We estimate an equilibrium model of residential sorting with endogenous traffic congestion to evaluate the efficiency and equity impacts of urban transportation policies. Leveraging fine-scale data on household travel diaries and housing transactions with home and work locations in Beijing, we...

This paper measures the impact of housing price changes on household consumption at the city level using the universe of credit and debit card transactions in China from 2011 to 2013. In sharp contrast to the literature on the U.S. housing market, our analysis shows a large and negative housing...

While China has made great strides in transforming its centrally-planned economy to a market-oriented economy, there still exist widespread interregional trade barriers, such as policies and practices that protect local firms against competition from non-local firms. This study documents the...

Developing and fast-growing economies have some of the worse air pollution in the world, but there is a lack of systematic evidence on the health especially morbidity impact of air pollution in these countries. Based on the universe of credit and debit card transactions in China from 2013 to...

The social costs of pollution and climate change hinge critically on humans’ ability to adapt. Based on transaction records from the world’s largest payment network, this research compiles daily travel flows and documents that China’s rapid expansion of high-speed railways (HSR)...

Although entry regulation is ubiquitous across countries, comprehensive evaluations on the broad impacts of such regulations on firm dynamics and productivity are lacking. We address the key identification challenge of policy endogeneity by leveraging the staggered implementation of a pilot...

During 2013-2014, China launched a nationwide, real-time air quality monitoring and disclosure program, a watershed moment in the history of its environmental regulations. We present the first empirical analysis of this natural experiment by exploiting its staggered implementation across cities....

During 2013-2014, China launched a nationwide, real-time air quality monitoring and disclosure program, a watershed moment in the history of its environmental regulations. We present the first empirical analysis of this natural experiment by exploiting its staggered implementation across cities....