The heavy reliance of Chinese local governments on land-leasing revenues in recent decades has attracted widespread criticism due to its potential risks and problems. This research, using a panel dataset of 280 prefecture-level cities in China from 1999-2009, explores what factors affect Chinese...

This study is the first attempt to examine the determinants of expenditure decentralization at sub-provincial levels in China. The Chinese central government gives detailed guidelines to local governments on public finance, but, ironically, their expenditure assignment is far from being...

Pay-as-you-go (pay-go or cash) and pay-as-you-use (pay-use or debt) are two mechanisms to finance capital projects. While pay-go faces multiple constraints, pay-use smoothes outlays, stabilizes tax rates, and improves inter-generational equity. Thus, pay-use has dominated infrastructure...

We offer a detailed examination of a broad class of 2 x 2 matrix games as a first step toward considering measures of resource distribution and efficiency of outcomes. In the present essay, only noncooperative equilibria and entropic outcomes are considered, and a crude measure of efficiency...

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has opened up many unprecedented opportunities in revolutionizing the digital marketing field. In this study, we designed a DRL-based personalized targeting strategy. We show that it can address four important challenges in this area. 1) Sequential-decisions:...

We develop a new measure of relative debt transparency by comparing the amount of state debt reported in the annual Census survey and the amount reported in the statistical section of the state Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). GASB 44 requires states to start reporting their total...