The housing affordability issue in mega-cities creates a significant job-housing mismatch and undermines productive new business creation. This paper focuses on Beijing and investigates whether improved accessibility via the subway network helps new firms benefit from agglomeration economies...

Using firm birth records and startup data matched with cities' characteristics, this paper analyzes nearly 300 prefecture-level cities to examine the role of human capital and market access in shaping the economic geography of innovation-driven entrepreneurship in China. We document strong...

Throughout the imperial era, defensive walls surrounded Chinese cities. Although most city walls have vanished, the cities have survived. We analyze a sample of nearly 300 prefectural-level cities in China, among which about half historically had city walls. We document that cities that had...

Throughout the imperial era, defensive walls surrounded Chinese cities. Although most city walls have vanished, the cities have survived. We analyze a sample of nearly 300 prefectural-level cities in China, among which about half historically had city walls. We document that cities that had...

China's government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in new industrial parks with the intent of boosting the productivity of new firms attracted to the parks and to generate spillovers for the local economy in order to accelerate economic growth. Do such place based investments...