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on China |
| By: | Ngov, Meng Yu; Vézina, Pierre-Louis; Tran, Trang Thu; Nayyar, Gaurav |
| Abstract: | This paper documents how foreign firms, inputs, and subsidies have shaped the development of Viet Nam’s solar panel industry. The analysis uses firmto-firm transaction data from Panjiva as well as firm-level data from the Viet Nam’s Enterprise Survey to trace solar panel value chains. It uncovers three key findings. First, parts and components from subsidizing countries are 30 percent cheaper than alternatives. Those from China, which provides the majority of solar inputs to Vietnamese producers, are cheapest. Foreign green subsidies may thus spill over across countries via value chains. Second, Chinese FDI firms dominate Viet Nam’s solar industry, accounting for 75% of exports and 50 percent of jobs, and they export solar panels that are 38 percent cheaper than those of other producers in Viet Nam. Third, local firms supplying parts and components to these Chinese FDI firms experience positive productivity gains. The findings show how Viet Nam’s solar boom emerged through deep integration into China’s subsidized supply chains. |
| Date: | 2026–10–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11478 |
| By: | Fukuzawa, Daisuke; Islamaj, Ergys; Le, Duong Trung; Mattoo, Aaditya; Samano Penaloza, Agustin |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses how China’s rapid expansion has affected growth in other developing economies through the trade channel. The empirical strategy is a shift-share design that exploits pre-determined variation across countries in the exposure of their exports to China’s import demand and export supply in global markets, well before China became a dominant trader. The paper shows that China’s rising demand for commodities and intermediate goods has had a favorable impact on other developing countries’ growth, while intensified competition from its manufacturing exports has had an adverse effect. The former effect is stronger and therefore the net effect has been positive for most countries. The positive impact is, however, becoming weaker as China’s growth slows down, and developing countries’ longer term growth may also be influenced by the changes in their economic structures induced by China’s trade expansion. |
| Date: | 2026–09–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11467 |
| By: | Barattieri, Alessandro; Mattoo, Aaditya |
| Abstract: | China’s growing dominance in manufacturing exports is attracting widespread attention. However, existing explanations of China’s export exceptionalism and its consequences for developing countries suffer from three shortcomings. First, attributing China’s large and increasing share in manufacturing exports primarily to its industrial policy obscures more fundamental factors: the scale of its economy, the diversity of its provincial endowments, and the pace of its automation. Second, focusing on the low-skilled export dimension of China’s economic expansion overlooks its positive impact on growth and its heterogeneous effects on structural transformation in developing countries. Finally, blaming foreign industrial policies distracts attention from the often more damaging trade and investment restrictions imposed by developing countries themselves, many of which could be reformed unilaterally. |
| Date: | 2026–09–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11470 |
| By: | Harun Alp; Sina T. Ates; Colin C. Caines; Nathan Converse; Jasper Hoek; Eva Van Leemput |
| Abstract: | Global imbalances have returned to the forefront of policy debates, with China at the center of those discussions. China's trade surplus has reached exceptionally large levels, raising concerns about its implications for the rest of the world (de Soyres et al. 2026). |
| Date: | 2026–09–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfn:103839 |
| By: | Maria Cristina Barbieri G\'oes; Saverio Barabuffi |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates spatial productivity convergence across Chinese provinces during structural transformation, examining how a shift in auonomous demand composition reshaped regional productivity dynamics. Using Panel Structural Vector Autoregressive modelling and province level data from 2001 to 2021, we analyse eastern, central, ad western regions across two sub-periods through the augmented Kaldor-Verdoorn law. A post-2011 spatial reversal emerges: inland regions exhibit stronger Verdoorn coefficients, while fiscal multipliers converge across coastal and inland areas, validating China's redistributive fiscal policies in narrowing regional productivity gaps. The Kaldor-Verdoorn coefficient remains robust throughout, while export effects on productivity collapse and government expenditure effects strenghten. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.37051 |
| By: | Cody Kallen |
| Abstract: | For decades, China was a major destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) by U.S. companies. In the last decade, however, trade tensions, geopolitical risks, and investment screening have interrupted these FDI flows and led firms to shift production toward third countries (Reyes-Heroles et al., 2020). |
| Date: | 2026–09–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfn:103840 |
| By: | Hanming Fang; Jing Wu; Vincent Yao |
| 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 differ 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. |
| JEL: | G11 G12 R30 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35797 |
| By: | Shi, Yingxin; Shi, Xinyu |
| Abstract: | We exploit the staggered, province-level rollout of China's Fully Digitalized Electronic Invoice (the Shu-Dian- Piao, or FDEI) between late 2021 and 2023 to identify how invoice digitalization affects firms' formal compliance costs and tax compliance, and-most importantly-how these effects are distributed across parties with different bargaining power. Using firms in regions that never opened an FDEI issuance pilot within the window as controls and the Callaway and Sant'Anna (2021) estimator, which is robust to heterogeneous treatment timing, we document three findings. First, on average, firms' administrative- expense ratio rises by about 0.26 percentage points after treatment, with no detectable pre-trend; audit fees, financial-expense ratios, and top-five supplier/customer shares do not change significantly. Second, the increase is highly concentrated: it is about 0.33 percentage points for non-state-owned firms and 0.40 percentage points for small firms, while it is insignificant for state-owned and large firms. Third, tax compliance, measured by book-tax differences, the Desai-Dharmapala residual, and effective tax rates, does not improve on average or in any ownership/size subgroup. The claim robustly supported by the data is therefore the asymmetric incidence of formal compliance costs toward weaker market participants-not the stronger claim that compliance improvement is "decoupled" from compliance costs. The evidence should be read as short-run and conservative, given the concentration of treatment in 2023, the short post-period, and nationwide spillovers from the separately rolled-out receipt side. |
| Keywords: | electronic invoice, tax administration, compliance cost, incidence, staggered difference-in differences, China |
| JEL: | H26 H32 K34 O17 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:344060 |
| By: | Ziyao Wang |
| Abstract: | I estimate firm-level capital-, labor-, and material-augmenting productivity for Chinese manufacturing, 1998--2008, and the effect of state-owned enterprise (SOE) privatization on each. Results show technological change is strongly biased toward capital and labor. Private firms operate above SOEs on capital and labor, but below on materials. Privatization raises labor-augmenting productivity right after the transition, a front-loaded gain that fades on the full panel but persists among 1998 incumbents. It leaves capital-augmenting productivity no higher and modestly lowers materials. The SOE sector's catch-up runs through restructuring of the plants the state kept, with exit of overstaffed plants adding to the labor gain. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.08729 |
| By: | Franziska Disslbacher; Salvatore Morelli; Matteo Targa |
| Abstract: | Using the novel GC Wealth Project Data Warehouse, this paper shows that wealth inequality has increased since the early 2000s in roughly 60% of the countries in our sample, although trends are not uniform across countries. While the largest gains in wealth shares accrue to the top 10%, relative losses are borne by the bottom 50% and the middle 40% alike. We reveal substantial variation of estimates across data sources and units of analysis, which complicates international comparison of wealth inequality. Yet, core trends at the country level are generally robust. Individual-based series generally report higher inequality than household-based ones. Regional patterns reveal sharp increases in inequality in Latin America, North America, India, and China, while Europe and Asia-Pacific exhibit more stable trends. Incorporating Forbes billionaire data extends coverage to low-income countries and Africa—where, notably, billionaire wealth relative to GDP has remained stable, marking a distinct exception to global patterns. |
| JEL: | D3 D31 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lis:lwswps:55 |
| By: | Pisch, Frank; Carattini, Stefano; Huang, Hanwei; Singh, Tejendra Pratap |
| Abstract: | Although the environmental impact of trade has been a long-standing concern, there is still scant evidence on the channels through which international market access affects pollution. We exploit the unique episode of China’s world market integration in the early 2000s to provide direct empirical evidence on three such mechanisms, corresponding to each pollution scope: direct pollution at firms’ locations (scope-1), indirect pollution from energy generation (scope-2), and indirect pollution from the supply chain (scope-3). We combine granular satellite data on air pollution with detailed information on manufacturing firms and coal power plants, and leverage exogenous foreign demand shocks for identification. Three main findings emerge: exporting firms reduce local pollution; pollution levels around coal power plants rise due to regional export shocks; and upstream suppliers reduce pollution in the face of export demand shocks to downstream firms. Our findings point to China’s reliance on coal power plants to fuel its export-driven growth as one of the main drivers of the rise in pollution. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dar:wpaper:162611 |
| By: | Liu, ZY (Universal Life Church); Yuan, Di |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes and develops a theoretical proposition concerning the endogenous evolution of consumerism: consumerism may not necessarily come to an end because of “excessive consumption”; rather, by continuously raising the consumption standards associated with “normal life, ” it may make an increasing number of ordinary workers unable to participate in the consumption patterns it has itself constructed, thereby eroding the demand base on which it depends. Consumer demand has a positive expansionary effect during the early stages of economic development. The paper then explains why social consumption standards may continue to rise through three channels: firm competition; positional goods and social comparison; and the diffusion and amplification of cultural products and social media. On this basis, it argues that under conditions of market competition, firms simultaneously need to expand effective demand on the consumer side and have an inherent incentive to control labor costs, creating a structural mismatch between the growth of workers’ incomes and the rise of consumption standards. When consumption standards grow persistently faster than the actual disposable incomes of ordinary workers, consumption behavior may shift from “keeping up with the standard” toward “reducing, postponing, or even exiting consumption, ” with particularly concentrated effects in marriage and family formation. Using the decline in China’s marriage and birth rates, the rising consumption standards associated with wedding photography and housing, and the adjustment of the real-estate sector as illustrative empirical cases, the paper distinguishes two post-turning-point adjustment paths—“structural consumption downgrading” and “aggregate-demand-driven consumption contraction”—and discusses the possibilities and limits of external trade as a substitute for domestic demand. The paper further constructs a conceptual income–consumption-standard mismatch model to characterize the pressure generated by the divergence between income and consumption standards and its transmission to consumption behavior, family formation, and future demand. Finally, it proposes four policy directions: optimizing social-media algorithms, establishing a Departmental Employment Quality Index (DEQI) for higher education, reducing the minimum cost of basic living, and limited government intervention in consumption externalities. |
| Date: | 2026–10–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:ztws6_v2 |
| By: | Giulia Chiara; Stefano Lucarelli |
| Abstract: | This paper formalizes and empirically tests the causal transmission mechanism linking international capital centralization, macro-financial imbalances, protectionism, and systemic military escalation. We challenge the orthodox view of globalization as a self-stabilizing framework for peace, conceptualizing contemporary geoeconomic fragmentation through a theoretical framework stemming from the debate on global imbalances and the analytical revival of the Marxian tendential law of capital centralization. Integrating Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) and Bayesian Vector Autoregression (BVAR) models on historical time-series data (1998–2024), we estimate the dynamic interactions between net control, net international investment positions, a protectionism index, and military expenditure metrics across both a bilateral U.S.-China framework and an aggregated creditor-debtor group model. The empirical results confirm a statistically significant multi-stage causal sequence: an increase in capital centralization widens gaps in net international investment positions, prompting debtors to deploy protectionist measures to mitigate further capital centralization. Conversely, these protectionist shocks induce persistent, long-term positive impacts on the military expenditure of creditor states. Econometric evidence demonstrates that trade conflicts and rearmament are endogenous structural symptoms of the systemic motion of capital rather than exogenous diplomatic failures. |
| Keywords: | Capital centralization; Protectionism; Military expenditure; SVAR and BVAR models |
| JEL: | B51 F51 C32 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hpo:wpaper:1_2026 |
| By: | Dongshuang Hou (School of Mathematics and Statistics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China); Aymeric Lardon (Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, Université Lumière Lyon 2, emlyon business school, GATE UMR 5824, F-42023 Saint-Etienne, France) |
| Abstract: | We introduce similarity Gaussian games, transferable-utility games in which the worth of a coalition is the total pairwise similarity among its members, measured by a Gaussian kernel. Similarity Gaussian games are convex weighted graph games, so the Shapley value is always a core allocation; it also has two complementary interpretations: it is weighted degree centrality in the associated similarity network and, up to a common factor, a Gaussian kernel density estimate evaluated at each player’s characteristic. We derive the Shapley value in closed form and study how it changes with the bandwidth. For large bandwidths, we establish an exact asymptotic affine relationship between the Shapley values of similarity Gaussian games and squared deviations games, providing a precise link between local similarity and dispersion. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gat:wpaper:2609 |