Linda Yueh

University of Oxford | OX · Department of Economics

An enduring paradox of China’s remarkable economic growth is the lack of a well-established legal system. By drawing on the credibility thesis, this paper proposes that legal and economic reforms give rise to, and reinforce, the other and the market is underpinned by evolving institutions that are shaped by the expectations of the actors in the eco...

Linda Yueh selects essential reading for all those who want to understand the Chinese economic miracle.

Microeconomic data is the best source of insight into China's extraordinary emergence. Linda Yueh explains why.

Although there have been surplus and deficit nations in the world for some decades, the 2008 global financial crisis underscored the magnitude of the so-called global imbalances which provided the macroeconomic backdrop to the worst financial crisis in nearly a century. The two key players are the United States and China, which have been the twin m...

This paper analyses the drivers and components of China's economic growth, showing that the structure of the economy is just as important as standard growth factors in determining its growth. The structural reforms that dismantled state-owned enterprises and shifted factors from agriculture to urban areas are key, as are technology transfers and kn...

The nature of entrepreneurship in a marketizing economy will be affected not only by personal and socioeconomic characteristics, but also by the extent of legal development and financial repression. Many developing countries have underdeveloped legal and credit systems that can impede self-employment. Since China is an economy characterized by lega...

Chinese economic growth has been spectacular in the last 30 years. We investigate the role of International Joint Ventures with Technology Transfer agreements, an understudied area. Technology transfer is the traditional mechanism for developing countries to "catch up" and has been a key component of Chinese economic policy. We collect original sur...

Although the state in China is no longer all encompassing as it had been during the pre-1979 centrally planned period, it still reaches into numerous areas of the economy, notably through its continuing ownership of state-owned enterprises. As a result, China poses a paradox in that it has incomplete property rights and rule of law which are though...

Since the 1990s, China has made a significant effort to transform its state‐owned enterprises into shareholding companies and allow its private firms to become incorporated. This corporatization policy has been used to restructure state‐owned enterprises as well as govern a growing and diverse set of firms in a marketizing economy. The intent of th...

China has undergone a remarkable transition over the past thirty years from a centrally-planned economy to a more market oriented one. The transformation of business in China has been correspondingly evident. This book gives an interdisciplinary analysis of the evolution of business development in China and the 'marketization' of industry during th...

The re-balancing of the Chinese economy requires the linking of internal and external sector reforms. The shift toward greater domestic demand necessitates a series of measures, including the adjustment of interest rates and the exchange rate. A more balanced Chinese economy would generate more sustainable growth, particularly as global macroeconom...

China's economic growth over the last two decades has been truly remarkable. Averaging near double‐digit percentage growth each year, it is now the second largest economy in the world based on gross domestic product (GDP) and is expected, one day, to overtake the USA and become the largest. China's growth has been predominantly expor...

China has developed into the world's second-largest economy from being one of the poorest in 1979. Linda Yueh's research explains the country's success.

Although there have been surplus and deficit nations in the world for some time, the magnitude of the so-called global imbalances in the 2000s provided the macroeconomic backdrop to the worst financial crisis in nearly a century. The key players are the United States and China, but the global macroeconomic imbalances involve many other emerging eco...

China's impressive economic growth over three decades has seemingly occurred in the absence of a strong legal system. This paper views China's reform process over the past three decades as one that has entailed a gradual introduction of market forces into areas of the economy, which requires both dismantling the structure of the centrally planned e...

There are several trends that warrant an international coop-erative approach to energy security. The first is that eco-nomic growth and population gains will lead to energy demand doubling over the next 30 years, mostly in develop-ing countries. Second, fossil fuels on current trends will continue to provide the vast majority of energy, but these r...

The last decade has seen an extraordinary shift in expectations for the world energy system. After a long era of excess capacity, since 2001, prices for oil and most energy commodities have risen sharply and become more volatile. Easy-to-tap local fuel supplies have run short, forcing major energy consumers to depend on longer and seemingly more fr...

'By examining the institutional reforms used to make the transition, Yueh provides a comprehensive and exceptionally insightful analysis of economic change in what has become the world's second biggest economy. . . Highly recommended.'

This paper explores whether the patent laws and intellectual property rights (IPR) system in China have resulted in innovation during the reform period. Subject to criticism on account of imperfect enforcement, the patent law system has produced a stock of patents which has grown rapidly alongside economic growth. The success rate of patent applica...

During the last year the global economyhas experienced its most severe recessionsince the Great Depression. This articlecompares the UK experience with thatof OECD member countries – a group ofthe major industrialised economies. Whileimportant economies such as Japan andGermany saw a larger fall in output, thedepth of the UK recession was larger th...

This paper investigates the relationship between self-employment and social networks in urban China, an economy rife with informational and institutional imperfections, under-developed financial markets, but a growing and important non-state sector. Having a social network can help the self-employed access supply and credit networks, and assist in...

Summary This paper investigates the traits of self-employed entrepreneurs in urban China, an economy rife with informational and institutional imperfections, under-developed financial markets, but a growing and important non-state sector. Despite this challenging context, this paper finds that entrepreneurs make on average 20% more than non-entrepr...

Summary China has experienced remarkable economic growth for three decades despite having a weak legal system and under-developed financial markets thought to be crucial for economic development. An assessment of the relationship among the legal and financial systems and economic growth reveals a complex set of institutional factors that have under...

China has experienced dramatic trade liberalization since the late 1990s. In this paper, I investigate the impact of trade liberalization on …rm productivity by using both Chinese manufacturing …rm-level data and highly disaggregated Chinese import data from 1998-2002. For this purpose, a …rm's total factor productivity (TFP) was calculated by adop...

After capturing the world's attention with the 2008 Olympics, what's next for China? Linda Yueh says the answer can be found by tracking China's labour productivity.

In China, urban residents have traditionally been protected against labour market competition from rural–urban migrants. Over the period of urban economic reform, rural–urban migration was allowed to increase in order to fill the employment gap as growth of labour demand outstripped that of the resident labour force in urban areas. However, as refo...

Summary This paper investigates the traits of self-employed entrepreneurs in urban China, an economy rife with informational and institutional imperfections, under-developed financial markets, but a growing and important non-state sector. Despite this challenging context, this paper finds that entrepreneurs make on average 20% more than non-entrepr...

Many in the West have acknowledged the recent emergence of China as an economic powerhouse without fully understanding how it came to be. Linda Yueh says that one fact about China has to be taken into account: it is home to a growing population of entrepreneurs.

Social capital is considered to play an economic role in labour markets. It may be particularly pertinent in one that is in transition from an administered to a market-oriented system. One factor that may determine success in the underdeveloped Chinese labour market is thus "guanxi", the Chinese variant of social capital. With individual-level meas...

This paper reviews European experience of economic integration and discusses the key similarities and difference between the European and Asian models. Europe has been able to achieve 'deep integration' because of the vision of a united Europe, the political balance within Europe, and the development of the institutions of the EU. None of these fea...

Productivity advances drive long-run economic growth, and a crucial factor is labour productivity improvements. The productivity of labour in China was marginally relevant in the pre-1978 period, but the picture has changed dramatically in the reform period due to numerous labour market reforms as well as radical changes in ownership structure wher...

In the 26 years since market-oriented reforms were introduced, China has emerged onto the world stage as a major economic presence, particularly since her accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001. This book is a collection of papers on the effects of globalisation on China's growth prospects and of China's growth on the wider economy. The...

China's urban sprawl has led to serious social cleavages. Unclear land and property rights have resulted in an uneasy alliance between real estate companies and local authorities, with most willing to strike illegal deals over land. The results have been devastating. Farmers live in fear that the land they till today will be gone tomorrow, while ur...

This paper assesses China's economic reforms in the context of globalisation. We argue that the economic reforms undertaken in China must be consistent with its gradualist approach to transition, and that given its status as a developing country, a slower pace of liberalisation is required. We analyse the effects of globalisation on major aspects o...

China's intellectual property rights regime provides formally for a measure of protection that is not always realised in practice. With the implementation of WTO-mandated measures in the coming years, China's intellectual property regime will come under increasing pressure. Intellectual property rights are one form of property rights which are thou...

The present study tests the extent of parental forgone consumption used instead to invest in children's human capital by use of intrahousehold resource allocation models. Using an unusual, comprehensive data set for urban China, there is more spending on boys aged 13 to 15 but more on girls aged 16 to 18, suggesting that standard human capital theo...

This article argues that the global intellectual property rights regime will affect the economic growth prospects of developing countries. The trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) provisions under the WTO articles will eventually cover all of its member countries, currently at around 150 and representing 95% of world trade....

The large-scale reform of the state-owned sector and the development of a private sector in the 1990s changed the nature of employment in urban China. The system of allocated, lifelong jobs, denoted the iron rice bowl, that had previously prevailed under state planning was eroded, permitting more labor turnover and mobility. Using an urban househol...

In urban areas of China, economic reforms were intensely implemented after 1984. We focus on two primary aspects of the reforms in the 1990s, those pertaining to the labor market and to wages. Based on original interviews and two unique household data sets, we investigate the effects of the reforms. Our first finding is that the components of annua...

In China urban residents have traditionally been protected against labour market competition from rural-urban migrants. Over the period of urban economic reform, rural-urban migration was allowed to increase in order to fill the employment gap as growth of labour demand outstripped that of the resident labour force in urban areas. However, as refor...

The move to a more market-oriented economy is associated with evidence of increased inequality in the incomes earned by men and women. The context of our study of this question is the recent large-scale reform of the inefficient state sector, which has caused layoffs of urban workers that dramatically changed the state of employment in urban China....

China"s gradualist approach to transition has resulted in a partially reformed economy within a communal property system that has grown well for nearly three decades. This path raises questions about the institutional foundations of China"s increasingly decentralised economy. China"s incremental reform process has been characterised by ill defined...

With projected 2007 growth rates of 10.8-10.9%, exceeding the previous year's impressive growth rate of 10.7%, China appears to defy expectations of a slowdown or even the usual cyclical movements in an economy. China certainly is not immune to business cycles – they are merely complicated as with most issues in China due to its transition from cen...

The economic rise of China heralds a transformation in the global economy that started in the early 1990s. Although market-oriented reforms began in 1978, it was not until 1992 that China's Open Door Policy took off. Meanwhile, after experiencing a major balance of payments crisis in 1991, India's economic policies also moved towards openness and i...