This paper examines how Chinese policy banks responded to China's Belt Road Initiative (BRI) using transaction-level international syndicated loan data. Employing a difference-in-differences (DID) estimation, we show that Chinese policy banks increased aggregate lending (number of loans and loan...

Stockpiling and scheduling plans for medical supplies represent essential preventive and control measures in major public health events. In the face of major infectious diseases, such as the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the outbreak trend and variability of disease strains are often...

We examine whether and how firm-level perceived idiosyncratic political risk affects their mergers and acquisitions (M&A) decisions. We find that firms exposed to a high level of perceived political risk are less likely to conduct M&As. Furthermore, the negative association between firm-level...

To what extent did independent directors help firms’ recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic? In this paper, we answer this question by investigating whether independent directors contribute to Chinese listed firms’ operation income growth during the first and second quarters of the year 2020....

Superstition is prevalent in rural areas, yet very few studies examine whether it affects rural households’ economic decisions. In this paper, we investigate the impact of “zodiac year” superstition on Chinese rural households’ life insurance spending. We find a statistically significant...

This paper presents updated estimates of potential output growth for the global economy through 2022. Global potential output growth is expected to decline sharply in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and recover partially by the end of the projection horizon of the October 2020 Monetary...