This paper estimates the returns to membership of the Chinese Communist Party using unique twins data we collected from China. Our OLS estimate shows that being a Party member increases earnings by 10%, but the within-twin-pair estimate becomes zero. One interpretation of these results is that...

Sex ratios (males to females) rose markedly in China in the last two decades, and crime rates nearly doubled. This paper examines whether the two are causally linked. High sex ratios imply fewer married men, and marriage has been conjectured to be a socializing force. Our paper exploits the...

In China, the male-biased sex ratio has increased significantly. Because the one-child policy only applied to the Han Chinese but not to minorities, this unique affirmative policy allows us to identify the causal effect of the one-child policy on the increase in sex ratios by a...

This paper empirically estimates the returns to membership of the Chinese Communist Party using unique twins data that the authors collected from urban China. Our ordinary least squares estimate shows that being a Party member increases earnings by 28.1 percent, but when we use a...

In this paper, we use new survey data on twins born in urban China, among whom many experienced the consequences of the forced mass rustication movement of the Chinese "cultural revolution," to identify the distinct roles of altruism and guilt in affecting behavior within families. Based on a...

We use survey data on twins in urban China, among whom many experienced the consequences of the forced mass rustication movement of the Cultural Revolution, to identify the roles of altruism, favoritism, and guilt in affecting family behavior. We exploit the fact that many families were forced...

Spousal education is correlated with earnings for two reasons: cross-productivity between couples and assortative mating. This article empirically disentangles the two effects by using Chinese twins data. We have two innovations: using twins data to control for the unobserved mating effect in...

This paper tests the external effect of household childbearing behavior by drawing on microfertility data from China. The test is executed by regressing one woman’s fertility on the average fertility of neighboring women. China’s unique affirmative birth control policy provides us with...

This paper examines the impact of entrepreneurship on economic growth by using a panel data set of 29 provinces in China over 20 years. Two indicators of entrepreneurship are defined and introduced into the traditional growth regression framework that is estimated using the system generalized...

In this paper, we use new survey data on twins born in urban China, among whom many experienced the consequences of the forced mass rustication movement of the Chinese “cultural revolution,” to identify the distinct roles of altruism and guilt in affecting behavior within families. Based on...