ABSTRACT The persistent expansion of local government debt in China and the associated risks have become a central institutional concern for fiscal sustainability, financial stability, and macroeconomic management. A rapidly growing literature has examined its formation mechanisms, drivers, economic effects, and governance arrangements, yet existing studies remain fragmented and lack a unified analytical framework. Building on a vertical–horizontal intergovernmental perspective, this paper develops a stylized analytical model that incorporates both vertical interactions across levels of government and horizontal competition among local governments. On this basis, it provides a comprehensive survey of the literature on local government debt in China. Specifically, the paper maps the intellectual landscape of the field through a descriptive bibliometric analysis, reviews the evolution of conceptual definitions, financing instruments, and governance arrangements, synthesizes the main drivers of debt expansion, and evaluates the economic effects of local government debt through the policy trade‐off between growth‐oriented fiscal accommodation and discipline‐oriented fiscal governance. Finally, it discusses policy implications for the design of an incentive‐compatible intergovernmental framework, debt governance rules, and risk‐mitigation instruments, and outlines directions for future research.

This study examines a causal relationship between fiscal pressure and the market structure of government-controlled factors of production, by exploiting a city-level panel data set on urban land transactions in China. We find that in the face of higher fiscal pressure, local governments tend to transfer fewer land parcels and make the urban land market more concentrated. This kind of concentration, in turn, will lead to higher housing prices. This study has implications for other countries where the government controls certain types of production factors, such as land or natural resources.

Economic policy uncertainty has prominent effects on investment and output. Using unique transaction-level data in China, this paper explores the impact of economic policy uncertainty on land transaction premiums in China. On average, a 1% increase in the policy uncertainty level reduces land transaction premiums by 3.907 percentage points. The impact of policy uncertainty is more profound for firms with tighter financial constraints and land located in cities with lower rent-to-price ratios. The influence of policy uncertainty becomes weaker after the anti-corruption campaign in China, especially in provinces scrutinised by the central inspection teams, implying that improvements in the political environment alleviates the impact of policy uncertainty.

This study revisits the puzzle of the gender happiness gap in China based on data from the China General Social Survey between 2008 and 2017. Decomposition analyses in this study indicate that women are happier than men mainly due to women's higher positive responsiveness to happiness determinants (the coefficient effect) rather than a higher level of objective achievements (the composition effect). Women obtain happiness from education despite not having a higher education, and women get more happiness from spousal income instead of personal income. Within families, the study finds that the greater the income gap between husband and wife, the greater the gender happiness gap. To help explain this gap, the study demonstrates that women living under traditional gender norms have higher evaluation of their education when they obtain lower levels of education than those living under egalitarian norms.HIGHLIGHTSIn China, women's objective achievements in education and income have improved but remain lower than men's.Women are happier than men due to higher responsiveness to achievements.The income gap between husbands and wives increases women's subjective well-being and reduces men's.The traditional belief that men are more capable leaves women worse off in education.The gender happiness gap is much larger in urban areas and eastern regions of China.

This paper investigates the determinants and the time pattern of the subjective well-being of private business owners. We find that both personal and enterprise-level factors have a significant influence on subjective status of private business owners. Meanwhile, we find supportive evidence of Easterlin paradox among Chinese private entrepreneurs: both personal income and operating revenue enhance subjective status in a certain period, but subjective status declines as time goes by, even as incomes continue to rise. A further Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition suggests that the competition and provincial factors are the keys to explaining the paradox. Finally, we try to verify the positive effect of political connection on entrepreneurs' subjective status to provide some helpful advice for the government.

当前,产业数字化不断深入发展,平台经济、工业互联网、智能制造等新业态、新模式不断涌现,成为了数字经济的重要组成部分.与传统经济相比,以数字技术和数据资源为核心的产业数字化赋予了生产力和生产关系新的内涵,将极大地解放和发展社会生产力,优化生产关系和生产方式,重构传统产业体系和经济体系.推动传统产业数字化转型升级,是驱动产业效率提升、实现经济高质量发展的重要抓手.

This study examines how land marketization without privatization in China influences industrial structure by utilizing China's urban land transactions data from 2003 to 2015 and the data covering 29 industries in China's industrial and manufacturing sector. The baseline panel-data analysis shows that a one standard deviation in-crease in the degree of land marketization will lead to a significant increase in the rationalization level of in-dustrial structure, indicated by a decrease in the Theil index by 0.01, which is around 66.7% of the average annual change. The transmission mechanism is that land marketization boosts firm entry rate and market competition, leads to a lower proportion of state-owned enterprises, and also reduces the dispersion degree of firms' TFP and improves the efficiency of resource allocation at the firm level. The systematic generalized method of moments and the instrumental variable approach are employed to deal with the possible endogeneity problem, and the main results are found to be robust. This study enriches our understanding of the reform of land marketization in developing countries: while maintaining land ownership unchanged, we can still make land use rights allocated through market means like auctions, which can result in a better industrial structure and a higher level of economic efficiency.

Information and communication technology plays an important role in human life and social production.The existing literature has mainly studied the economic impact of such technology in developed countries;the use of broadband in developing countries has been overlooked.This paper fills the gap by examining a broadband development program in China.Difference-in-difference estimates show that the deployment of high-quality broadband promoted regional employment in the skilled service sector.The effect was larger in cities with a greater number of educated residents and cities in the west of China.We also found that broadband development stimulated firm creation and innovation.These findings imply that broadband promotes innovation and provides new impetus to the economic transition of emerging markets.

This study estimates the cost of poor institutions using cross-provincial firm investments in China based on its unique land policies. We find that provinces with better institutions attract more firm investment and that institutions are substitutive with land price distortion. Firms with high (low) labor productivity move primarily between provinces with better (inferior) institutions. This stratification effect suggests that a poor institutional environment has dynamic costs, hindering technology diffusion from provinces with good institutions to those with poor institutions. The results imply that it is difficult to achieve industrial upgrades by factor price distortion rather than institutional environment improvements.

This study investigates the impact of the current United States (US)-China trade war on resource allocation, using monthly panel data at the city level; the data relate to the transfer of local government-controlled land from 2017 to 2019. The results show that the trade war significantly changed local governments' economic development strategies. As the trade war progressed, Chinese local governments shifted their attention to boosting the development of high-tech in-dustries by significantly increasing the proportion of land supply for these industries. After the trade war, for every 1% increase in the US exports as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), land supply to high-tech industries increased by 0.25%. This effect is more prevalent in cities with more fiscal resources, a younger secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Municipal Committee, lower levels of public nationalism, and a larger share of foreign enterprises among exporters. These results are consistent with our assumption that the pressure generated by the US-China trade war has significantly increased the potential returns for local governments in terms of developing high-tech industries.

搜集2007-2019年全国220余万条宗地交易数据,结合年鉴数据,从微观视角研究了我国土地出让的时空特征.研究结果发现:我国国有建设用地供应的市场化进程正在快速推进,但供应规模存在较大波动;土地供应向外扩张的特征明显;工业用地供应存在显著的空间分异特点,供应规模和质量的南北差距问题愈发突出;体现产业发展质量的高技术产业用地供应呈现出多空间层次的"中心—外围"结构;住宅用地的人地协调程度有待提升.基于对微观宗地交易总体特征的系统性分析,提出了 土地供应改革对应的政策建议.

疫情防控催生了"宅经济"业态."宅经济"是数字经济的重要组成部分,是"互联网+"发展的新业态,并逐渐发展壮大成为经济增长的新动能."宅经济"产生的替代效应和互补效应也对其发展提出了新要求.抓住"宅经济"发展的机遇,需要继续加强数字基础设施建设和数字产业发展的政策引导,创新数字平台企业监管,减低制度性交易成本,打造"宅经济"发展的良好生态,推动中国经济高质量发展.

中央政府在2002年和2006年出台重大改革措施,分别要求地方政府以市场化方式出让商住用地和工业用地.本文以这两次改革作为准实验,基于2000-2011年城市面板数据,考察不同的地方政府对中央改革政策的反应.研究发现:中央政府强有力的改革措施确实会大幅提高地方政府土地出让的市场化水平,但却并不彻底;相较于优地理禀赋城市,劣地理禀赋城市更积极执行商住用地的市场化改革,但却更消极应对工业用地的市场化改革.进一步分析还发现,相较于优地理禀赋城市,劣地理禀赋城市增进商住用地出让的市场化水平更能有效缓解财政压力并带动固定资产投资,但增进工业用地出让的市场化水平却难以产生类似的积极效果.

"中年危机"是一种重要的社会现象.本文利用中国居民调查数据,考察了居民幸福感的"中年危机".研究发现,幸福感与年龄之间存在显著的U形关系,与青年人相比,中年人的幸福感平均降低约0.2,约为幸福感平均值的5.5％."中年危机"显著地受到个体经济特征的影响,无工作、无住房以及中等收入群体的中年危机更严重.关于收入对不同年龄群体幸福感的边际分析表明,无论是基于功利主义还是基于优先权的福利主义视角,照顾中年危机中相对弱势群体的公共政策都有利于提高居民的整体幸福感.

产业政策是否有效、应该如何制定产业政策是当前社会关注的一个焦点.本文试图对现有中国产业政策经验研究进行总结和评论.中国产业政策的经验研究表明:第一,已有文献主要使用产业政策的类型、区位和力度,来衡量中国的产业政策;第二,已有研究重点关注产业政策对生产率、产业结构、创新和跨国产业链的影响;第三,产业政策效果的异质性是影响研究结论的一个重要因素,中央与地方的产业政策效果不同,不同时期政策效果具有差异,产业政策实施过程中官员激励和企业性质也会影响产业政策的效果.通过对这些文献的回顾与梳理,可以为未来产业政策设计提供参考.

This paper explores the motivations behind the issuance of Urban Investment Bonds (UIBs) to stimulate local economies in China after the 2008 global financial crisis. Based on panel data from 2005 to 2011, we find that pressure to achieve economic growth has a positive effect on the issuance of UIBs, while fiscal pressure has the opposite effect on UIB issuance. We also find that the tenure of municipal party secretary, the revenue of land-use right transfer and fiscal pressure will change the impact of economic growth pressure on UIB issuance. These results are consistent with a pattern in which China's local government officials are influenced by the central government's assessment of local economic growth performance and have promotion-related incentives to maintain and develop the local economy.

"撤点并校"自推行以来,关于它的效果说法不一.本文以云南省鹤庆县为例,采用对学生跟踪调查的面板数据,使用双重差分方法对中学合并是否提高了学生成绩进行检验.研究结果显示,学校合并短期内(合并后的第1和第2学期)会显著降低学生成绩,但在合并后的第3学期特别是第4学期,学生成绩显著提高.该结论在控制学生、家庭、教师和学校等方面的特征变量后,依然成立.机制分析表明,学校合并后学生寄宿比例上升、班级规模扩大、家校距离增加会对学生成绩造成负向影响,但是男性班主任比例提高在一定程度上可以削弱学校合并的负向影响.在考察学校合并的异质性影响时,本文发现,学校合并主要提高了学生的语文成绩,学校合并后,数学成绩和英语成绩出现过下降,政治成绩则呈现先下降后上升的特点;学校合并短期内给女生、寄宿生和客校生学习成绩造成了显著的负向影响.

我国经济已由高速增长阶段转向高质量发展阶段,提高资源配置效率至关重要.在地方政府掌握大量资源的背景下,市场化进程会对政府配置资源的效率有何影响?本文以工业用地配置为切入点,将2008—2013年我国工业用地出让数据与同期工业企业微观数据相匹配,构建每宗工业用地的配置效率指标,研究市场化进程与土地资源配置效率间的关系.结果发现:(1)市场化程度越高的地区,微观层面土地资源配置效率越高;(2)在传导机制上,市场化进程能够规范地方政府行为进而提高配置效率;(3)对于存在经济增长压力和财政压力的城市,市场化进程对土地配置效率的提升作用更大.

By using World Values Survey (WVS) data and other datasets, this paper measures the heterogeneity of Chinese residents' values and explores the relationships among cultural diversity, economic growth, and social policy in China. The study finds that, from 1990 to 2013, there was an overall rise in the value heterogeneity of Chinese residents, and cultural heterogeneity is mainly driven by within-group rather than between-group heterogeneity. Groups of residents with higher levels of income and education seem to have a lower degree of value heterogeneity. Panel-data regressions show that cultural heterogeneity is negatively correlated with provincial economic growth, and positively correlated with social conflict. Although social policies cannot directly affect cultural diversity itself, they may impact the way that cultural heterogeneity influences economic and social outcomes. In provinces with relatively low fiscal expenditures on education, cultural diversity has a stronger negative effect on GDP growth and a larger positive effect on social conflict. A social policy that boosts social security expenditures could also weaken the positive effect of cultural diversity on social conflict.