Annual Conference

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Trade, Growth and Development

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May 2026

Universities and the Rise of Services

Chang LIU, Kohei TAKEDA
Structural transformation from manufacturing to services varies widely across regions. Using regional data from the US, we document four stylized facts: (i) commuting zones with universities experience higher growth in service employment and establishments, especially high-skilled services; (ii) the...
Keywords: structural transformation, skill premium, innovation, economic geography
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Annual Conference

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Accounting

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May 2018

Uneven Regulatory Playing Field and Bank Transparency Abroad

Tai-Yuan CHEN, Yi-Chun CHEN, Mingyi HUNG
We study the implications of cross-country regulatory differences on banks’ transparency and stability abroad. Using a global sample of banks’ majority-owned foreign subsidiaries, we find that foreign subsidiaries’ transparency decreases when their home countries have tighter activity restrict...
Keywords: transparency within and among MNEs and national states, agency theory, multinational corporations (MNCs) and enterprises (MNEs), headquarters–subsidiary roles and relations
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Annual Conference

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Trade, Growth and Development

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May 2022

Unequal Transition: The Making of China's Wealth Gap

Lijun ZHU, Yu ZHENG, Yangtian JIANG
This paper studies the evolution of wealth inequality during China’s rapid economic growth since its market-oriented reforms in the early 1990s. We first document the evolution and composition of China’s wealth distribution and summarize stylized facts on aspects of the growth and reform process...
Keywords: Wealth inequality, The Chinese economic reform, Financial frictions, Entrepreneurship, Housing, Migration
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Annual Conference

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Investment Finance, Senior Fellows/Fellows, Capital Market Development: China and Asia

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May 2022

Understanding Retail Investors: Evidence from China

Charles M. JONES, Donghui SHI, Xinran ZHANG, Xiaoyan ZHANG
Using comprehensive account-level data from 2016 to 2019, we examine retail investor trading behavior in the Chinese stock market. We separate millions of retail investors into five groups by their account sizes and document strong heterogeneity in their trading dynamics and performance. Retail inve...
Keywords: Retail investors, Chinese stock market, Return predictability, Information content
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Annual Conference

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Corporate Finance, Senior Fellows/Fellows

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May 2013

Understanding Informal Financing

Franklin ALLEN, Meijun QIAN, Jing XIE
This paper offers a unified framework to understand informal financing. We explore various sources of informal financing based on their mechanisms to deal with asymmetric information and enforcement and examine their role in supporting firm growth. We find that constructive informal financing such a...
Keywords: Informal financing, asymmetric information, social collateral, firm growth
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