cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.3886/e113986
title: Replication data for: Human Capital and China's Future Growth

description: In this paper, we consider the sources and prospects for economic growth in China with a focus on human capital. First, we provide an overview of the role that labor has played in China's economic success. We then describe China's hukou policy, which divides China's labor force into two distinct segments, one composed of rural workers and the other of urban workers. For the rural labor force, we focus on the challenges of raising human capital by both increasing basic educational attainment rates as well as the quality of education. For the urban labor force, we focus on the issues of further expanding enrollment in college education as well as improving the quality of college education. We use a regression model to show the typical relationship between human capital and output in economies around the world and demonstrate how that relationship has evolved since 1980. We show that China has made substantial strides both in the education level of its population and in the way that education is being rewarded in its labor markets. However, as we look ahead, our results imply that China may find it impossible to maintain what appears to be its desired growth rate of 7 percent in the next 20 years; a growth rate of 3 percent over the next two decades seems more plausible. Finally, we present policy recommendations, which are rooted in the belief that China continues to have substantial room to improve the human capital of its labor force.
DOI: 10.3886/e113986v1
title: Replication data for: Human Capital and China's Future Growth

description: In this paper, we consider the sources and prospects for economic growth in China with a focus on human capital. First, we provide an overview of the role that labor has played in China's economic success. We then describe China's hukou policy, which divides China's labor force into two distinct segments, one composed of rural workers and the other of urban workers. For the rural labor force, we focus on the challenges of raising human capital by both increasing basic educational attainment rates as well as the quality of education. For the urban labor force, we focus on the issues of further expanding enrollment in college education as well as improving the quality of college education. We use a regression model to show the typical relationship between human capital and output in economies around the world and demonstrate how that relationship has evolved since 1980. We show that China has made substantial strides both in the education level of its population and in the way that education is being rewarded in its labor markets. However, as we look ahead, our results imply that China may find it impossible to maintain what appears to be its desired growth rate of 7 percent in the next 20 years; a growth rate of 3 percent over the next two decades seems more plausible. Finally, we present policy recommendations, which are rooted in the belief that China continues to have substantial room to improve the human capital of its labor force.
DOI: 10.3886/e113987
title: Replication data for: Is China Socialist?

description: It has been 40 years since Deng Xiaoping broke dramatically with Maoist ideology and the Maoist variant of socialism. Since then, China has been transformed. Forty years ago, in 1978, China was unquestionably a socialist economy of the familiar and well-studied "command economy" variant, even though it was more decentralized and more loosely planned than its Soviet progenitor. Twenty years ago--that is, by the late 1990s--China had completely discarded this type of socialism and was moving decisively to a market economy. China today is quite different both from the command economy of 40 years ago, and from the "Wild West Capitalism" of 20 years ago. Throughout these enormous changes, China has always officially claimed to be socialist. Does the "socialist" label make sense when applied to China today?
DOI: 10.3886/e113987v1
title: Replication data for: Is China Socialist?

description: It has been 40 years since Deng Xiaoping broke dramatically with Maoist ideology and the Maoist variant of socialism. Since then, China has been transformed. Forty years ago, in 1978, China was unquestionably a socialist economy of the familiar and well-studied "command economy" variant, even though it was more decentralized and more loosely planned than its Soviet progenitor. Twenty years ago--that is, by the late 1990s--China had completely discarded this type of socialism and was moving decisively to a market economy. China today is quite different both from the command economy of 40 years ago, and from the "Wild West Capitalism" of 20 years ago. Throughout these enormous changes, China has always officially claimed to be socialist. Does the "socialist" label make sense when applied to China today?
DOI: 10.3886/e113988
title: Replication data for: From "Made in China" to "Innovated in China": Necessity, Prospect, and Challenges

description: After more than three decades of high growth based on its low-wage advantage and relatively favorable demographics--in combination with market-oriented reforms and openness to the world economy--China is at a crossroads with a much higher wage and a shrinking workforce. Future growth will depend, by necessity, more on the generation of increased productivity, and domestic innovation will play an important part in this. In this paper, we assess the likelihood that China can make the necessary transition. Using data on expenditure on research and development, and patent applications, receipts, and citations, we show that the Chinese economy has become increasingly innovative. We will argue that rising wages and expanding markets are among the important drivers of China's growth in innovation. On the other hand, we find evidence of resource misallocation in the innovation area: while state-owned firms receive more subsidies, private firms exhibit more innovation results. Innovation can presumably progress even faster if resource misallocation can be tackled.
DOI: 10.3886/e113988v1
title: Replication data for: From "Made in China" to "Innovated in China": Necessity, Prospect, and Challenges

description: After more than three decades of high growth based on its low-wage advantage and relatively favorable demographics--in combination with market-oriented reforms and openness to the world economy--China is at a crossroads with a much higher wage and a shrinking workforce. Future growth will depend, by necessity, more on the generation of increased productivity, and domestic innovation will play an important part in this. In this paper, we assess the likelihood that China can make the necessary transition. Using data on expenditure on research and development, and patent applications, receipts, and citations, we show that the Chinese economy has become increasingly innovative. We will argue that rising wages and expanding markets are among the important drivers of China's growth in innovation. On the other hand, we find evidence of resource misallocation in the innovation area: while state-owned firms receive more subsidies, private firms exhibit more innovation results. Innovation can presumably progress even faster if resource misallocation can be tackled.
DOI: 10.3886/e113989
title: Replication data for: A New Era of Pollution Progress in Urban China?

description: Over the last 30 years, China's economy has boomed. This trend has lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty but it has also sharply increased local, regional, and global pollution levels. We look at the rise in air pollution over recent decades, and the perhaps surprising finding that in many of China's urban areas, levels of particulates (of less than 10 microns) have been decreasing during the last 10 to 15 years. We then turn to the costs and tradeoffs of air pollution, including costs to human health, reductions in worker productivity, and how people are seeking to reduce their exposure to pollution as shown by compensating differentials in real estate prices and purchases of masks and air filters. We discuss how rising incomes tend to raise the demand for environmental amenities and thus increase political pressure for environmental protection, and then we turn to the policy tools that China has used to reduce pollution. We conclude by arguing that as China's government is preparing for an additional 300 million people to move to urban areas over the next 30 years, it will have a number of opportunities for China to reduce pollution through a shift from manufacturing to services, along with various steps to improve energy efficiency and resource conservation. Overall, it seems that China is on track to improve its environmental performance in the years ahead.
DOI: 10.3886/e113989v1
title: Replication data for: A New Era of Pollution Progress in Urban China?

description: Over the last 30 years, China's economy has boomed. This trend has lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty but it has also sharply increased local, regional, and global pollution levels. We look at the rise in air pollution over recent decades, and the perhaps surprising finding that in many of China's urban areas, levels of particulates (of less than 10 microns) have been decreasing during the last 10 to 15 years. We then turn to the costs and tradeoffs of air pollution, including costs to human health, reductions in worker productivity, and how people are seeking to reduce their exposure to pollution as shown by compensating differentials in real estate prices and purchases of masks and air filters. We discuss how rising incomes tend to raise the demand for environmental amenities and thus increase political pressure for environmental protection, and then we turn to the policy tools that China has used to reduce pollution. We conclude by arguing that as China's government is preparing for an additional 300 million people to move to urban areas over the next 30 years, it will have a number of opportunities for China to reduce pollution through a shift from manufacturing to services, along with various steps to improve energy efficiency and resource conservation. Overall, it seems that China is on track to improve its environmental performance in the years ahead.
DOI: 10.3886/e114114
title: Replication data for: The Macroeconomic Effects of Monetary Policy: A New Measure for the United Kingdom

description: This paper estimates the effects of monetary policy based on a new, extensive real-time dataset for the United Kingdom. Employing the Romer-Romer identification approach we construct a new measure of monetary policy innovations and find that a 1 percentage point increase in the policy rate reduces output by 0.6 percent and inflation by up to 1 percentage point after 2 to 3 years. Our use of forecast data is shown to be crucial and that their omission generates the well-known price puzzle. Our estimates are more comparable to the wider VAR literature but we also reconcile our findings with the Romer-Romer estimates for the United States.
DOI: 10.3886/e114114v1
title: Replication data for: The Macroeconomic Effects of Monetary Policy: A New Measure for the United Kingdom

description: This paper estimates the effects of monetary policy based on a new, extensive real-time dataset for the United Kingdom. Employing the Romer-Romer identification approach we construct a new measure of monetary policy innovations and find that a 1 percentage point increase in the policy rate reduces output by 0.6 percent and inflation by up to 1 percentage point after 2 to 3 years. Our use of forecast data is shown to be crucial and that their omission generates the well-known price puzzle. Our estimates are more comparable to the wider VAR literature but we also reconcile our findings with the Romer-Romer estimates for the United States.
DOI: 10.3886/e113453
title: Replication data for: The Role of Bequests in Shaping Wealth Inequality: Evidence from Danish Wealth Records

description: Using Danish administrative data, we estimate the impact of bequests on the level and inequality of wealth. We compare the distributions of wealth over time of people whose parent died and those whose parent did not. Bequests account for 26 percent of the average post-bequest wealth 1-3 years after parental death and significantly affect wealth throughout the distribution. Bequests increase absolute wealth inequality (variance of the distribution censored at the top/bottom 1% increases by 33 percent), but reduce relative inequality (the top 1% share declines by 6 percentage points from the base of 31 percent).
DOI: 10.3886/e113453v1
title: Replication data for: The Role of Bequests in Shaping Wealth Inequality: Evidence from Danish Wealth Records

description: Using Danish administrative data, we estimate the impact of bequests on the level and inequality of wealth. We compare the distributions of wealth over time of people whose parent died and those whose parent did not. Bequests account for 26 percent of the average post-bequest wealth 1-3 years after parental death and significantly affect wealth throughout the distribution. Bequests increase absolute wealth inequality (variance of the distribution censored at the top/bottom 1% increases by 33 percent), but reduce relative inequality (the top 1% share declines by 6 percentage points from the base of 31 percent).
DOI: 10.3886/e113454
title: Replication data for: Revenue and Incentive Effects of Basis Step-Up at Death: Lessons from the 2010 "Voluntary" Estate Tax Regime

description: In 2010, the U.S. estate tax expired and executors of wealthy decedents were not required to file estate tax returns. In the absence of the estate tax, beneficiaries received assets with carryover rather than stepped-up basis. Unrealized capital gains accounted for 44 percent of the fair market value of non-cash assets in estates that chose the carryover basis regime, and an even higher percentage for some asset categories. Many of the largest gains were on assets that had been held for at least two decades.
DOI: 10.3886/e113454v1
title: Replication data for: Revenue and Incentive Effects of Basis Step-Up at Death: Lessons from the 2010 "Voluntary" Estate Tax Regime

description: In 2010, the U.S. estate tax expired and executors of wealthy decedents were not required to file estate tax returns. In the absence of the estate tax, beneficiaries received assets with carryover rather than stepped-up basis. Unrealized capital gains accounted for 44 percent of the fair market value of non-cash assets in estates that chose the carryover basis regime, and an even higher percentage for some asset categories. Many of the largest gains were on assets that had been held for at least two decades.
DOI: 10.3886/e113455
title: Replication data for: Crises and the Development of Economic Institutions: Some Microeconomic Evidence

description: This paper studies the long run effects of financial crises using new bank and town level data from around the Great Depression. We find evidence that banking markets became much more concentrated in areas that experienced a greater initial collapse in the local banking system. There is also evidence that financial regulation after the Great Depression, and in particular limits on bank branching, may have helped to render the effects of the initial collapse persistent. All of this suggests a reason why post-crisis financial regulation, while potentially reducing financial instability, might also have longer run real consequences.
DOI: 10.3886/e113455v1
title: Replication data for: Crises and the Development of Economic Institutions: Some Microeconomic Evidence

description: This paper studies the long run effects of financial crises using new bank and town level data from around the Great Depression. We find evidence that banking markets became much more concentrated in areas that experienced a greater initial collapse in the local banking system. There is also evidence that financial regulation after the Great Depression, and in particular limits on bank branching, may have helped to render the effects of the initial collapse persistent. All of this suggests a reason why post-crisis financial regulation, while potentially reducing financial instability, might also have longer run real consequences.
DOI: 10.3886/e113456v1
title: Replication data for: Too Big to Fail before the Fed

description: "Too-big-to-fail" is consistent with policies followed by private bank clearing houses during financial crises in the U.S. National Banking Era prior to the existence of the Federal Reserve System. Private bank clearing houses provided emergency lending to member banks during financial crises. This behavior strongly suggests that "too-big-to-fail" is not the problem causing modern crises. Rather it is a reasonable response to the threat posed to large banks by the vulnerability of short-term debt to runs.
DOI: 10.3886/e113990
title: Replication data for: A Real Estate Boom with Chinese Characteristics

description: Chinese housing prices rose by over 10 percent per year in real terms between 2003 and 2014 and are now between two and ten times higher than the construction cost of apartments. At the same time, Chinese developers built 100 billion square feet of residential real estate. This boom has been accompanied by a large increase in the number of vacant homes, held by both developers and households. This boom may turn out to be a housing bubble followed by a crash, yet that future is far from certain. The demand for real estate in China is so strong that current prices might be sustainable, especially given the sparse alternative investments for Chinese households, so long as the level of new supply is radically curtailed. Whether that happens depends on the policies of the Chinese government, which must weigh the benefits of price stability against the costs of restricting urban growth.
DOI: 10.3886/e113990v1
title: Replication data for: A Real Estate Boom with Chinese Characteristics

description: Chinese housing prices rose by over 10 percent per year in real terms between 2003 and 2014 and are now between two and ten times higher than the construction cost of apartments. At the same time, Chinese developers built 100 billion square feet of residential real estate. This boom has been accompanied by a large increase in the number of vacant homes, held by both developers and households. This boom may turn out to be a housing bubble followed by a crash, yet that future is far from certain. The demand for real estate in China is so strong that current prices might be sustainable, especially given the sparse alternative investments for Chinese households, so long as the level of new supply is radically curtailed. Whether that happens depends on the policies of the Chinese government, which must weigh the benefits of price stability against the costs of restricting urban growth.
DOI: 10.3886/e113991v1
title: Replication data for: Challenges to Mismeasurement Explanations for the US Productivity Slowdown

description: The United States has been experiencing a slowdown in measured labor productivity growth since 2004. A number of commentators and researchers have suggested that this slowdown is at least in part illusory because real output data have failed to capture the new and better products of the past decade. I conduct four disparate analyses, each of which offers empirical challenges to this "mismeasurement hypothesis." First, the productivity slowdown has occurred in dozens of countries, and its size is unrelated to measures of the countries' consumption or production intensities of information and communication technologies (ICTs, the type of goods most often cited as sources of mismeasurement). Second, estimates from the existing research literature of the surplus created by internet-linked digital technologies fall far short of the $3 trillion or more of "missing output" resulting from the productivity growth slowdown. Third, if measurement problems were to account for even a modest share of this missing output, the properly measured output and productivity growth rates of industries that produce and service ICTs would have to have been multiples of their measured growth in the data. Fourth, while measured gross domestic income has been on average higher than measured gross domestic product since 2004—perhaps indicating workers are being paid to make products that are given away for free or at highly discounted prices—this trend actually began before the productivity slowdown and moreover reflects unusually high capital income rather than labor income (i.e., profits are unusually high). In combination, these complementary facets of evidence suggest that the reasonable prima facie case for the mismeasurement hypothesis faces real hurdles when confronted with the data.
DOI: 10.3886/e113992
title: Replication data for: Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election

description: Following the 2016 US presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories ("fake news"), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: 1) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their "most important" source; 2) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; 3) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and 4) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.
DOI: 10.3886/e113992v1
title: Replication data for: Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election

description: Following the 2016 US presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories ("fake news"), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: 1) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their "most important" source; 2) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; 3) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and 4) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.