Author: Nial Gooding

Alicia Garcia Herrero writing in a recently published Financial and Economic Review from the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Hungarian Central Bank) addresses perhaps most important economic question of our age. Will China run out of puff, Japan style; or not? There are worrying parallels: both economies suffer from low private consumption, high savings and ‘significant economic […]

The authors of the paper highlighted today have taken a look at the three cutting edge technologies which are, and will continue, shaping our world i.e. AI, quantum computing and semiconductors, to see where the world’s largest economic blocs rank in terms of progress. They’ve hand-cranked, with the help of an LLM, a look at […]

Ralph Ossa and Stephen Redding from the Zurich and Stanford universities writing in a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper get straight to the point: “Empirical findings from the recent waves of U.S. tariffs suggest that most of the incidence of these tariffs has been borne by U.S. importers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers […]

The full report is over 120-pages and you’ll find it via this link The IMF’s Annual China Report – 2026. Below I’ve filleted some of the more interesting charts for you. In summary; the IMF would like China to get a move on in terms of stimulating domestic consumption, were surprised by the strength of […]

A group of researchers from Stanford and Wharton wonder how an IPO system in the United States, tweaked to allow more listings of Foreign Private Issuers (FPIs), has been hijacked by shabby Chinese companies who have, and for many years, systematically bilked investors? That Chinese issuers (plus their enablers and other dodgy operators), literally now […]

Nosov Vasilii, a PhD Candidate in Public Policy at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy casts a scholarly eye over what’s been kind-of obvious for a while. ‘Western’ sanctions (led by the United States), which have grown in popularity in recent years, have caused many smaller actors to reconsider their relationship with China. In […]

Larry D. Qiu, Heiwai Tang, and Xing Wei from Lingnan U. (HK), HK U. and Nanjing U. have produced a novel little paper on the long-term benefits of having been a ‘Treaty Port’. As the map reminds, there were a lot of these. You can find a list of the majors, and whose was whose […]

What the researchers writing in a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Tomohide Mineyama & Dongho Song, attempt to quantify is how the rise in global trade has changed the political landscape in the United States (and elsewhere probably but that’s not included in the scope of this work). There’s no […]

[The paper highlighted today is a ‘preprint’ which means it’s still rough around the edges. Take a look here, Ultra-High-Voltage Lines and Grid Productivity if you wish but I think I’ve got the main points below.] The researcher, Shoi Ming Shoi Ming from the Nanjing University believes this study may be a first in terms […]

[For the record, I think the notion AI ‘winners’ is naive. Moreover, the comparison between AI and the introduction of printing is a flawed analogy. However, today’s paper has merit in terms of taking a novel approach to understanding the workings of China’s economic model. If Herr Schumpeter is new to you there’s a primer […]

Justin Ko, (whom I take to be a student) attached to the Harvard University – Harvard Law School; University of Macau, Faculty of Law has noticed China’s local F&B champions are breaking out. In more of a monograph than a paper he wonders why and how this is occurring? Unlike with more well established multinational […]

The IMF write with authority on China as their analysts have good access to the planners. A recent ‘Working Paper’ from Yizhi Xu, Fan Zhang, Rongyu Cui, and Ding Hua takes a look at the current top-of-mind problem in China i.e. personal consumption. Or lack thereof. First, a quick reminder of an important aspect of […]

In a study that’s the subject of today’s highlighted paper Genia Kostka and Hui Zhou, working at the Freie Universität Berlin, present the first cross cultural study of why and how people are using AI for counseling, comfort and emotional support. The table below presents some interesting cultural bias. Chinese users seem to especially enjoy […]

Yinghua Fan, Guanhao Feng and Dashan Huang believe they’ve produced a first in terms of modelling the complete spectrum of investors at work in China’s A-share markets (due to data constraints the study was of just Shanghai from 2007~2023, Shenzhen had to be left out). Many believe stock markets in China are driven by no-nothing […]

I read through most of the paper highlighted today in a bit of harrumph. What I thought Andrew W. Torrance (et al.), from the University of Kansas School of Law writing in an article for the Houston Law Review, was trying to do was set up a ‘straw man’ argument to tear it down. In […]

Like so much that China has done, and is doing, nothing like it in the history of humanity has been seen before. In the case of the paper highlighted today the subject is the extraordinary expansion of higher education that’s taken place starting from 1999. Zhaoxuan Wang from the University of British Columbia has taken […]