We study how trade-policy dynamics affect the dynamics of trade volumes and the implications of these effects for estimates of the trade elasticity. We use data on US imports and trade policy from 1974-2017 for China and Vietnam--the countries with the largest import growth and the largest...

We study the role played by Chinese state-owned firms during the US-China trade war. Based on measures constructed from Chinese firm-level customs microdata, we show that the presence of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Chinese imports led to a large negative impact on US exports in addition to...

We introduce a new methodology to detect and measure economic activity using geospatial data and apply it to steel production, a major industrial pollution source worldwide. Combining plant output data with geospatial data, such as ambient air pollutants, nighttime lights, and temperature, we...

Higher compensation and increased monitoring are two common strategies for addressing the moral hazard problem between firms and workers. In a field experiment with new hires at an automobile manufacturing firm in China, we randomly varied both signing bonuses and monitoring intensity. Both...

The changing pattern of quality in China's rural schools across time and province is extracted from the differential labor market earnings of rural migrant workers. Variations in rates of return to years of schooling across migrant workers working in the same urban labor market but having...

Geoeconomic pressure--the use of existing economic relationships by governments to achieve geopolitical or economic goals--is a prominent feature of global power dynamics. This paper introduces a methodology using large language models (LLMs) to systematically identify the application of and...

We examine how interbank wholesale funding shapes the transmission of interest-rate-based monetary policy in China and contributes to systemic risk. Using a bank-level quarterly panel dataset and an estimated policy rule for the 7-day repo rate, we find that access to wholesale funding amplifies...

A central challenge in the climate crisis is how to mobilize collective action--and who can do it. We show that digital platforms can transform latent support for sustainability into measurable environmental outcomes, while also generating value for the platform itself. We study Ant Forest, a...

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)...

Finding new international suppliers is costly, so most importers source inputs from a single country. We examine the role of banks in mitigating trade search costs during the 2018-2019 U.S.-China trade tensions. We match data on shipments to U.S. ports with the U.S. credit register to analyze...