Regional financial development has greatly supported the rapid growth of Chinese municipal corporate bonds. This study introduces the concept of regional financial resources and constructs an informative measure of regional financial development by using principal component analysis (PCA), incorporating 13 indicators from three primary financial industries, including bank, security and insurance. Using a sample of municipal corporate bonds (MCBs) issued in China from 2009 to 2019, we find that an increase in regional financial development is associated with significant MCB credit spreads narrowing. This effect can be realized by improving fiscal stability and debt sustainability. Additionally, this narrowing varies among cities and provinces with different fiscal conditions and economic development. The results are also verified through a series of robustness tests. This study proposes possible policy suggestions for improving the Chinese fiscal management and MCBs market.

This study investigates the impact of the land rental market (LRM) on labor productivity in rural China. Particular attention is given to farm and non-farm labor productivity. Using 2012 household-level data and a multinomial endogenous switching treatment regression (MESTR) technique, we find that rural households renting-in farmland increased labor productivity in the farm sector by about 55%, while labor productivity in the non-farm sector decreased by about 6%. We also find that rural households renting-out farmland had lower labor productivity in both the farm and non-farm sectors by 13% and 9%, respectively. More family labor transferred from the farm to the non-farm sector after renting-out land.

The disordered and rampant local tax incentives have interfered with regular business competition and resource allocation, and whether they have the rationality of existence has also become an urgent problem to be clarified. In China, the government has undertaken a new round of policy adjustment to comprehensively sort out and standardize tax incentives, trying to realign value-oriented tax competition among local governments. Thus, this paper examines the real effect of standardizing tax incentives using China's State Council documents Nos. 62[2014] and No. 25[2015], with the measurement of abnormal tax burdens and abnormal fiscal subsidies. The result shows that this round of policy governance has maintained the steadiness of the overall tax burden and fiscal subsidy, and only abnormal tax burdens and fiscal subsidies have been reduced through structural adjustment; In addition, it has also taken into account the difference among regional economic development. The governance in the Midwest is generally lighter than in the East. Meanwhile, the effect of governance among different property companies has presented a reduced tendency as "state-owned enterprises -- local state-owned enterprises -- private enterprises".

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.

Recent evidence shows an increase in sovereign debt from China to emerging and low-income developing countries. Chinese lending contracts have stringent confidentiality clauses that restrict the borrowers from reporting these contracts. The use of these type of clauses hide the true fiscal and financial conditions of a country. This paper analyzes the debt sustainability and welfare implications of such clauses in the context of a sovereign default model with asymmetric information. I find welfare loses associated with reporting these contracts for countries that have debt with China, and small welfare gains for countries that do not have these commitments. This implies that additional incentives are necessary to encourage countries to embrace transparency initiatives.

Chinese companies have a distinctive feature by embedding Communist Party of China (CPC) into governance structure. In this study, we examine the impact of embedded CPC governance on disclosure quality in Chinese private firms. We find that embedded CPC governance improves disclosure quality. We also document that internal control mediates the relationship between embedded CPC governance and disclosure quality. Further analyses show that our results are pronounced for private firms with greater peer pressure, stronger industry competition, and poorer information environments. Overall, our findings aid our understanding of the role of embedded CPC in influencing disclosure practices in private enterprises.

Taking the prevalence of the global green development concept and China's green credit development practice as the background, this paper constructs a theoretical model analysis framework with the incentive policy of green credit as the entry point. First, the impact effect of green credit incentive policy is examined using the BVAR model. The results show that the green credit incentive policy suppresses the output level in the short run through the financing constraint channel, but has a positive contribution to output in the long run due to the adjustment of the production structure and the dynamic adjustment of green investment and R&D. Next, the paper constructs a DSGE model embedded with green credit fiscal and tax incentive policies, which explains the impact mechanisms and comparative effects of fiscal and financial policies driving green credit. The model shows that the re-guarantee policy is the most effective and consensual green credit incentive policy. In terms of the policy combination, the combination of the re-guarantee policy and the income tax policy is the current optimal policy pairing, and its policy is able to produce an amplification effect through the balance sheet channels of commercial banks and enterprises at the same time. In addition, a certain intensity of the above policy combination not only can effectively increase the scale of green credit, but also does not produce significant negative shocks to output and inflation. In summary, the findings of this paper provide a useful reference for the formulation and implementation of green credit incentive policies.

本文的目的是建立刻画区块链生态系统行为表现的 “共识博弈” (Consensus Game) 的一般框架，并针对 “矿池间隔博弈 ” \ (Mining Pool Gap Game）的 “共识均衡” \ (Consensus Equilibria) 的存在性进行刻画和解读，然后通过共识博弈这个新概念来建立和解释区块链平台本身的稳定性在挖矿间隔行为出现的 情况下在基于共识均衡存在的这个意义上的正面回答。这里，“间隔博弈”\ (Gap Game) 所在的区块链生态是指基于中本聪\ （Nakamoto) 在\ 2008 年提出的 “工作量证明” 作为基本的共识原则的挖矿平台。特别地，本文首先在一般激励机制条件下，基于区块链生态中的共识博弈框架，对挖矿间隔行为可能出现的情况下，建立了在一般激励相容机制条件下的共识均衡点的存在性结果和对应区块链生态能够持续运转的稳定性解读书, 然后结合在 “挖（币）矿” \ (Mining Bitcoin）工作中涉及到的工作费用、奖励机制和挖矿能力这三类主要因素，从挖矿工（组）收益的角度, 针对不同嵌入场景对挖矿工（组）的 “间隔博弈行为” \（Gap Game Behavior) 对可能产生的影响进行了解读和分析。本文的理论结果和案例分析表明，结合不同挖矿场景相合适的激励相容机制， 共识博弈（均衡）这个概念可以在理论的层面（即，不需要情景数据模拟结果的支持），能够得到或形成针对不同场景下的挖矿行为的解释和解读。此外，我们有理由期待和相信，结合影响挖矿（组）收益相关的要素因子，共识博弈可以帮助我们构建对应的合适场景的激励相容机制，通过刻画挖矿工（组）出现的诸如 “间隔行为”, “分叉链”, “矿池攻击” 等（不良)行为，支撑数字经济的健康发展, 并对共识经济学基础理论的发展能够起到推进作用。

A significant number of procurements in both public and private sectors have adopted the practice of splitting the award among multiple bidders in an auction, as an alternative to the one-winner-take-all approach. This aims to encourage participation from small firms and reduce dependency on a single supplier. One prominent example is China’s national drug procurement multiple-winner auction, where the drug supply is divided among several winners, increasing in proportion to the number of participants. Given the societal importance of drug prices, it is crucial to properly examine the rationale for using split-award auctions. However, there is limited theoretical and empirical guidance available in the literature. This paper investigates the competitive impact of split-award auctions on key outcomes, such as participation and procurement costs, using both a theoretical framework and empirical evidence. Theoretically, it demonstrates that split-award auctions consistently boost participation but also increase expected procurement costs in almost all instances. The expected procurement cost decreases only if the split-award auction raises participation from 0 to 1 compared to the winner-take-all auction. Empirically, the paper estimates the direction and magnitude of the effects on participation and expected procurement costs using drug procurement data. The findings reveal that split-award auctions moderately increase average participation by 0.85 bidders (17%), but significantly raise the unit expected procurement cost by 4 CNY (38%). Almost half of the overall increase in expected procurement costs stems from reallocating production to more expensive bidders, while the other half results from increased markups charged by bidders in response to this reallocation.

This paper examines the relationship between kin-based institutions and the state in the modern economy, exploring how clan captures the local government. Using data from China’s primary land market and a nationwide genealogy dataset, we employ spatial matching to estimate clan’s causal impacts on land parcel prices, which are a crucial source of fiscal revenue for local government. We find that firms linked to local clans obtained 1.3%-3.0% lower prices than those without clanship connections. We show that clan firms get lower prices through collusion with bidders, a process facilitated by local officials. This patron-client relationship leads to a decline in economic growth at the county level, while China’s anti-corruption campaign transforms the economic impact from negative to positive.