In the late 1980s, Mexico opened itself to international trade and foreign investment, followed in the early 1990s by China. China and Mexico are still the two countries characterized as middle-income by the World Bank with the highest levels of merchandise exports. Although their measures of openness have been comparable, these two countries have had sharply different economic performances: China has achieved spectacular growth, whereas Mexico’s growth has been disappointingly modest. In this article, we extend the analysis of Kehoe and Ruhl (2010) to account for the differences in these experiences. We show that China opened its economy while it was still achieving rapid growth from shifting employment out of agriculture and into manufacturing while Mexico opened long after its comparable phase of structural transformation. China is only now catching up with Mexico in terms of GDP per working-age person, and it still lags behind in terms of the fraction of its population engaged in agriculture. Furthermore, we argue that China has been able to move up a ladder of quality and technological sophistication in the composition of its exports and production, while Mexico seems to be stuck exporting a fixed set of products to its North American neighbors.

Suzhou and Shenzhen are among the top cities in China by GDP, and both have performed exceedingly well in terms of cultivating technological industries and attracting foreign investment. This is in spite of the fact that neither city is a provincial capital nor a centrally administered city like Shanghai and Beijing. Yet, the two cities embody very different administrative models with respect to their relationship with the provincial and central governments. Shenzhen, in particular, has a closer relationship with the central government than almost any non-centrally administered city in China, whereas Suzhou is a city that remains closely in coordination with the provincial government even as its economy has grown by leaps and bounds. This begs the question of which city's model will prevail moving forward: the Shenzhen model, typified by "re-centralization" of power, or the Suzhou model, which represents more of the conventional regional decentralization model that has been prevalent in China since the 1980s. The article attempts to argue that even though Shenzhen is of pivotal importance to the central government's policies, it will remain an outlier for the time being so as to avoid disturbing the delicate balance between the central and provincial governments, barring an unforeseen economic or political crisis.

This paper investigates the contribution of futures market information to enhancing the predictive accuracy of macroeconomic forecasts, using data from China. We employ three cat-egories of predictors: monthly macroeconomic factors, daily commodity futures factors, and daily financial futures variables. Principal component analysis is applied to extract key fac-tors from large data sets of monthly macroeconomic indicators and daily commodity futures contracts. To address the challenge of mixed sampling frequencies, these predictors are incor-porated into factor-MIDAS models for both nowcasting and long-term forecasting of critical macroeconomic variables. The empirical results indicate that financial futures data provide modest improvements in forecasting secondary and tertiary GDP, whereas commodity futures factors significantly improve the accuracy of PPI forecasts. Interestingly, for PMI forecast-ing, models relying exclusively on futures market data, without incorporating macroeconomic factors, achieve superior predictive performance. Our findings underscore the significance of futures market information as a valuable input to macroeconomic forecasting.

Local financial development is crucial for advancing regional financial supply side structural reform, enabling local governments to leverage financial instruments to effectively mobilize land resources and foster competitive growth. The introduction of numerous financial products linked to land-related rights and interests has resulted in a pronounced transmission and interconnection of fiscal and financial risks across regions. This study examines the impact of local financial development on land financialization in China using panel data from prefecture-level cities and detailed information on land mortgages. The findings indicate that the establishment of city commercial banks (CCBs) contributes to the progress of land financialization by incentivizing local government financing vehicles to participate in land mortgage financing, increasing the transfer of debt risks to the financial sector. Notably, the impact of CCBs on land financialization is more pronounced in regions with urban agglomeration, high GDP manipulation, inadequate local financial regulation, and robust implicit government guarantees. Further analysis reveals that CCB establishment has negative spillover effects on land financialization in neighboring areas, while expansion strategies such as establishing intercity branches, engaging in cross-regional mergers, and relaxing regulations have mitigated the rise of land financialization at the regional level. This study provides policy recommendations that focus on reducing local governments’ reliance on land financing and enhancing the prevention and management of financial risks.

We document a positive investment premium in the Chinese market, in contrast to the typical negative investment premium in other markets. The premium only exists when we measure investment by quarterly asset growth, not annual asset growth. A positive premium can be attributed to the fact that quarterly asset growth positively predicts future profitability and GDP growth in the Chinese market, whereas both relationships are negative in the U.S. market. Furthermore, Chinese firms have shorter operating cycles compared to those in the U.S., which explains why quarter data is more valuable.

The study of interconnections between various sectors of the national economy is crucial for understanding the pattern and pace of macroeconomic growth. This paper analyzes the macroeconomic impact of shocks occurring in specific sectors through both supply and demand perspectives and proposes a combination of bottom-up and top-down structural path analysis approaches to trace the transmission path of network spillover effects, where shocks in this paper refer to microeconomic productivity changes and network spillover is defined as the effect on GDP due to the propagation of shocks to other sectors. The research results found that the total spillover effect of primary and secondary industry sectors in China shows an inverted U-shape, and the total spillover effect of tertiary industry sectors shows an upward trend. A large total spillover effect of a sector does not mean that both upward and downward spillover effects are large; for example, the construction industry has high upward spillover effects and low downward spillover effects. The spillover effect of each production layer decreases as the path lengthens, and the distribution is Lshaped.In addition, by identifying the critical paths of spillover effects, we find that the spillover effects of labor-intensive industries, such as wholesale and retail, are decreasing year by year, and the spillover effects of the paths related to the information technology industry are gradually occupying an important position.

This research analyses the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic on China's economy, examining the divergent epidemic prevention policies used by local governments. Empirical evidence highlights that the emergence of COVID-19 cases correlates with a 1.13% reduction in quarterly GDP growth. However, when a city's secretary maintains an informal ties with the provincial secretary, GDP growth remains resilient. Analyzing micro-level data, we observe that city secretaries with informal ties tend to enact flexible anti-contagion measures. This flexibility stems from a decreased likelihood of reprimand for virus transmission. Such shields exclusively manifests when incumbent provincial secretaries share informal ties with central leadership. This underscores the interplay of political networks in shaping localized economic responses.

An optimal tax and borrowing plan determines the marginal cost of servicing government debt, p', and makes the government’s debt risk-free. An option to default restricts debt capacity. Optimal debt-GDP ratio dynamics are driven by 1) a primary deficit, 2) interest payments, 3) GDP growth, and 4) hedging costs. Hedging influences debt capacity and debt transition dynamics. For plausible parameter values, we make comparative dynamic quantitative statements about debt-GDP ratio transition dynamics, debt capacity, and how long it would take our example economy to attain that calibrated equilibrium debt capacity.

We document a positive investment premium in the Chinese market, in contrast to the typical negative investment premium in other markets. The premium only exists when we measure investment by quarterly asset growth, not annual asset growth. A positive premium can be attributed to the fact that quarterly asset growth positively predicts future profitability and GDP growth in the Chinese market, whereas both relationships are negative in the U.S. market. Furthermore, Chinese rms have shorter operating cycles compared to those in the U.S., which explains why quarter data is more valuable.

消费、投资和出口被称为经济增长的"三驾马车"，是推动GDP增长的三个主要因素。 在后疫情时代背景下经济全球化面临逆流，投资的边际效益递减，再加上疫情对我国进出口 贸易的冲击，消费的重要性更加突显。金融市场发展对居民消费有着重要影响。我国政府早 在2013年就提出了发展普惠金融的目标，随着普惠金融的推广和数字金融的发展，两者之间 产生了紧密的关联。数字普惠金融凭借数字化、广覆盖、低成本的优势给居民带来安全便捷 的金融服务，降低风险感知，提升收入感知，从而影响消费。因此，在新的发展格局下，研 究数字普惠金融对居民消费的影响具有现实意义。 已有研究表明数字金融普惠指数的空间分布呈现地理和收入聚集性，且不同区域的居民 消费水平也存在较大差异，而我国东部地区经济发展水平和金融发展水平迅速，居民收入水 平相对处于高位，居民消费需求前卫，层次更加多元化，因此，将我国东部地区作为研究重 点，探讨消费理论可以综合考虑更广泛的消费需求和层次，有助于更深入地理解当前经济新 环境下居民的消费行为和理论。 通过固定效应回归我们发现，总体上来看数字普惠金融具有增加中国东部地区居民消费 的正向效益，数字普惠金融的发展有助于促进东部地区居民消费水平的提升。通过机制分析， 我们发现数字普惠金融通过提升社会保障水平、缩小城乡收入差距的中间机制提升居民消费 需求。从数字普惠金融对城乡居民消费水平差异的影响来看，数字普惠金融对城乡居民消费 水平的影响存在异质性，其对城镇居民消费的促进作用明显大于农村居民。