We study favoritism via hometown ties, a common source of favor exchange in China, in fellow selection of the Chinese Academies of Sciences and Engineering. Hometown ties to fellow selection committee members increase candidates' election probability by 39 percent, coming entirely from the...

We study a 2004 program designed to motivate Chinese bureaucrats to reduce accidental deaths. Each province received a set of ‘death ceilings' that, if exceeded, would impede government officials' promotions. For each category of accidental deaths, we observe a sharp discontinuity in reported...

We study the consequences of month-end lending incentives for Chinese bank managers. Using data from two banks, one state-owned and the other partially privatized, we show a clear increase in lending in the final days of each month, a result of both more loan issuance and higher value per loan....

We document evidence of corruption in Chinese state asset sales. These sales involved stakes in partially privatized firms, providing a benchmark - the price of publicly traded shares - to measure underpricing. Underpricing is correlated with deal attributes associated with misgovernance and...

We study the impact of nationalism and interstate frictions on international economic relations by analyzing market reaction to adverse shocks to Sino-Japanese relations in 2005 and 2010. Japanese companies with high China exposure suffer relative declines during each event window; a symmetric...

We study the relationship between the political connections of Chinese firms and workplace fatalities. In our preferred specification we find that the worker death rate for connected companies is two to three times that of unconnected firms (depending on the sample employed), a pattern that...

We document the market response to an unexpected announcement of proposed sales of government-owned shares in China. In contrast to the quot;privatization premiumquot; found in earlier work, we find a negative effect of government ownership on returns at the announcement date and a symmetric...

Audits are a standard mechanism for reducing corruption in government investments. The quality of audits themselves, however, may be affected by relationships between auditor and target. We study whether provincial chief auditors in China show greater leniency in evaluating prefecture...

In this paper, we demonstrate that university students who cheat on a simple task in a laboratory setting are more likely to state a preference for entering public service. Importantly, we also show that cheating on this task is predictive of corrupt behavior by real government workers, implying...

This paper examines whether an individual-level transfer of property rights increases the individual's bargaining power within the household. The question is analyzed in the context of a housing reform that occurred in China that gave existing tenants the opportunity to purchase the homes that...