state accept meetings with the Dalai Lama by curbing bilateral lending flows from its state banks.
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With a few cronyist tweaks, China’s communist leaders made capitalism safe for Party rule. But will cronyism become China’s next booming export?
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The third and final part of ProMarket’s interview with Bernard Yeung, Dean of the National University of Singapore’s business school and one of the predominantly non-U.S.-born economists who laid the foundations for the scientific research of economic power concentration.
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In the second part of his interview with ProMarket, Bernard Yeung—one of the economists who laid the foundations of scientific research on economic power concentration—discusses free trade, the connection between wealth and power, and why governments may actually prefer markets controlled by dominant players rather than by many competitors.
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In the past four years, China has been waging the biggest anticorruption campaign in its modern history. Is it working?
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