This paper considers a setting in which the acquisition of human capital entails a change of location in social space that causes individuals to revise their comparison groups. Skill levels are viewed as occupational groups, and moving up the skill ladder by acquiring additional human capital,...

We develop a novel method to impose constraints on univariate predictive regressions of stock returns. Unlike the previous approaches in the literature, we implement our constraints directly on the predictor, setting it to zero whenever its value falls below the variable's past 12-month high....

Modern economic development is accompanied by the structural transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy. Since the 18th century, all countries that industrialized successfully have followed their comparative advantages and leveraged the latecomer advantage, including emerging...

This study examines the impact of corporate site visits on analysts' forecast accuracy based on a sample of such visits to Chinese listed firms during 2009–2012. We find that analysts who conduct visits (“visiting analysts”) have a greater increase in forecast accuracy than other analysts....

This paper exploits two unique features of China's history to study the effects of access to internal migration: reforms to the household registration (hukou) system, and historical migration flows. We show that temporary migration due to a government policy called the “sent-down youth”...

Official reports and case studies reveal that China experienced different means of communication with the world powers since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. In the first five years, China had public communication with both the United States and the European Union under the...

We study the relationship between the political connections of Chinese firms and workplace fatalities. In our preferred specification we find that the worker death rate for connected companies is two to three times that of unconnected firms (depending on the sample employed), a pattern that...

We classify institutions into socially responsible institutions (SRI) and non-socially-responsible institutions (NSRI) based on the value weighted Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) scores of their portfolio holdings. Controlling for CSR scores, stocks that experience an increase in NSRI...

Economic transitions from state planning and redistribution to market exchange create many businesses opportunities. But such transitions also create great uncertainty because many interdependent factors – modes of exchange, types of products, and forms of organizations – are in flux....