In this paper, I study the peer effects in corruption, or more specifically, how sharing hometown or college ties with other officials who have been investigated for corruption affects an official's likelihood of being investigated for corruption himself. In specifications including fixed...

Despite an increasing awareness on the importance of political leaders in shaping economic performance, there is little consensus regarding what make a leader good for growth. We argue that the variety of public-sector experiences enhances leaders’ capabilities, and use cross-country data of...

Local protectionism disrupts buyer-supplier chains, since it requests local firms to buy the outputs of other local firms as inputs. Hence, it is an important factor for firms' location choices, as buyer-supplier chains affect profitability. I study how local protectionism shapes the spatial...

In this paper, I study a principal-multiagent model where the principal adopts the relative performance evaluation (RPE) as the compensation strategy, and where agents are connected in an information network. The ability of each agent is private information, but adjacent agents in the...

This paper studies how the carbon emission trading system (ETS) pilot policy announced in 2011 affects firm dynamics, including entry, exit, and innovation. Using a difference-in-difference-in-differences empirical strategy, we find that in pilot cities, in targeted sectors, and after the policy...

I study the optimal compensation scheme in organizations in Shi (2020), in which agents connected in a network are endowed with the same ability, and work collectively to produce a team output. Connected agents can help neighbors to reduce the disutility of working. For any given network...

In this paper, I provide an empirical and theoretical analysis on whether and how in-utero negative health shocks affect politicians' human capital and career and governance outcomes, using Chinese Great Famine (1959-1961) and Chinese city Party Secretaries as a case in point. Using a...

I study how trade liberalization, or more specifically, WTO accession by China in 2001, affects industry dynamics: entry, exit, and innovation in China. Using various identification strategies (DDD, IV, DD), I find that the trade liberalization has the following causal impacts: (1) in the short...

We provide the first theoretical and empirical study on how the carbon emission regulation affects firm dynamics, including entry, exit, and innovation. Using a difference-in-difference-in-differences empirical strategy, we find that in low-carbon zone pilot cities, in carbon-intensive sectors,...

We study the general equilibrium effects of firms' political connections, using whether the firm is invested by investors who follow any bureaucratic transfers as a measure of the political connection, as in Shi et al. (2021). We establish several empirical facts, including: (1) Politically...