Is it justified for states to appropriate private property rights? If so, should governments regulate or expropriate? Competing models predict that government power of appropriation causes underinvestment, overinvestment, and growth. We use random assignment of U.S. federal court judges setting...

This paper uses the enactment of China’s 2007 Property Law (the Law), which reduces the risk of expropriation by local governments, as the setting to investigate the importance of property rights protection for private firm investment. Using propensity score matching and a...

Rights offers are a relatively common capital-raising method. In a rights offer, the company’s existing shareholders are given the opportunity to purchase newly-issued shares in proportion to the amount of shares they already own for a specific subscription price per-share. Because all...

We investigate a 2012 pay-or-explain regulation implemented by China's Shanghai Stock Exchange. The regulation mandates that eligible firms must either pay 30% of their current-year profits as cash dividends or explain the reasons for their nonpayment through a public conference call. Using...

A number of developing countries use land expropriation policies to expand cities and develop peri-urban areas. In China, an average of 1,600 km2 were expropriated annually from 2004-2018. The impact of this urban development strategy on expropriated households is not well-understood. I estimate...

We identify the causal effect of career incentives on bureaucrat performance by exploiting the ex ante competitiveness of promotions. Using detailed data on the career histories of top bureaucrats in all Chinese prefectures between 1996 and 2014, we show that bureaucrats with fewer competitors...