Research

Working Papers

Checks and Balances: Media Criticism in China

I study how political competition among provincial officials affects media criticism in China. I collect news reports of local mouthpiece outlets operated by local provincial governments that at least point out the weakness of local governance from 2004 to 2017. By exploiting the semi-randomness of the pairing of the provincial governor and the party sectary, based on an established fact that bureaucrats are likely to be promoted in their third or fourth year (hereafter referred to as the promotion examination period), I show that competition induces media criticism. My empirical findings expand in three dimensions. First, if a pair is assigned such that their promotion examination periods overlap, then during the examination period of the secretary: 1) mouthpieces increase the number of critical reports; 2) this increase of media criticism is mainly driven by the criticism on economic affairs, as opposed to public affairs; 3) mouthpieces increase their reports on local achievements. Second, pairs assigned to expect an overlapped promotion examination have a higher GDP growth rate. Third, the correlation between media criticism and secretaries’ promotion is positive for secretaries in pairs expected to be examined together with the paired governor, especially when the GDP growth rate is mediocre, and is negative otherwise. I construct a principal-agent model with adverse selection to illustrate how competition can be generated by promotion pressure. Intuitively, when both officials go through promotion examination, the economic signals from individuals cannot be observed separately, and media content serves as an additional signal sent by the secretary to increase the chance of promotion. These results suggest that the checks and balances embedded in the bureaucratic system allow the government-led media outlets to sometimes serve effectively as a watchdog than a lapdog.

State Ownership and R&D Efficiency: Evidence from Chinese Public Firms (with Yang Ming, submitted)

This paper empirically investigates how state-owned firms differ from non-state-owned firms on their R&D efficiency. We estimate the economic value of invention patents granted to Chinese publicly listed firms using the stock market’s responses to patent issuances, following the methodology proposed in Kogan, Papanikolaou, Seru and Stoffman (2017). We measure the return of R&D by dividing the future patent value by current R&D expenditure, and find that the state-owned firms’ R&D efficiency is higher with very low R&D intensity, and is lower for medium and high R&D intensity. This finding is robust across different specifications, with both non-parametric and parametric models.

Work in Progress

Sanction Busting Through Minerals Trading (with Raymond Fisman and Giovanna Marcolongo, polished version available soon)

Perish in Comfort: Growth Impact of an Estate Boom (with Xiangyu Feng and Zhiyuan Chen)

Market Access and Cross-Country Sentiment: Evidence from the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict

Coronavirus catastrophe: Who is to blame? Evidence from the U.S. local media outlets