Debt in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) is at its highest level in half a century. In about nine out of 10 EMDEs, debt is higher now than it was in 2010 and, in half of the EMDEs, debt is more than 30 percentage points of gross domestic product higher. Historically, elevated...

We develop a unified framework to trace value added along global supply chains in the presence of foreign direct investment by decomposing either GDP based on forward linkages or final production based on backward linkages. The new framework accounts for the presence of foreign invested...

While major stock market indices are followed by large monetary investments, we document that membership decisions for the S&P 500 index have a nontrivial amount of discretion. We show that firms' purchases of S&P ratings appear to improve their chance of entering the index (but purchases of...

A binding interest rate cap on household savings is a common form of financial repression in developing economies and typically benefits banks. Using proprietary data from a leading Chinese FinTech company, we study Fintech's role in ending financial repression in China through the introduction...

With capital controls, the standard financial market transactions needed for currency carry trade are hard to implement. Using detailed trade data reported by both the mainland Chinese and Hong Kong's governments, we present evidence that indirect currency carry trade likely takes place via...

We examine an indirect but potentially deadly consequence of the "missing girls" phenomenon. A shortage of brides causes many parents with sons of marriageable age to work harder and seek higher-paying but potentially dangerous jobs. In response, employers invest less in workplace safety, which...

Measuring country origins of factor content in bilateral or sector-level exports is important to understand evolution of regional and global value chains and the roles of individual country-sectors in these chains. This paper proposes a method to distinguish between measures based on backward...

A relatively mild form of government failure - for example, bureaucrats can count but do not differentiate quality - can significantly affect the efficacy of industrial policy. We investigate this idea in the context of China's largest pro-innovation industrial policy using a structural model....

We estimate the size of the likely unofficial income of a household with a government official by the difference between the income that would be necessary to explain their observed home purchase behavior and the official income. Using unique and comprehensive administrative records on the House...

China's remarkable run of persistently high growth in recent decades is all the more stunning in light of the country's low levels of financial and institutional development, state-dominated economy, and nondemocratic government. Notwithstanding the inefficient and risky growth model, the...