Bureaucracy

  • 详情 Crisis Control in Top-down Bureaucracy: Evidence from China's Zero-Covid Policy
    This study investigates the compliance of local Chinese officials with the zero-Covid policy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. By examining biographical data from political elites and using a prefecture-day data set on risk levels – an indicator reffecting the status of zero-Covid policy - we discover a significant impact of prefecture leaders’ promotion incentives on their response to COVID-19 outbreaks. Our empirical analysis reveals that leaders with stronger promotion incentives tend to exhibit increased reactions to emerging cases. Evidence shows that such a phenomenon is driven by the different choices of the prefecture leaders facing relatively larger-scale COVID-19 outbreaks. Furthermore, local governors whose jurisdictions are more economically developed tend to enforce more stringent mobility restrictions. However, for prefecture leaders who oversee more developed regions and possess strong promotion incentives, the combined effects of these two factors tend to balance each other out in terms of pandemic response. These results suggest a natural tension between demands for crisis management during the pandemic and routine performance in economic development within the political framework of China.
  • 详情 Government Intervention in Credit Allocation Process and Leverage Dynamics: Evidence from China
    We study how government intervention in the bank loan granting process affects firms’ leverage dynamics. We exploit the setup of administrative approval centers (AACs) in China, a program aiming to reduce bureaucracy in business activities, as a quasi-natural experiment. On average, AACs help to shorten the leverage rebalancing period by as much as a quarter. This acceleration pattern persists in under-leveraged firms, which issue more debt to rebalance accordingly. Cross-sectional analyses show that the positive effect of AACs on leverage adjustment is more pronounced for firms that are in poorer legal environment, with more financial constraints, or less politically connected. ics.
  • 详情 The Effects of Policy Reversals: A Natural Experiment from Financial Market Liberalization in China
    What are the effects of policy reversals which were initiated by the US bureaucracy in response to the 2008 global financial crisis? Answering this question is challenging because US capital markets are relatively mature and policy reversals are far and in between in recent years. Specifically, the challenges include the one-time nature of these US policy reversals, the confounding effects of many programs targeting interrelated segments of the capital markets at the same time as well as possible endogeneity issues. China, on the other hand, offers a natural experiment to study the effects of policy reversals. In the last three decades, the Chinese government has initiated many policy changes to liberalize the capital markets and some of these have been reversed several times. Using hand-collected data of policy reversals targeting the Chinese stock markets from 1994 through 2009, we are able to address the first two challenges. To resolve any endogeneity issue, we focus on the impact of such policy reversals (targeted at the Chinese stock markets) on the Chinese repo markets, which trade market-driven interest rates. We find that the Chinese policy reversals are indeed effective in reducing the term spread, the volatility of the interest rate, and the volatility of the term spread. Our results suggest that the policy risk is systematically priced in financial securities, implying that policy makers can rely on financial market indicators to objectively evaluate their policy decisions.
  • 详情 The Effects of Policy Reversals: A Natural Experiment from Financial Market Liberalization in China
    What are the effects of policy reversals which were initiated by the US bureaucracy in response to the 2008 global financial crisis? Answering this question is challenging because US capital markets are relatively mature and policy reversals are far and in between in recent years. Specifically, the challenges include the one-time nature of these US policy reversals, the confounding effects of many programs targeting interrelated segments of the capital markets at the same time as well as possible endogeneity issues. China, on the other hand, offers a natural experiment to study the effects of policy reversals. In the last three decades, the Chinese government has initiated many policy changes to liberalize the capital markets and some of these have been reversed several times. Using hand-collected data of policy reversals targeting the Chinese stock markets from 1994 through 2009, we are able to address the first two challenges. To resolve any endogeneity issue, we focus on the impact of such policy reversals (targeted at the Chinese stock markets) on the Chinese repo markets, which trade market-driven interest rates. We find that the Chinese policy reversals are indeed effective in reducing the term spread, the volatility of the interest rate, and the volatility of the term spread. Our results suggest that the policy risk is systematically priced in financial securities, implying that policy makers can rely on financial market indicators to objectively evaluate their policy decisions.
  • 详情 The Effects of Policy Reversals: A Natural Experiment from Financial Market Liberalization in China
    What are the effects of policy reversals which were initiated by the US bureaucracy in response to the 2008 global financial crisis? Answering this question is challenging because US capital markets are relatively mature and policy reversals are far and in between in recent years. Specifically, the challenges include the one-time nature of these US policy reversals, the confounding effects of many programs targeting interrelated segments of the capital markets at the same time as well as possible endogeneity issues. China, on the other hand, offers a natural experiment to study the effects of policy reversals. In the last three decades, the Chinese government has initiated many policy changes to liberalize the capital markets and some of these have been reversed several times. Using hand-collected data of policy reversals targeting the Chinese stock markets from 1994 through 2009, we are able to address the first two challenges. To resolve any endogeneity issue, we focus on the impact of such policy reversals (targeted at the Chinese stock markets) on the Chinese repo markets, which trade market-driven interest rates. We find that the Chinese policy reversals are indeed effective in reducing the term spread, the volatility of the interest rate, and the volatility of the term spread. Our results suggest that the policy risk is systematically priced in financial securities, implying that policy makers can rely on financial market indicators to objectively evaluate their policy decisions.
  • 详情 Is the State-Led Industrial Restructuring Effective in Transition China? Evidence from the Steel Sector
    During the reform era, the Chinese government has been carrying out strategic industrial policies modelled on those in post-war Japan and South Korea, in the hope of transforming its highly fragmented manufacturing sector into one that comprises a small number of internationally competitive big businesses. Using the evolution of the Chinese steel industry structure from the late 1980s to the early 2000s as a case in point, this paper finds that the Chinese government's consolidation attempts have, by and large, not been very successful. The disappointing policy outcome is interpreted by a detailed examination of the industry policy mechanism in China. It is concluded that the institutional framework of the Chinese state differs from its counterparts in Korea and Japan in some fundamental aspects. Among these, the fragmented and uncoordinated Chinese bureaucracy contributes significantly to the inefficacy of policy implementation.