China began its gradual economic reform in the late 1970s; Russia initiated radical reform in the early 1990s. During the course of reform, China has enjoyed rapid growth while Russia has contracted. This paper argues that one reason for this difference is that Chinese local governments enjoy...

The 2007 Property Law in China checked the power of local governments to expropriate the assets of private firms and it gave creditors (primarily banks) more rights over the assets underlying their secured loans to private firms. We use the property law as a natural experiment for understanding...