This paper proposes a new nonparametric mixed data sampling (MIDAS) model and develops a framework to infer clusters in a panel regression with mixed frequency data. The nonparametric MIDAS estimation method is more flexible and substantially simpler to implement than competing approaches. We...

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 studies the consignment auction as an allocation mechanism for emission permits among polluting firms. By assuming firms have non-increasing marginal values for the permits and linear bid functions, we characterize a class of linear equilibria in a divisible consignment auction with...

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...

Recent evidence, from both academia and practice, indicates that implementing affirmative action policies in school choice problems may induce substantial welfare losses on the intended beneficiaries. This paper addresses the following two questions: what are the causes of such perverse...

This paper examines the COVID-19 impact on Chinese farmers’ peer-to-peer (P2P) borrowings using transaction-level data. Our difference-in-differences estimation results suggest that farmers from the most pandemic-affected region, Hubei province, substantially reduced their P2P loans by 13%...

We investigate the impact of inter-firm connections on alliances. We find that both professional connections, borne out of current employment ties and board interlocks along with social connections, borne out of past employment ties and educational ties, increase the likelihood of alliance...