Two competing hypotheses, value enhancing and value discounting, state that implementing socially responsible corporate policies can have positive or negative effects on firm value. This paper tests how a specific type of social responsibility–corporate equality–affects firm value. Corporate...

Existing studies in finance have documented the comovement of stock returns of companies headquartered in the same location. The interpretation is that local investors have a “local bias” due to an information advantage on local companies. This paper argues that localized agglomeration...

Local governments often charge developers impact fees to finance local public goods. This has been practiced in Chinese cities for more than two decades; however, no empirical studies have tested the effect of impact fees on real estate prices. Using a panel data set for 35 large- and...

This paper develops a signaling theory where brain drain as well as the opposite of brain drain, a phenomenon we call “lame-drain” can result. In particular, we assume there are three types of agents according to their intrinsic abilities; education (with endogenous intensity) consists of...

Whether, and how much, increased commute costs decrease labor supply is important for transport policy, city growth, and business strategies. Yet empirical estimates are limited and biased downward due to endogenous choices of residences, workplaces, commute modes, and wages. We use the...

Most highways in urban China are tolled to finance their construction. During the eight-day National Day holiday in 2012, highway tolls are waived nationwide for passenger vehicles. We use this to test highway tolls’ effect on air pollution. Using daily pollution and weather data for 98...

This paper studies how industry specialization, diversification, and churning affect unemployment rates in Chinese cities. Using a city level panel data set from 1997 to 2006, we find that the specialization of wholesale and retail industry can significantly decrease unemployment rate; however,...

Using the 2004 China economic census database, this paper examines the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the geographic concentration of manufacturing industries, controlling for other determinants of industrial agglomeration. Higher geographic concentration is found...

Whether urbanization economies are caused by urban diversity or urban scale is not clear in regional and urban economics literature. Many empirical studies have used either city population size or urban industrial diversity to measure urbanization economies and have reached different...

Using the 2004 China economic census database, this paper examines the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the geographic concentration of manufacturing industries, controlling for other determinants of industrial agglomeration. Higher geographic concentration is found...