Social science studies of bioethics demonstrate that ethics are highly contextual, functioning differently across local settings as actors make daily decisions “on the ground.” Sociological studies that demonstrate the key role organizations play in shaping ethical decision-making have...

As originally developed by Charles Ragin in The Comparative Method (1987), qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) has been used extensively by comparative and historical sociologists as an effective tool for analyzing data sets of medium-N populations. Like many other methods, however, QCA is...

I estimate the annual local government spending multiplier to range from 2.22 to 0.72 and the accumulated multiplier, which is the total increase of local output per 1 RMB increase of local government spending during 2001-2019, to be 11.8 at the prefecture city level in China, where government...

The problem of selecting independent variables for qualitiative comparative analysis (QCA) is addressed. This is a different problem for QCA than for inferential statistical methods, for both technical and epistemological reasons. Technically, QCA can manipulate only a few variables at one time....

China's land market features a substantial industrial discount: industrial-zoned land is an order of magnitude cheaper than residential land. In contrast to explanations centered on subsidies to industry or promoting industry growth, we emphasize the importance of future tax revenues from the...

The rise of shadow banking and attendant financial fragility in China can be traced to intensified deposit competition following the global financial crisis (GFC). Deposit competition intensified after the GFC because the GFC slowed down banks' deposit growth from cross-border money inflows and...