NBER Publications by Joseph Fan

Where legal systems and market forces enforce contracts inadequately, vertical integration can circumvent these transaction difficulties. But, such environments often also feature highly interventionist government, and even corruption. Vertical integration might then enhance returns to political rent-seeking aimed at securing and extending market power. Thus, where political rent seeking is minimal, vertical integration should add to firm value and economy performance; but where political rent seeking is substantial, firm value might rise as economy performance decays. China offers a suitable background for empirical examination of these issues because her legal and market institutions are generally weak, but nonetheless exhibit substantial province-level variation. Vertical integratio...

Weak institutions ought to deter foreign direction investment (FDI), and mass media stories highlight China's institutional deficiencies, yet China is now one of the world's largest FDI destinations. This incongruity characterizes China's paradoxical growth. Cross-country regressions show that China's FDI inflow is not exceptionally large, given the quality of its institutions and its economic track record. Institutions clearly determine a country's allure as an FDI destination, but standard measures of institutional quality can be problematic for countries undergoing rapid institutional development, and can usefully be augmented by economic track record measures. Deng Xiaoping's 1993 "southern tour" heralded sweeping reforms, and this regime shift is insufficiently reflected in commonly u...