[Although this work leans ‘progressive’ and, in places, flirts with a lack of objectivity it has merit. It’s sponsored by an institution set up shortly after the GFC by Mr. George Soros and that may trigger suspicion for some.] Thomas Ferguson, Servaas Storm and Jie Chen from the universities of Delft and Massachusetts trace the […]

In 1999 China embarked on a radical program to increase higher education. Most of the developed world has followed the same path in recent years. China though has good data on where this new talent went and into what type of employment. In a paper for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Federica Coelli, […]

Researchers Siu Kay Choy, Dan Luo and Buqing Yang from King’s College London and the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics – School of Finance have found dollars on the sidewalk that shouldn’t be there. These sidewalk dollars are the returns that an ‘efficient’ market shouldn’t permit i.e. patterns that reoccur and therefore should be […]

(Robin) Hui Huang (et al.), a law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law has produced a timely update on where China currently stands on Variable Interest Entity (VIE) structures. We’re reminded these arrangements (where ‘foreigners’ get to participate and invest in ‘in theory’ no go economic areas) have been around […]

Virginia Brassesco, Herman Schinca and Fernando Schapachnik from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina wanted to find out if smart kids, in this case a sample of 146 first year STEM students from Argentina and China, were overestimating the capability of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) chatbots such as ChatGPT. To find out they devised […]

In a CESifo Working Paper authored by Harald Fadinger (et al.) of the University of Vienna the researchers present the most comprehensive study (I’ve seen) to date on the effects of China’s tariffs on the U.S. and vice versa with particular emphasis on the effects on third countries. Their work covers ‘millions of establishments’ in […]

Seth G. Benzell, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, and Victor Yifan Ye writing in a Working Paper for non-profit think tank the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) have produced intriguing ‘what-if’ analysis of global trends to 2100 if demographic and technology trends persist. If you wish to get into the weeds of this you can access […]

Classical economic theory teaches it doesn’t matter how money changes hands, it’s all the same. In the real world though researchers have found better payment systems stimulate trade and the researchers of the paper highlighted today note “By reducing the frictions of physical exchange, cashless systems raise market participation and money velocity, and electronic payments […]

Mohan Xu (et al.) from the Guanghua School of Management have tackled a paradox in China that’s long vexed (this one included!) investors. How come when China’s government steps on the stimulatory-gas, stock market investors don’t soon thereafter get rewarded? It’s been observed in developed markets fiscal pump priming not only jollies an economy along […]

Researchers Hanming Fang and Chang Liu writing in a Working Paper for the U.S. based National Bureau of Economic Research take a novel look at a piece of the global issue of falling births. In this case it’s the Chinasphere or what’s more often more euphemistically referred to as ‘East Asia’. The researchers wanted to […]

A monograph not a paper this week. From The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve comes a recent ‘FEDS Notes’ by Chris A. Avalos, Trang Hoang, and Eva Van Leemput which looks at how much ‘China’ is in the Vietnam export boom of recent years. Since 2016 changes have been extraordinary. A look at […]

In a Working Paper for the U.S. based National Bureau of Economic Research Nicola Borri, Aleh Tsyvinski and Yukun Liu of the LUISS, Yale and Rochester universities have used Open Router data to study the use of 380 trillion tokens or about 2% of current monthly global usage to see what effect company usage of […]

Wang Jin, Nadav Kunievsky and Bowen Lou of the Chapman, Chicago and Southern California universities (et al.) describe how the U.S.’s attempts to retard China’s AI development ambitions have backfired. A decade or so ago the U.S. government decided the best way to crimp China’s technological progress was to restrict access to the nuts and […]

Researchers Xu Chen, Meifen Qian, Juan Yao and Bin Yu from the Zhejiang and Sydney universities have uncovered an interesting ‘tick’ in terms of how women allocate money to mutual funds (at least in China). Using data from over 97,000 mutual fund investors the paper highlighted today shows female investors have an affinity for female-managed […]

The briefing paper highlighted today was produced by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy and is a good summary of where China is today. It flags the major outstanding issues and, where possible, what can be done about them. The blue line below is the Incremental Capital Output Ratio (ICOR) or how much has […]

Alicia García-Herrero, multi accredited academic and Chief Economist for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East at Natixis takes a closer look at China’s most pressing economic conundrum. China produces more than it can consume. The idea has been consumers will eventually catch up in this process and that production, logically, must proceed consumption. The problem with […]