Annual Conference

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Trade, Growth and Development, Senior Fellows/Fellows

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May 2021

Golden Ages: A Tale of Two Labor Markets

Hanming FANG, Xincheng QIU
We document stark differences in the labor market outcomes between the U.S. and China, the largest two economies in the world, during the past 30 years. (1) The peak age in cross-sectional age-earnings profiles stays constant at around 45- 50 years old in the U.S. but decreases sharply from 55 to 35...
Keywords: Age-Earnings Profiles, Human capital, Life Cycle
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Annual Conference

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Trade, Growth and Development, Senior Fellows/Fellows

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May 2021

Supporting Seniors: How Low-Income Elderly Individuals Respond to a Retirement Support Program

Sumit AGARWAL, Wenlan QIAN, Bernard YEUNG, Tianyue RUAN
Longer life expectancy and insufficient savings expose individuals to financial vulnerability in older ages and prompt government support measures. We study a government cash subsidy program for the low-income elderly population in Singapore. Using comprehensive, high-frequency transaction data, we ...
Keywords: retirement support, cash transfer, Consumption, Liquidity Constraints
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Annual Conference

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Trade, Growth and Development, Senior Fellows/Fellows

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May 2021

Bureaucratic Bean Counting and Patent Subsidies: A Welfare Evaluation of China's Pro-innovation Program

Shang-Jin WEI, Xiaobo ZHANG, Ge YIN, Jianhuan XU
This paper quantifies the welfare effect of the patent subsidy policy (the InnoCom program) in China. The policy encourages firms to hold more patents, but disregard the quality of patents. We provide evidence that the subsidy decreases the value of patents either through declining the quality of ne...
Keywords: Welfare effect, patent subsidy, positive demand shock, China
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Annual Conference

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Trade, Growth and Development

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May 2021

Future Technology Hubs or Backwater? Lessons on Structural Change from Germany’s Coal Regions

Wolfgang KELLER, Ehsan VALLIZADEH, Simon JANSSEN
This paper studies the structural adjustment from natural resource-intensive industry- to knowledge-based growth. The closure of coal mines in Germany over 1975-2017 produces local labor market shocks that reveal how the presence of natural resources and international competition may affect the rise...
Keywords: Mining, spillover effects, Employment, labour mobility
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Annual Conference

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Trade, Growth and Development, Senior Fellows/Fellows

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May 2021

Transport Infrastructure and Productivity: The China Experience

Meijun QIAN, Steven J. DAVIS
China has undertaken massive investments in its surface transportation system since the early 1990s, continuing to the present day. We study the impact of these public investments on plant productivity and resource allocation efficiency. We first collect and geocode highly detailed data on China’s...
Keywords: Transport infrastructure, productivity, dispersion, allocative efficiency, China.
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