Who gets caught for corruption when corruption is pervasive? Evidence from China’s anti-bribery blacklist

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This article empirically investigates why in a corruption-pervasive country only a minority of the firms get caught for bribery while the majority get away with it. By matching manufacturing firms to a blacklist of bribers in the healthcare sector of a province in China, we show that the government-led blacklisting is selective: while economically more visible firms are slightly more likely to be blacklisted, state-controlled firms are the most protected compared to their private and foreign competitors. Our finding points to the fact that a government can use regulations to impose its preferences when the rule of law is weak and the rule of government is strong

Who gets caught for corruption when corruption is pervasive? Evidence from China’s anti-bribery blacklist

This article empirically investigates why in a corruption-pervasive country only a minority of the firms get caught for bribery while the majority get away with it. By matching manufacturing firms to a blacklist of bribers in the healthcare sector of a province in China, we show that the government-led blacklisting is selective: while economically more visible firms are slightly more likely to be blacklisted, state-controlled firms are the most protected compared to their private and foreign competitors. Our finding points to the fact that a government can use regulations to impose its preferences when the rule of law is weak and the rule of government is strong

Can I live with you after I retire? Retirement, old age support, and internal migration of older adults in China

This study examines the causal impact of retirement on migration decisions. Using a regression discontinuity (RD) design approach, combined with a nationally representative sample of 228,855 Chinese older adults, we find that retirement increases the probability of migration by 12.9 p.p. (an 80% increase in migration). Approximately 38% of the total migration effects can be attributed to inter-temporal substitution. Retirement-induced migrants are lower-educated, have restricted access to social security, and come from origins with high living costs. Relying on old age support from adult children in migration is a likely mechanism. These findings are consistent with a simple theoretical model of migration for older adults.Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Serie

The retirement migration puzzle in China

We examine whether and how retirement affects migration decisions in China. Using a regression discontinuity (RD) design approach combined with a nationally representative sample of 228,855 adults aged between 40 and 75, we find that retirement increases the probability of migration by 12.9 percentage points. Approximately 38% of the total migration effects can be attributed to inter temporal substitution (delayed migration). Retirement-induced migrants are lower-educated and have restricted access to social security. Household-level migration decisions can reconcile different migration responses across gender. Retirees migrate for risk sharing and family protection mechnisms, reducing market production of their families in the receiving households

China's reform of the Hukou system and consequences for workers and firms

This thesis contains three interconnected studies on China’s reform of the Household Registration System, or the Hukou System, which regulates internal migration. In Chapter 1, we describe the general institutional background of the Hukou System, look into a reform of the Hukou System adopted by local governments since 2002, and give the outline of each core chapter. In Chapter 2, we explain how the Hukou reform was gradually adopted by local governments in China. We propose a theoretical framework to describe local governments’ incentives to adopt the Hukou reform. By collecting information on the reform date at the prefecture level as well as a number of prefecture-level explanatory variables, we use two different approaches to empirically study local governments’ decisions to adopt the Hukou reform. First, we use a simple logit model to estimate how local economic factors in the pre-reform year affect the probability of early reform adoption. We group prefectures into “early reform” prefectures and the remaining prefectures based on a threshold point in time. Second, we use a complementary log-log model to model the duration of time until reform adoption. We transform our data into discrete-time duration data for the period 2002-2007 given that the reform was adopted by local governments at different points in time. Prefecture which did not adopt the reform until after 2007 are treated as censored. Our estimates indicate that prefectures with a higher degree of labour misallocation and higher demand for labour are adopting the reform earlier, and prefectures with a higher level of expenditures involving public services and social welfare are adopting the reform later. In Chapter 3, we examine whether the Hukou reform increases migration into the prefecture. Because information on migrant stocks and flows by prefecture is not consistently available to us, we construct three different indicators to capture prefecture-level migrations in China from 2000 to 2010. The first indicator refers to the number of non-agricultural Hukou holders registered at the prefecture level, which is available from 2000 to 2008. We use this indicator to capture whether the reform makes it easier for migrants to convert to a local Hukou. The second indicator refers to migration inflows from other prefectures, which is available in 2000 and 2005. We use this indicator to capture whether the reform induces new migration inflows from other prefectures. The third indicator refers to the size of total urban population, which is available in 2000, 2005 and 2010. We use this indicator to capture whether the reform increases the net migration inflows (migration inflows minus migration outflows). We use a difference-in-differences framework with prefecture-level fixed effects to estimate the reform effect on migration. Our estimates indicate that the Hukou reform increases the number of non-agricultural Hukou holders, increases migration inflows from other prefectures, and increases the total urban population in the long term, suggesting that the reform is effective in increasing migration. Also, we find heterogeneous effects of the reform for different skill groups. We find that the reform effect is larger for unskilled workers relative to skilled workers. In Chapter 4, we study how local manufacturing firms react to the Hukou reform. To be exact, we study whether manufacturing firms are growing faster in reform prefectures relative to non-reform prefectures. We focus on firm employment using the Chinese Annual Survey on Industrial Firms (CASIF) from 2000 to 2007. We use a difference-in-differences framework with firm-level fixed effects to estimate the reform effect on firm employment. We also use a propensity score matching approach to deal with the reform endogeneity suggested by the Chapter 2. Our estimates indicate that the reform increases local manufacturing firms’ employment on average. In addition, the reform impact on firm employment is larger for firms located in labour intensive industries and for firms located in industries that use migrant workers more intensively. Finally, we find that the reform also affects state-owned firms. In contrast to the non-state-owned firms that expand after the reform adoption, the state-owned firms downsize. Chapter 5 summarizes the main findings of the thesis and discusses our future research directions

High-coherence parallelization in integrated photonics.

Coherent optics has profoundly impacted diverse applications ranging from communications, LiDAR to quantum computations. However, developing coherent systems in integrated photonics comes at great expense in hardware integration and energy efficiency. Here we demonstrate a high-coherence parallelization strategy for advanced integrated coherent systems at minimal cost. By using a self-injection locked microcomb to injection lock distributed feedback lasers, we achieve a record high on-chip gain of 60 dB with no degradation in coherence. This strategy enables highly coherent channels with linewidths down to 10 Hz and power over 20 dBm. The overall electrical-to-optical efficiency reaches 19%, comparable to that of advanced semiconductor lasers. This method supports a silicon photonic communication link with an unprecedented data rate beyond 60 Tbit/s and reduces phase-related DSP consumption by 99.99999% compared to traditional III-V laser pump schemes. This work paves the way for realizing scalable, high-performance coherent integrated photonic systems, potentially benefiting numerous applications

The Legacies of the Soviet Influence in the 1950s: China's 156 Major Industrial Projects

This paper investigates whether and how China's adoption of Soviet-aided industrialization programs in the 1950s has affected its long-run innovation. Focusing on 156 major industrial projects aided by the Soviet Union, combined with an instrumental variable approach, I find that the adoption of these programs substantially discourages local firms to innovate in the long run. A causal mediation analysis of instrumental variable settings shows that the negative effect is entirely driven by local firms' lower intensity of incentive pay. This evidence suggests disadvantages of Soviet-aided industrialization programs for long-run innovation due to firms adopting incentive-incompatible management technology

Welfare Magnets and Internal Migration in China

This study examines the causal effects of welfare benefits on internal migration decisions. Using a quasi-experimental migration reform across 283 Chinese cities from 2002 to 2015, combined with a difference-in-differences setup, I show that improved welfare benefits substantially increase migration. The observed impact is more pronounced for individuals such as the young, women and medium-low-skilled workers. It is relatively smaller in destinations exposed to larger positive demand shocks, suggesting that improved welfare benefits reduce migration costs. And it persists over the long term. All these findings confirm the existence of sizable welfare magnet effects