Xiao Chen, Jie Deng and Junbian Yu from the South China Agricultural University, Jinan University and the Shenzhen MSU-BIT University note a body of academic literature on the benefits of connectivity and better operating markets. However, until now studies have been mostly on the benefits of air and High Speed Rail links. The researchers wanted […]
Category: Sunday Papers
In a paper produced for the National Bureau of Economic Research researchers believe they have collated the most comprehensive database of China’s foreign ownership to date. They analyzed over 161,000 firms in 159 countries over the period 2012~2021 and unlike prior studies that followed reported Foreign Direct Investment numbers they’ve gone deeper. Looking through holding […]
Working out if sanctions are effective is difficult because those sanctioned tend to be secretive in terms of their response; Iran and N. Korea for example. China however was hit in 2007 by the ‘China Military Catch-All Rule’ from the United States and because sanctioned products were clearly identified it’s been possible to follow up […]
Cunyi Yang from the Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU) – Lingnan (University) College; The University of Hong Kong – Faculty of Business and Economics (et al.) have created a new index, the War Related Diplomatic Sentiment Index (WDSI) as a way of getting ahead of events via official government rhetoric. There are already a number of […]
Justin Ko, from the Harvard University – Harvard Law School; University of Macau, Faculty of Law has produced a useful and timely piece on China’s energy dynamic which explains two much asked-of-late questions. First, why hasn’t China tapped into its oil and gas emergency reserves (this last occurred in 2021) and second, why hasn’t the […]
Jian Liu and Xianfeng Ma at the Wuhan university looked at 3,350 domestically listed firms in China from 2019~2024 to see if they could add usefully to the debate about firm value and ESG scoring. The problem with this kind of analysis in the past is that there are a number of ESG-ranking providers whose […]
Pablo Fajgelbaum of the University of California, Los Angeles & NBER and Amit Khandelwal of the Yale University & NBER have looked closely at 2025 to see what, if any, the effects of tariffs were on the U.S. economy. We’re by now all familiar with some version of this chart: At the end of 2025 […]
Xin Chen (et al.) from the Shenzhen Audencia Financial Technology Institute at the Shenzhen University address an issue that’s especially pertinent right now. Why, in times of elevated economic uncertainty, are markets often so often ‘quiet’? In academic terms the question repeats as ‘Why, in times of high economic policy uncertainty (EPU), is volatility low […]
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 […]