China’s household wealth is growing rapidly and has become significant worldwide. While the government played an important role in economic growth and wealth accumulation, few research has explained why and how government expenditure redistributes household wealth in China. This study uses China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) household survey (2010-2018) and prefecture-level data to estimate the impact of government expenditure on household wealth, especially the value of housing asset. We find that the capitalization of government expenditure contributes an important part to housing value appreciation, which accounts for more than 50% of household wealth. Furthermore, the impact mechanism of government expenditure on households’ wealth has a substantial redistributive effect. Government expenditures greatly advance the net worth of households who own their houses, especially for households that own two or more houses, but contribute much less to those comprising rental tenants.

This paper studies the evolution of wealth inequality during China’s rapid economic growth since its market-oriented reforms in the early 1990s. We first document the evolution and composition of China’s wealth distribution and summarize stylized facts on aspects of the growth and reform process that are key to understanding wealth accumulation. Then we develop a heterogeneous-agent dynamic general equilibrium model that incorporates two sectors, the rural agricultural sector and the urban manufacturing sector, with endogenous migration, occupation, and durable consumption (housing) choices subject to frictions. In particular, the persistent financial market friction that entrepreneurs face plays a key role, as it ensures that the wealth brought by rapid capital accumulation is accrued predominantly to entrepreneurs.Our quantitative exercise decomposes the rising wealth inequality in China into different contributing factors.

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of return and volatility spillover effects between developed and emerging futures markets with investment obstacles. It mainly focuses on analysis of the effects on equilibrium futures price, investors’ trading strategies and their wealth distributions in the emerging market. Three hypotheses are proposed. The first two assume that there is either return or volatility spillover between the two markets. The last one combines the first two together by assuming that there are both return and volatility spillovers between the markets. Our analysis results show that the equilibrium futures price, investors’ trading strategies and their wealth distributions in the emerging futures market are affected by (1) the scale of informed traders in the emerging market who form their expectations of delivery price by using the spillovers from the developed market, (2) the spillovers degree that the informed in the emerging market expect, and (3) whether there is return spillover or volatility spillover, or both. Overall, the findings suggest that if there are both return and volatility spillovers, then ignoring the volatility spillover, investors will make improper investment decisions so that the futures contracts could be overpriced and the traders’ wealth could be harmed. The theoretical analysis provide an important implication for empirical examination on the spillover effects between markets, that is, both return and volatility spillover effects should be considered jointly, otherwise the return spillover effects can be overestimated. Empirical examination in copper futures markets generally supports the conclusions drawn from our theoretical analysis.