Associate Professor Wang Yanan from the School of Finance, along with collaborators Professor Kong Dongmin and Dr. Ye Naide, published the joint paper Deregulating the input market by central inspection: Lessons from China's primary land market online in the international authoritative journal Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization is a top-tier journal in the fields of organizational and behavioral economics, primarily publishing research findings in economic decision-making, organization and behavior, and economic change. It is recognized as an A-tier journal by the academic journal accreditation of the school.

Abstract

Leveraging a reform that assigns central inspectorates to local units in China to oversee industrial land transactions, this study examines the effects of unleashing the local government's influence on land prices using a difference-in-differences design. Our research provides compelling evidence that the reform leads to an additional 50% increase in industrial land prices and significantly enhances the productivity of local industrial firms. The rise in land prices can be attributed to an increase in market-oriented transactions. Additionally, we discover an improvement in the quality of new entrants and a reduction in resource misallocation following the reform. By demonstrating the positive externalities of central supervision on local government intervention in the industrial land market, our findings suggest that, in certain cases, central inspection can mitigate distorting behaviors of the local government in input markets. This, in turn, facilitates the screening of productive entrants and hinders investments by unproductive incumbents, thereby improving the overall productivity of economic entities.

Teacher Introduction

Kong Dongmin, a distinguished professor of the Wenhui Scholar Program at the School of Finance of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, is also a doctoral supervisor. He is a member of the Financial Management Professional Committee of the China Society of Management Modernization. His primary research interests include financial finance, behavioral finance, and the Chinese capital market. He has published numerous papers in domestic and international journals such as the Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Public Economics, and Management Science, as well as in domestic journals including Economic Research, Financial Research, and Economic Quarterly. He has presided over major projects funded by the National Social Science Fund as well as several projects funded by the National Natural Science Fund and the Social Science Fund. Currently, he serves as the editor-in-chief of Economic Analysis and Policy and as an associate editor for journals such as Quarterly Journal of Finance.

Wang Yanan is an associate professor at the School of Finance, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. He obtained his Ph.D. in Finance from the School of Economics, Fudan University, and pursued joint doctoral training at WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany. His primary research areas include corporate finance, contract theory, and behavioral finance. Currently, he is leading a project funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and has participated in several projects funded by both the National Natural Science Foundation and the National Social Science Foundation of China. His research findings have been published in prominent domestic journals such as Economic Research and Financial Research, as well as in SSCI journals including the Journal of Corporate Finance, China Economic Review, Energy Economics, Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Economic Modelling, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, and Finance Research Letters.