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on China |
| By: | Difei Ouyang (School of International Trade and Economics, University of International Business and Economics); Weidi Yuan (Nanjing University and University of Geneva); Yuan Zi (Geneva Graduate Institute and University of Oslo and CEPR) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how trade affects women's marriage and fertility decisions in China. Exploiting regional variation in the exposure to the U.S. granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations, we find that more exposed Chinese prefectures experience relative increases in the fraction of unmarried young women and women without children. These shifts in family decisions coincide with a trade-induced increase in female workforce participation and reallocation of women relative to men to the service sector, where wages are higher. Additionally, women in more exposed areas experience greater gender empowerment, as measured by their attitudes toward work, family, and gender equality. |
| Keywords: | trade liberalization; gender inequality; family decisions; Chinese economy |
| JEL: | F16 J12 J13 J16 |
| Date: | 2026–09–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gii:giihei:heidwp28-2026 |
| By: | Federica Coelli (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, CEPR, and CESifo); Difei Ouyang (University of International Business and Economics); Weidi Yuan (Nanjing University); Yuan Zi (Geneva Graduate Institute, CEPR, and CESifo) |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that human capital accumulation can accelerate structural transformation without accelerating growth. We study China's 1999 higher education expansion, a large, rapid, and largely unanticipated increase in college graduates. We find that more exposed prefectures experienced larger increases in the skilled-labor share and shifted employment and value added from agriculture toward services. The reallocation extended to low-skilled workers. Consumer services absorbed most of the increase in employment, while producer services accounted for a disproportionate share of high-skilled employment growth. Yet more-exposed prefectures did not grow faster. A four-sector model rationalizes these patterns, showing how greater skill supply can generate broad-based servitization, but also a Baumol-type growth penalty when labor reallocates toward slower-growing sectors. Our findings highlight that the payoff to higher education depends not only on how much skill it creates, but also on whether the resulting structural transformation directs resources toward the economy's engines of productivity growth. |
| Keywords: | Human Capital; Structural Transformation; Higher Education Expansion; Servitization; China |
| JEL: | I25 J24 L16 O11 O14 |
| Date: | 2026–09–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gii:giihei:heidwp27-2026 |
| By: | Lorenzo Bencivelli (Bank of Italy); Alessio Ciarlone (Bank of Italy); Emidio Cocozza (Bank of Italy); Andrea Gerali (Bank of Italy); Andrea Perin (Bank of Italy); Carmine Porello (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the major structural transformations that have been reshaping the global automotive industry since the COVID-19 pandemic. Organized as a series of questions and answers, it analyses key developments across market dynamics, electrification, trade policy, supply chains, and digital technology. The post-pandemic recovery has been strikingly uneven: while China's vehicle sales surpassed pre-pandemic levels, advanced economies - particularly in the European Union - remain significantly below 2019 volumes, reflecting weakened affordability and policy uncertainty. China's rapid rise as the world's largest electric vehicle producer and exporter, driven by sustained industrial policy, battery supply chain dominance, and an estimated 30 to 45 per cent manufacturing cost edge over Western competitors, has fundamentally altered competitive dynamics. European, Japanese, and Korean original equipment manufacturers face mounting pressure from Chinese electrification, trade fragmentation, and the transition to software-defined vehicles, where Chinese firms are estimated to have a two- to three-year lead. US and EU defensive measures-including prohibitive tariffs and countervailing duties-have proved only partially effective, with EU passenger car imports from China rising by nearly 30 per cent in 2025. The paper concludes that diverging industrial, trade, and environmental policies are fragmenting global automotive markets into distinct regional ecosystems, raising costs, complicating investment, and accelerating a structural realignment of competitive advantage. |
| Keywords: | electric vehicles, trade policy, automotive industry |
| JEL: | L62 F13 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_1030_26 |
| By: | Yuan, Di; Liu, ZY |
| Abstract: | Millions of female university graduates in China face a severe shortage of standardized office jobs with weekends off each year. This structural mismatch exacerbates employment pressure. Drawing on empirical data from the Anhui provincial civil service examination, this paper proposes a “dignity-defense-oriented reproductive decision-making model.” Confronted with the gap between high career expectations and labor-market reality, female university students, motivated by dignity defense and risk aversion toward the motherhood penalty, prefer survival strategies such as “slow employment” and the “civil service examination craze” over marriage and childbearing. These choices significantly suppress the overall birth rate. To address this dilemma, the paper recommends reconstructing the university employment-quality evaluation system and disciplinary structure, introducing national policies that reduce the motherhood penalty, and promoting a shift in the macro-market toward consumption infrastructure centered on independent women. |
| Date: | 2026–07–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:yf6p2_v1 |
| By: | Di, Yuan; Liu, ZY |
| Abstract: | Against the backdrop of a sustained decline in marriage and birth rates in China and intensifying gender tensions, traditional explanations centered on individual preferences or gender norms are insufficient to account for the structural mechanisms involved. Drawing on the economics of marriage and the family, this paper examines how rising costs of housing, weddings, bride price, childbearing, and education affect men's decisions to enter marriage, as well as how the expansion of higher education, the shortage of standardized professional employment, and the motherhood penalty shape women's opportunity costs associated with marriage. Building on these factors, together with declining expectations of economic growth, changing lifestyle expectations, and the rising utility of singlehood as an alternative, the paper proposes the “Dual Marriage Costs–Expectation Mismatch Integrated Model” (the Di Formula) and uses “marital surplus” to characterize the comprehensive net benefits of marriage relative to singlehood. The paper argues that contemporary gender relations in China involve more than a conflict of values, but separately rising direct marriage costs for men and opportunity costs for women, together with a widening structural mismatch between modernity-based expectations and real resource constraints. When marital surplus declines and eventually becomes negative, individually rational decisions to postpone or forgo marriage may, in aggregate, contribute to declining marriage and birth rates and intensified gender tensions. Marriage is therefore increasingly shifting from a traditional mechanism of family cooperation toward a high-cost, high-risk, long-term economic decision. |
| Date: | 2026–09–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:53ctn_v1 |
| By: | Shi, Liangkun; Wu, Huanqi; Yang, Hanfei |
| Abstract: | Local government financing channels provide an essential perspective for understanding the investment decisions of local governments and their economic effects. In China, broadly defined local government debt includes two categories: statutory debt and the debt incurred by local government financial vehicles (LGFVs). This paper uses provincial-level panel data from 2016 to 2025, constructs a data-driven industrial structure index, and estimates a two-way fixed-effects model controlling for the overall debt scale. The empirical evidence suggests that the different financial channels on industrial structure are associated with different and opposing changes in industrial structure. When the debt composition shifts toward LGFV debts, the share of relatively high-productivity efficiency industries increases, particularly that of the tertiary sector. In contrast, when the debt composition shifts toward statutory debt, the share of relatively low-production efficiency industries increases, particularly that of the secondary sector. Therefore, the composition of local government debt, rather than its scale alone, is relevant to changes in regional industrial structure. |
| Date: | 2026–09–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:3waq5_v1 |
| By: | Grumbach, Stéphane (INRIA) |
| Abstract: | Under conditions of rapidly increasing societal complexity, understanding other civilizations might become an epistemological necessity for fostering adaptive capacities. Drawing on Weber's Verstehen, Jullien's method of the écart, Luhmann's theory of observation, and Koselleck's conceptual history, we propose a method of differential displacement to compare not simply different situations, but their dynamics, with the aim of exposing implicit assumptions. As a case study, following Jullien, we examine what the categories through which China approaches the digital transformation can reveal to Europeans about its purposes and governance. The goal is neither to endorse nor to criticize China, but to move beyond the simplistic duality of democracy and authoritarianism and examine what the difference reveals about Europe's own categories. We further argue that persistent misunderstanding of others can progressively feed a misunderstanding of one's own transformation. Under conditions of complexity surge, comparison can become a mechanism of collective intelligence and adaptive learning. |
| Date: | 2026–09–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:xhaqe_v1 |
| By: | Hanming Fang (University of Pennsylvania and NBER); Jing Wu (Tsinghua University); Vincent Yao (Georgia State University) |
| Abstract: | We examine the causal effect of uncertainty in property rights on housing prices and speculative behavior. We take advantage of a distinctive setting in Shenzhen, China, where neighboring residential units that are otherwise similar dier in the strength of their property rights protections. Some units have full property rights (FPR) with a 70-year leasehold, whereas others have only limited property rights (LPR) protections. Using detailed listing data, we find that the sales market prices these protections, while the rental market does not. Our estimates imply that the perceived probability that FPR rights could be questioned at the end of the 70-year term is between 7% and 21%, and that the probability the LPR receives no legal protection in any future year exceeds 50%. We further show that LPR units are more susceptible to speculation, as reflected in higher turnover and greater price volatility. Lastly, we show that the public release of new urban planning codes raises listing prices and lowers turnover and price volatility for LPR properties relative to matched FPR units. |
| Keywords: | Property Rights, Housing Prices, Speculative Activities, Urban Planning Codes |
| JEL: | G11 G12 R30 |
| Date: | 2026–09–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:26-014 |
| By: | Chung, Sunghoon |
| Abstract: | Recent shifts in Korea's trade structure are characterized by a broad-based rise in imports from China and a concentrated expansion of exports to the United States in a small set of products, resulting in deeper bilateral trade dependence with both economies. These structural shifts introduce multiple risks, including supply chain vulnerability, job losses in sectors competing with Chinese imports, exposure to U.S. protectionism, and macroeconomic instability. Proactive trade diversification through coordinated policies and targeted export promotion initiatives is essential, alongside institutional reforms to shield affected industries and workers. This agenda should remain a policy priority even after the current trade negotiations with the U.S. are concluded. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:kdifoc:343512 |
| By: | Kaiji Chen; Hanming Fang; Yang Tang |
| Abstract: | Rapid economic growth creates large differences in lifetime incomes across generations. This paper examines the intergenerational redistribution generated by subsidized access to appreciating public assets in rapidly growing economies. We show that providing incumbent generations with subsidized access to these assets before future growth is fully capitalized into market values gives them an early claim on subsequent economic growth, thereby redistributing resources from future to incumbent generations. In the context of housing privatization, subsequent capital gains on privatized housing enable homeowners to trade up, further amplifying housing demand, house prices, and intergenerational redistribution. We evaluate the early ownership and capital gains channels of asset-based redistribution in a quantitative equilibrium model calibrated to China's housing privatization. Relative to more standard pension-based redistribution, we show that asset-based redistribution delivers higher welfare for future cohorts while substantially reducing long-run fiscal burdens once economic growth unexpectedly slows. |
| JEL: | E02 G11 G28 H2 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35754 |
| By: | Deng, Zichen (Dept. of Economics, University of Amsterdam); Niu, Runxi (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) |
| Abstract: | Pollution from regulated sources can cross administrative boundaries; consequently, jurisdiction-based treatment assignment may fail to accurately capture policy exposure at a given receptor. To address this, we construct a predetermined treatment intensity by combining regulatory assignment with pre-policy source characteristics and atmospheric source–receptor linkages, and use it in a continuous treatment difference-in-differences design. A formal framework and simulations clarify when cross-boundary transport attenuates jurisdiction-based comparisons and when the source–receptor design recovers policy effects. Applied to China’s Two Control Zones policy, both designs indicate post-policy reductions in local SO2 emissions. For SO2 dry deposition at receptors, the source–receptor estimate is negative and statistically significant, whereas the jurisdiction-based estimate is also negative but not statistically distinguishable from zero. The same exposure measure reveals declines in crop value per hectare in more exposed villages, which are less apparent in jurisdiction-based comparisons. Crop-specific response patterns are consistent with a sulfur-nutrient channel. |
| Keywords: | spillovers; air pollution; atmospheric transport; source-receptor design; Two-Control Zones; agriculture |
| JEL: | C21 C23 O13 Q53 Q58 |
| Date: | 2026–09–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2026_013 |
| By: | Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés; Dijkstra, Lewis |
| Abstract: | The European Union (EU) confronts a widening productivity gap with the United States (US) and China. Informed by the Draghi Report (2024), the emerging response is a bold but narrow one, dominated by massive investment in the technologies and sectors where Europe most conspicuously lags. This article argues that pursuing parity in areas where Europe shows considerable weakness is the wrong race. The surer path runs through Europe's existing strengths —its pharmaceutical hubs, aerospace clusters, machine-tool districts and chemical bases, among others— used not as a pretext for standing still but as a springboard for reinvention. This implies mobilising the potential of every European territory by climbing the complexity ladder, absorbing new technologies into living industrial ecosystems, and diversifying into related activities that grow organically out of existing capabilities. A differentiated, place-sensitive strategy built on path dependence, brownfield digitalisation and the deliberate strengthening of European chokepoints in strategic sectors offers a more durable route to competitiveness than chasing after American or Chinese shadows. Europe is not short of talent or invention: the problem lies in institutional barriers to integration, the weakness of its knowledge-to-innovation pipeline, and its chronic inability to help promising start-ups graduate into globally significant firms. Fix those, and the case for territorial myopia collapses. For if Europe is bound to struggle at imitation, it might as well succeed at being itself and, on its own terms, lead. |
| Keywords: | competitiveness;economic chokepoints;economic geography;Europe;industrial policy;place-sensitive strategies;regional inequality;related diversification;scale-up |
| JEL: | R11 O33 R58 F52 |
| Date: | 2026–09–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:141003 |
| By: | Federico, Giovanni; Tena Junguito, Antonio |
| Abstract: | Humans have been migrating since the out-of-Africa dispersal, roughly 300, 000 years ago, but the nineteenth century marked a major leap forward. For the first time in history, millions of people voluntarily migrated over long distances, from Europe to the Americas and Oceania, and from India and China to Southeast Asia. Yet we still know too little about these flows. The recent literature has made great progress in analyzing migrants' motivations and the microeconomic impact of their arrival, but the conventional wisdom still relies on the data compiled by Ferenczi and Willcox (1929) on gross migrations in the Atlantic economy. In this paper, we reconstruct new worldwide series for total (gross) and net migration, including inter-Asian and, partially, inter-European flows from 1800 to 1938. We estimate that more than 150 million people, about 10% of the world population, migrated, but half of them returned home. They accounted for between a sixth and a tenth of the workforce in the Americas and from a fifth to three-quarters in Australia and New Zealand. We also estimate the long-run effect of migrations on the distribution of the world population. |
| Keywords: | International migration; Global migration; Historical demography; Return migration; Labor mobility; Population dynamics; Economic history |
| JEL: | J61 N30 J11 F22 |
| Date: | 2026–09–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:50842 |
| By: | Daeun Moon; Yeokyung Hwang; Junseok Hwang; Dawoon Jeong |
| Abstract: | Green economic complexity provides a generalizable framework for examining countries' productive capabilities in a defined product set. We apply this framework to AI-enabling goods within the full product space, linking current specialization with adjacent diversification opportunities. Using BACI exports for 2007-2023 and 103 AI-enabling goods, we measure complexity-weighted specialization (AECI), product-level adjacent opportunities (AIAP), and average complexity-weighted relatedness of remaining candidates (AECP). In 2023, Japan leads AECI, while China leads AECP; portfolio breadth accounts for much of the variation in raw AECI. Initial raw potential is positively associated with subsequent changes in the AI-enabling export share, but its associations with changes in AECI and specialization counts are not statistically significant at the 5% level. Our contribution is a trade-based assessment of AI-enabling productive capabilities and related opportunities. The results and public dashboard provide a preliminary complement to publication and patent indicators, not a comprehensive measure of national AI performance or a validated forecast of diversification. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.17200 |
| By: | LiYang Wang (Washington University in St. Louis); Zhen Zhong (Georgetown University); Zhen Tian (University of Glasgow); Keyu Chen (Wuyi University); Keyu Chen (Wuyi University) |
| Abstract: | Advancements in data fusion and real-time analytics technologies have opened new avenues for addressing complex domain challenges. Financial risk early warning systems often suffer from inefficiency due to information silos and monitoring delays. This paper proposes a credit risk early warning system based on heterogeneous information fusion. The system employs a model architecture integrating deep neural networks and attention mechanisms to extract multidimensional features from diverse data sources such as transaction behaviors and social networks, thereby establishing an early identification mechanism for corporate and individual credit risks. System testing demonstrates that this approach significantly enhances the accuracy and timeliness of risk warnings, outperforming traditional rule-based engine solutions. The findings offer innovative insights for early intervention in financial risks, holding practical significance for safeguarding financial stability. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.15744 |
| By: | Hubert Gabrisch (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | This article critically analyses the German proposal of ‘associate membership’ for Ukraine, considering it against the backdrop of the tension between geopolitical challenges and the Union’s capacity to act. It begins with the premise that the Union’s current economic and political weakness stems from its institutional architecture, which no longer allows it to respond adequately to geopolitical challenges. This has resulted in the Union being sidelined in international diplomacy regarding Ukraine, and poses the risk of interference by Russia, China and the US in other candidate countries. Neither an expansion of the Union in terms of territory and population, nor a blurring of the fundamental distinction between association and membership instruments can change this situation. A resolute and pragmatic policy of internal reform is the superior alternative to the German proposal; until that can be put in place, one viable option could be to upgrade existing association agreements by incorporating the countries into the European Economic Area. |
| Keywords: | European Union, Merz proposal, enlargement, association, legal basis, treaty reforms |
| JEL: | F15 K33 O52 P48 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:pnotes:pn:111 |
| By: | Mikkel Bennedsen (Aarhus University, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Denmark; Aarhus Center for Econometrics (ACE), Aarhus University, Denmark; Center for Research in Energy: Economics and Markets (CoRE), Aarhus University, Denmark); Kim Christensen (Aarhus University, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Denmark; Aarhus Center for Econometrics (ACE), Aarhus University, Denmark; Research fellow at the Danish Finance Institute (DFI)); Peter Korsbakke Christensen (Aarhus University, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Denmark; Aarhus Center for Econometrics (ACE), Aarhus University, Denmark); Jun Yu (University of Macau, Faculty of Business Administration, Macau); Chen Zhang (Sun Yat-sen University, Lingnan College, China) |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes discrete-time approximations to rough continuous-time models of realized variance (RV). The leading rough models can be viewed as autoregressive processes driven by fractional Gaussian noise. We show that the Wold representation of this noise concentrates its dependence at the first lag when the Hurst parameter is below one half. Augmenting the autoregressive (AR) and heterogeneous autoregressive (HAR) models with a first-order moving-average (MA(1)) component therefore approximates the roughness, and the MA coeffcient maps almost linearly into the Hurst parameter. We refer to these extensions as the “rough†AR and “rough†HAR models. Estimating them on the log RV of ten ETFs, we find negative MA coeffcients for every asset, and the implied Hurst parameters align closely with the estimates from the continuous-time models. In the HAR literature, the negative MA(1) component is a significant feature that has been largely overlooked. In out-of-sample comparisons, the “rough†models outperform their classical counterparts for nearly every asset and horizon, with the largest gains at short horizons, and their accuracy is comparable to that of the rough continuous-time models but much easier to estimate by standard off-the-shelf software. |
| Keywords: | Continuous-time models, roughness, HAR model, realized variance |
| JEL: | C10 C58 C80 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boa:wpaper:202646 |