The work highlighted today from James Kai-Sing Kung (et al.) from the University of Hong Kong is clever but I found it unsatisfying. In it, he and his collaborators attempt to explain why China has been a persistent mega-state for so long. What gave rise to large, organized civilizations across the world was clearly agriculture, […]
The author(s) of today’s paper-in-focus, Ben Li (et al.) from the University of Massachusetts, cite an earlier paper from 2012 to highlight the fact that U.S. China-bashing isn’t new. “Reagan repeatedly criticized President Jimmy Carter for establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing. Bill Clinton excoriated the “butchers of Beijing” in the 1992 campaign and promised to […]
[This piece caught my eye as the effects of the global responses to COVID are going to leave deep scars across the social fabric of all societies affected. This study reminds just how long the effects of a societal trauma can persist.] Zhiming Cheng (et al., but from other Aussie institutions) from the Department of […]
There’s an ongoing debate in the academic literature as to whether government control of a company is a good or bad thing [Yes, really]. It’s a topical question as investors in government connected Chinese property companies are probably having a better time of it than those in wholly private entities. Investors in China tech stocks […]
The world’s two largest economies offer different scenarios for stock investors into the second half of 2022; one can now either: a) invest in an uncertain economy where recession may occur; but if it doesn’t an ongoing reckoning of profligate and inflationary government policies, deleterious to corporate earnings growth, will continue. Or, b) invest in […]
This is how the World Bank is now summing up China’s prospects: 2021 was the bounce-back year, 2022 is about finally squishing COVID and 2023 will be about getting back on the front foot. The forecast recovery, it should also be noted, will occur without the inflationary blight the rest of the world is having […]
China’s economic development in the last 40-years has progressed hand in hand with a high degree of corruption. This has led some to suggest that corruption may be a good thing. Perhaps it has a lubricating effect? Xiangyu Shi of the Yale University attempts to see if there’s a relationship between innovation, the lifeblood of […]
[This is the first time I’ve seen the phrase ‘G3’ used to sum the economic world. It refers to the U.S., China and an aggregated (big country) Europe and is a descriptor whose utility will no doubt cause it to stick.] In the paper highlighted today Luis Bauluz (et al.) from the University of Bonn […]
[I’m fond of saying that to understand China properly you have to imagine it, in many regards, about 50-years behind the developed West. After reading this study I think, with regards to financial markets, that glib summary may be too kind.] Grace Xing Hao of the PBC School of Finance at Tsinghua University and Jiang […]
Professors Thomas M. Hout and Robert A. Rogowsky of the Middlesbury Institute of International Studies seem to be addressing U.S. policymakers in their Working-Paper highlighted today. It’s a good companion piece for work highlighted last week on the subject of whether or not China’s accession to the WTO has been a policy mistake by the […]
A timely piece in the context of the discussion in the U.S. about rolling back the previous administration’s China tariffs. Jennifer Hillman, a senior fellow for trade and international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, provides useful context on where China-U.S. trade relations […]
Unusually I’m not going to recommend a full read of the paper highlighted today from Anum Qureshi (et al.) of the National University of Science and Technology (NUST), Pakistan. Partly because its a bit of a jumble and partly because the output from this kind of analysis, given how little data there is to plug […]
My first (and last) contribution on cryptocurrencies was prompted by an inquiry from an unlikely source. My older brother, a recent retiree living in the U.K. wrote to me late in December last year with a simple question “Would I buy cryptocurrencies?” Below is my answer (with some minor edits) which I think covers everything […]
In an IMF Working Paper from February this year staffers Diego A. Cerdeiro and Ciane Ruane took a closer look at China’s flagging business dynamism. That this has occurred is in no doubt as the chart of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) from their study period, 2003~2018, shows. Here’s a summary of their detailed findings: The […]
I have a simple rule for IPOs, Hong Kong ones at least; leave well alone. Their popularity is, in part, based on data and historical experience from more ‘grown-up’ markets in which they’ve been shown to be subject to habitual under-pricing (they’re rarely, if ever, under-priced in HK for reasons I won’t go into here). […]
If you know nothing about China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) initiatives the paper highlighted today may help you get up to speed. Heng Wang, of the University of New South Wales – Faculty of Law has drawn together an impressive check-list of work to-date, scholarly articles, broker research and etcetera which covers many of […]
The paper highlighted today, from Hilton L. Root of the George Mason University is not an easy read, which makes it especially hard to summarize; but I’ll try… In short, it goes back to the earliest formation of Chinese and Western societies and suggests the Christian Church in the West and the Confucian top-down family-oriented […]
In a Working Paper from the IMF researchers Serkan Arslanalp, Barry J. Eichengreen and Chima Simpson-Bell take a look at the U.S.-Dollar (U$) this century in terms of its use as a reserve currency. Lets start with one of the few things that’s crystal clear: The share of U$ being held by the world’s central […]
A year ago I took a look at the components of an index of unprofitable new-economy companies Goldman Sachs put together in early 2021. [NESCAR Watch – Slow Pile Up: So Far] I described these stocks then as a window into a much bigger group, the New-Economy Speculative Complex And Related (NESCAR). Since then we […]
I think the researchers (Chen Xi from the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, et al.) may be taking themselves a little too seriously with this paper that draws a line between climate change and future movie attendance in China (and by implication elsewhere). There’s a useful point though in terms of how weather […]