China's total real human capital increased from 26.98 billion yuan in 1985 (i.e., the base year) to 118.75 billion yuan in 2007, implying an average annual growth rate of 6.78%. The annual growth rate increased from 5.11% during 1985-1994 to 7.86% during 1995-2007. Per capita real human capital...

Given the challenges in quantifying the role of human capital on economic development, measuring human capital itself becomes an important issue. It is desirable to have a comprehensive human capital measure that goes beyond the traditional measures based on education attainment, yet is...

This paper develops an original measure of learning in higher education, based on grades in subsequent courses. Using this measure of learning, this paper shows that student evaluations are positively related to current grades but unrelated to learning once current grades are controlled. It...

We analyze a new management survey for around 1,000 firms and 10,000 employees across two large provinces in China. The unique aspect of this survey is it collected management data from the CEO, a random sample of senior managers and workers. We document four main results. First, management...

The theoretical literature has long noted that talent can be used in both the entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial sectors, and its allocation depends on the reward structure. We test these hypotheses by linking administrative college admissions data for 1.8 million individuals with the...

This paper studies how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected labor demand using over 100 million posted jobs on one of the largest online platforms in China. Our data reveals that, due to the effects of the pandemic both in China and abroad, the number of newly posted jobs within the first 13 weeks...

A burgeoning literature has documented the importance of elite colleges. Yet, little is known about access to elite education and its labor market implications in China, a country that produces one in every five college graduates in the world. College admission in China is governed by a single...

This paper studies the unintended effect of English language requirement on educational inequality by investigating how the staggered rollout of English listening tests in China's high-stakes National College Entrance Exam (NCEE) affected the rural-urban gap in college access. Leveraging...

China's total fertility rate declined very little following implementation of the One Child Policy (OCP) in 1979/1980, but then fell sharply, by more than one-third, during the early 1990s. In this paper, we propose that strengthening bureaucratic incentives under the "One Vote Veto" (OVV)...

Electric vehicle (EV) battery costs have declined by more than 90% over the past decade. This study investigates the role of learning-by-doing (LBD) in driving this reduction and its interaction with two major government policies - consumer EV subsidies and local content requirements. Leveraging...