This paper compares China's parallel and sequential admissions mechanisms under the dummy-quota policy that limits how many applicants each college can screen. Although neither mechanism is stable or strategy-proof, their weaknesses are structurally different. Under the parallel mechanism, priority violations and profitable deviations are confined to a policy-determined buffer: students routed into colleges' screening pools by exam-score priority but rejected when colleges finalize admissions based on their preferences. The size of this buffer is bounded by the gap between screening and admission capacities. Under the sequential mechanism, by contrast, violations are driven by the round-by-round structure and can expand sharply with congestion and preference concentration. We derive tight upper bounds that characterize these exposures and quantify their magnitudes in calibrated simulations. The results reveal a clear distinction: institutional risk is capped ex ante by design under the parallel mechanism, whereas under the sequential mechanism it scales with market pressure-providing a complementary explanation for China's transition from sequential to parallel admissions.

Using data from Chinese non-financial listed firms over the 2009-2021 period, this study examines the link between cybersecurity and total factor productivity. The results suggest that cybersecurity can improve total factor productivity, a finding robust to multiples tests. Further investigation confirms that this relationship arises from information multiplication and capital deepening. It is particularly pronounced after the implementation of the Cybersecurity Law or among firms with strong digital innovation activities. In contrast, for firms whose senior executives have an information technology background, the moderating effect is not significant. However, the relationship is more pronounced for firms with larger scale, that are more technology-intensive, or operating in industries with above-average competition. Policy wise, these findings provide new evidence on the economic value of cybersecurity and offer policy implications for improving cybersecurity governance and aligning security investment with information and communications technology development to enhance resource allocation efficiency and sustainable digital growth.

This study examines how changes in auction timing affect bidding behavior, using data from Chinese land market transactions. In 2021, a new policy mandated that 22 cities shift from sequential to simultaneous auctions for residential land. Using an event study approach, I find simultaneous auctions lead to higher prices and a greater auction failure rate. Additionally, I examine testable implications related to the mechanism behind the policy effect: auction prices rise more for higher-quality land and in cities with higher land quality variance; moreover, the auction failure rate increases more for lower-quality land. I then developed a model of bidding that rationalizes my main findings and offers some policy suggestions.

We investigate whether China's 2021 mining ban transformed Bitcoin from a speculative vehicle into a macro-sensitive asset. Using daily data from 2017-2025, we document a decisive structural break. Pre-2021, volatility was endogenous, driven by raw trading volume rather than fundamentals. Post-ban, however, internal microstructure noise loses predictive power. Instead, volatility is now driven by macroeconomic anxiety: Wikipedia searches for "Inflation" improve forecast accuracy by over 7%. We further uncover a "dual narrative" where inflation attention predicts crash risk, while "Recession" queries (pivot speculation) drive rallies. These findings suggest the regulatory shock successfully curtailed noise trading, allowing macro-fundamentals to dominate price discovery.

This paper develops a theoretical and empirical framework to analyze China's interest rate corridor, focusing on the Standing Lending Facility (SLF). We construct a general equilibrium model featuring an explicit corridor and a novel accessibility cost friction (α), which captures implicit costs during SLF application. The theoretical properties of the model explain key stylized facts associated with the corridor operation. The study highlights several fundamental properties of the corridor as a policy framework: 1) Both the width and the midpoint of the corridor are active policy tools, implying that SLF and Interest on Excess Reserves (IOER) policies should be designed cohesively within the unified corridor framework; 2) The policy's efficiency varies with the level of market liquidity; and 3) The corridor framework allows for a separation between price-based and quantity-based monetary policy instruments. Empirically, we employ the Joint Power Prior (JPP) Bayesian estimation to quantify the α time series, identifying structural breakpoints that align with major policy and market events. This study provides a quantitative tool for monitoring SLF transmission efficiency.

This paper focuses on China's green financial development context, selects carbon taxes and green credit policies as adjustable fiscal instruments, constructs a four-sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model, and innovatively divides the production sector into traditional and clean firms. We then separately investigate the impacts of these two structural policies on green economic development. The impact of structural policies on the development of green economy and emission reduction is investigated individually in terms of each policy. The results of the study show that the positive impacts of green credit and pollution tax rate have a significant inhibiting effect on pollution emissions; for total output, the policy of adjusting the carbon tax rate has a negative impact on economic development, while the negative impacts of targeted subsidy on economic development in the long run are not obvious. Based on this, this paper combines the green development practice to put forward the corresponding policy recommendations for the construction of a green low-carbon development policy system to provide references.

In this paper, we investigate the availability of external finance for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private enterprises (PEs) across all manufacturing industries in China. Employing a disequilibrium model, we find that SOEs are generally less financially constrained than PEs, but the difference is of small magnitude and has been steadily declining over time. We also reveal a positive relation between the advantage of SOEs in accessing external funds and the level of SOE monopoly at the industry level. In general, while SOEs and PEs are equally constrained in competitive downstream industries, we find a significant comparative advantage in accessing external finance for SOEs in monopolized mid- and upstream industries. The policy implication is straightforward: to finance PEs better, the Chinese government should consider breaking the existing monopolies or near monopolies of SOEs in certain industries further, rather than encouraging banks to favor PEs in their lending.

This paper examines the effects of China's 2016 coal capacity reduction policy on firms, local labor markets, and crime. We find that the policy substantially reduced the asset size and employment of coal firms in treated cities while simultaneously increasing their profitability and lowering debt. Policy-induced layoffs generated adverse spillovers in local labor markets, reducing residents' incomes, worsening public perceptions of job opportunities, and increasing divorce rates. These labor market effects were most pronounced among older and less-educated individuals. Employment also shifted away from the mining sector toward wholesale and retail trade and real estate-related industries. In addition, the policy led to an increase in crime, driven primarily by property offenses committed by individual offenders, while violent crime remained largely unchanged. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the increase in coal firms' profits exceeded the fiscal resources required for worker resettlement.

We study how expanding access to intellectual property (IP)-backed credit affects firm innovation and aggregate total factor productivity (TFP). Exploiting China's IP-backed financing pilot as a quasi-natural experiment, we use difference-indifferences estimates to show that the policy increases R&D participation, raises firm-level productivity, and reduces capital misallocation. To interpret these effects and quantify their aggregate implications, we develop a dynamic model of heterogeneous firms that borrow subject to collateral constraints backed by tangible assets and IP, and choose R&D investment and the accumulation of wealth. R&D raises future productivity and creates collateralizable IP. We estimate the model by the method of simulated moments, using the policy-induced shift in R&D participation to identify the change in IP pledgeability. The estimated model implies that a nationwide adoption of IP-backed financing would raise long-run TFP by 14%, with roughly two-thirds coming from static gains due to improved capital allocation and the remainder from dynamic gains driven by higher innovation that accumulate over time. Relative to a comparable expansion of lending backed by tangible collateral, IP-backed financing delivers larger productivity gains by easing constraints for high-productivity but low-wealth firms and by strengthening incentives to accumulate IP as collateral for future borrowing.

This paper studies the unintended spillover effects of China's 2020 "Three Red Lines" policy – a macroprudential intervention aimed at deleveraging real estate developers – on employment in the upstream manufacturing firms. Exploiting variation in industries' exposure to the real estate sector via input-output linkages and employing a generalized difference-in-differences (DID) design on panel data of listed manufacturing firms (2017-2022), we find a significant decline in employment among upstream suppliers, while there is no substantial effect on downstream firms. We identify two transmission channels: a demand propagation channel, evidenced by falling sales and inventory overhang, and a balance sheet contagion channel, where liquidity strain is passed upstream via extended payables and a shift to riskier short-term debt. Furthermore, we show that downward nominal wage rigidity shaped the adjustment, as firms resorted to layoffs rather than wage cuts for ordinary workers. From a regional labor market perspective, the employment losses represent a net reduction at the aggregate level, as displaced workers are not absorbed by other local firms in the same city or province. Our study reveals a significant real economic cost of sectoral macroprudential regulation and clarifies how such shocks propagate through production networks and interact with labor market frictions.