We study the information role of financing from connected individuals (e.g., family and friends) of entrepreneurs based on a crowdfunding platform and social media account login data. While financing from connected individuals is generally considered as a signal of high-quality projects, our...

A positive correlation between insurance coverage and ex post risk can be an indicator for private information in insurance markets. However, this test fails if agents have heterogeneous risk attitudes. We propose a new test that conditions on unobserved types of individuals who differ in their...

At the end of 1998, China launched a government-run mandatory insurance program, the Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI), to replace the previous medical insurance system. Using the UEBMI reform in China as a natural experiment, this study identify variations in patient cost sharing...

At the end of 1998, China launched a government-run mandatory insurance program, the Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI), to replace the previous medical insurance system. Using the UEBMI reform in China as a natural experiment, this study identify variations in patient cost sharing...

This paper studies the role of confidence in the transmission of uncertainty shocks during U.S. recessions. I use smooth-transition VAR to examine the regime-dependent effect of uncertainty shocks, and a counterfactual decomposition to isolate the role of confidence when the economy is in...

This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of uncertainty shocks with an emphasis on the interaction between elevated uncertainty and credit market conditions when the economy is in different regimes (recessions vs. non-recessions). We use a smooth-transition factor-augmented vector...

The effects of different anti-reflective structures on the photovoltaic performance of the silicon solar cell were studied using finite-element modelling and numerical simulations for which experiment alone does not provide a full description. The front surface reflectivity may be mitigated...

We use China's large-scale reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the late 1990s as a natural experiment to identify and quantify the importance of precautionary saving for wealth accumulation. Before the reform, SOE workers enjoyed the same job security as government employees. Since the...