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We analyze a large sample of participants in mixed-gender Rubik’s Cube competitions. Focusing on participants who barely made or missed the cut for the second round in a competition, we examine their likelihood of joining another competition in the future. We find a significant gender difference: Whereas boys are slightly discouraged by failing to qualify for the second round, girls are affected more and are more likely to give up forever. Furthermore, we find that this gender difference is most significant in countries with larger gender gaps in labor market outcomes.

Throughout the imperial era, defensive walls surrounded Chinese cities. Although most city walls have vanished, the cities have survived. We analyze a sample of nearly 300 prefectural-level cities in China, among which about half historically had city walls. We document that cities that had walls in late imperial China have higher population and employment density today, despite the fact that their walls have long gone. Using data from various sources, we test several possible explanations of this fact, including (1) walled cities have a well-defined historical core that helps hold economic activity close to the city center today; (2) walled cities today tend to have different industry compositions that are less conducive to decentralization; (3) walled cities are situated in regions where the local geographies make it less desirable to build out; (4) walled cities have more compact shapes that facilitate high density development; and (5) walled cities are located in regions where rural land is more valuable today and discourages urban sprawl. We find that historically walled cities still have higher density after taking into account all of these factors, which we interpret as evidence of economic persistence.

This paper develops a new approach for measuring the stringency of a major form of land use regulation, building height restrictions, and applies it to an extraordinary data set of land-lease transactions from China. Our theory shows that the elasticity of land price with respect to the floor area ratio (FAR), a building height indicator, is a measure of the regulation's stringency (the extent to which FAR is kept below the free-market level). Using a national sample, estimation allowing this elasticity to be city-specific shows variation in the stringency of FAR regulation across Chinese cities. Single-city estimation for Beijing shows that stringency varies with site characteristics.

In Chinese cities, migrants with rural hukou, compared to residents with local urban hukou, face more uncertainty, have limited access to mortgage finance, and are less eligible for low-cost housing. A simple model demonstrates that for these reasons, rural-to-urban migrants are less likely to own housing units in cities and as a result accumulate less wealth. Our empirical analysis examines a nationally representative household survey from 2013 and uses mother's hukou status as an instrumental variable. We find that household heads with rural hukou are about 20 percentage points less likely to own housing units in cities than comparable household heads with local urban hukou. Consequently, the average household head with a rural hukou owns 315 thousand yuan less housing wealth and 226 thousand yuan less total wealth than comparable household heads with local urban hukou. The average household head with a rural hukou has 288 thousand yuan less in housing capital gains than comparable household heads with local urban hukou. Moreover, we find that these differences are much larger in the first- and second-tier cities, cities with more stringent hukou regulations, and among younger cohorts.

The Chinese government has been using annual quotas to control the amount of farmland that can be converted for urban uses. Using an analysis sample of more than 1.5 million land-lease transactions during 2007–2016, we document facts on land conversion for urban development in China. We present evidence that land conversion quotas have been increasingly misallocated across cities in that a growing share of land conversion is occurring in less productive cities. A city-level production function is estimated for counterfactual analysis. Based on estimated parameters, we assess the economic losses from misallocation of land conversion quotas across cities in China and calculate the potential gains from reallocating land quotas to cities where urban land is more productive.

For thousands of years, the Chinese and many other nations around the world built defensive walls around their cities. This phenomenon is not well understood from an economic perspective. We rationalize the existence of city walls by developing a simple model that relates the dimensions and quality of city walls to a set of economic and geographic variables. We report an empirical analysis using hand-collected and previously unutilized data on city walls in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) Dynasties. We find that the circumference of a city wall is correlated with local economic and geographic conditions, that wall size is positively correlated with population size in the jurisdiction, and that frontier cities subject to a higher probability of attack tend to have stronger city walls. We examine the physical size distribution of walled cities in late imperial China and show that city sizes above a certain cutoff follow a Pareto law, although the Pareto coefficient decreases algebraically with the cutoff point. This result complements findings in the existing literature that focuses almost exclusively on the population size distribution of cities. We also find that cities with walls in the past have higher employment and population densities at the present time.

We study whether subways alleviate road congestion by examining 45 subway line launches in China and by using detailed data on road speed. Our difference-in-differences estimation finds that in the first year after a subway line is launched, rush hour speed on nearby roads increases by about 4 percent. The effect is most prominent in initially congested roads and declines over distance to the new subway line. Evidence on road speed is corroborated with substitution patterns among modes of transportation. Using auxiliary data from Beijing, we calculate that the time savings for each automobile or bus commute from faster speed is worth US$0.10. (JEL O18, P25, R41)

This paper uses the 2011 China Household Finance Survey data to estimate the effect of changes in housing value on homeowners’ labor force participation. Using the average housing capital gains of other homes in the same community as an instrument for the housing capital gains of a given household, we find that a 100,000 yuan increase in housing value leads to a 1.37 percentage point decrease in female homeowners’ probability of participating in the labor force and a 1.49 percentage point increase in their probability of becoming housewives. We find little effect on men's labor force participation.

This article examines start-ups' access to venture capital in Silicon Valley using a comprehensive database. The author finds that Silicon Valley consistently absorbs 20% to 26% of the total venture capital investment in the United States, and start-ups in this region benefit from the abundance of local venture capital. Venture-backed firms in Silicon Valley receive venture capital at a younger age and complete more rounds of financing. On one hand, this better access to capital makes start-ups in Silicon Valley more likely than start-ups elsewhere to complete initial public offerings and helps offset some of the negative effects of intense competition in the region. On the other hand, better access to venture capital is associated with a higher bankruptcy rate, possibly because competition for new ventures makes it more likely that poor business plans will get funding.

China has long aimed to restrict population growth in large cities but encourages growth in small and medium-sized cities. At the same time, various government policies favor large cities. We conjecture that larger cities in China offer a better quality of life and more opportunities. We thus predict that a typical rural-urban migrant is willing to give up some income in order to live in a larger city. We present a simple model in which rural-urban migrants choose destination cities to maximize utilities from consumption and urban amenities. Drawing data from a large-scale population survey conducted in 2005, we first estimate each migrant's expected earnings in each possible destination city using a semi-parametric method to correct for potential selection bias. We then estimate the typical migrant's preference for city population size, instrumenting population size with its lagged values to control for potential omitted-variables bias. From these estimation results, we calculate the typical migrant's willingness to pay to live in larger cities. Our results show that indeed rural-urban migrants strongly prefer cities with larger populations. We explore possible explanations for this preference and discuss the implications of these findings.