Intergenerational inequality and old-age poverty are salient issues in contemporary China. China's aging population threatens the fiscal sustainability of its pension system, a key vehicle for intergenerational redistribution. We analyze the positive and normative effects of alternative pension...

Analyzing data from a unique survey of managers of Chinese private firms, we investigate how family ties with firm heads affect managerial compensation and job assignment. We find that family managers earn higher salaries and receive more bonuses, hold higher positions, and are given more...

The Great Leap Forward (GLF) disaster, characterized by a collapse of grain output, and the associated famine in China between 1959 and 1961, can be attributed to a systemic failure in central planning. Encouraged by unrealistic expectations for agricultural productivity gains from...

Can the increasing significance of knowledge-products in national income---the growing weightless economy---influence economic development? Those technologies reduce ``distance'' between consumers and knowledge production. This paper analyzes a model embodying such a reduction. The model shows...

This paper analyses the geography of innovation in China and India. Using a tailor-made panel database for regions in these two countries, we show that both countries exhibit increasingly strong polarisation of innovative capacity in a limited number of urban areas. But the factors behind this...

We investigate whether inward FDI, either at the firm or industry level, has any impact on product innovation by Chinese State owned enterprises (SOEs). We use a comprehensive firm level panel data set of Chinese SOEs covering the period 1999 to 2003. Our results show that foreign capital...