While in standard housing economics housing is regarded as an asset and a consumption good, we study in this paper the consequences for housing prices if housing is also a status good. More concretely, if a family's housing wealth relative to others is an important marker for relative status in...

This paper is the first chapter in the Oxford Companion to the Economics of China (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Rather than trying to summarize other contributors' views, we provide our own perspectives on the Economics of China--the past experience and the future prospects. Our...

The high and rising household savings rate in China is not easily reconciled with the traditional explanations that emphasize life cycle factors, the precautionary saving motive, financial development, or habit formation. This paper proposes a new competitive saving motive: As the sex ratio...

China's rise as an economic powerhouse raises a number of questions that are the subject of lively debate. How did the country do it? How applicable are the lessons of China's economic reform of the past thirty years to the challenges it faces in the next three decades? What does the detailed...

The high and rising household savings rate in China is not easily reconciled with the traditional explanations that emphasize life cycle factors, the precautionary saving motive, financial development, or habit formation. This paper proposes a new competitive saving motive: as the sex ratio...

This study reviews broadly the experience of the last decade on crisis prevention and management. It seeks to draw greater attention to policy decisions that are made during the phase when capital inflows come to a sudden stop. Procrastination---the period of financing a balance of payments...

This paper generalizes the gross exports accounting framework at the country level, recently proposed by Koopman, Wang, and Wei (2014), to one that decomposes gross trade flows (for both exports and imports) at the sector, bilateral, or bilateral sector level. We overcome major technical...

This paper studies the effect of transport infrastructure on the real exchange rate (RER) and reaches two relatively strong conclusions. First, while the list of robust determinants of the RER is not long, transport infrastructure belongs to that list. Many other potential determinants proposed...

When a sovereign faces the risk of debt default, it may be tempted to expropriate the private sector. This may be one reason for why international investment in private companies has to take into account the sovereign risk. But the likelihood of a transfer from the sovereign risk to corporate...