This in-depth volume explains China's residential construction boom and reviews how some established trends are likely to challenge its housing market in coming years. It draws on household surveys and public data in China and provides important lessons about housing policy for China and other countries.

This year, the NBER Macroeconomics Annual celebrates its thirtieth volume. The first two papers examine China’s macroeconomic development. “Trends and Cycles in China's Macroeconomy” by Chun Chang, Kaiji Chen, Daniel F. Waggoner, and Tao Zha outlines the key characteristics of growth and business cycles in China. “Demystifying the Chinese Housing Boom” by Hanming Fang, Quanlin Gu, Wei Xiong, and Li-An Zhou constructs a new house price index, showing that Chinese house prices have grown by ten percent per year over the past decade. The third paper, “External and Public Debt Crises” by Cristina Arellano, Andrew Atkeson, and Mark Wright, asks why there appear to be large differences across countries and subnational jurisdictions in the effect of rising public debts on economic outcomes. The fourth, “Networks and the Macroeconomy: An Empirical Exploration” by Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, and William Kerr, explains how the network structure of the US economy propagates the effect of gross output productivity shocks across upstream and downstream sectors. The fifth and sixth papers investigate the usefulness of surveys of household’s beliefs for understanding economic phenomena. “Expectations and Investment,” by Nicola Gennaioli, Yueran Ma, and Andrei Shleifer, demonstrates that a chief financial officer's expectations of a firm's future earnings growth is related to both the planned and actual future investment of that firm. “Declining Desire to Work and Downward Trends in Unemployment and Participation” by Regis Barnichon and Andrew Figura shows that an increasing number of prime-age Americans who are not in the labor force report no desire to work and that this decline accelerated during the second half of the 1990s.

The United States and China are arguably the most globally consequential actors of the early twenty first century, and look set to remain so into the foreseeable future. This volume seeks to highlight that American images of China are responsible for constructing certain truths and realities about that country and its people. It also introduces the understanding that these images have always been inextricable from the enactment and justification of US China policies in Washington, and that those policies themselves are active in the production and reproduction of imagery and in the protection of American identity when seemingly threatened by that of China. Demonstrating how past American images of China are vital to understanding the nature and significance of those which circulate today, Turner addresses three key questions: What have been the dominant American images of China and the Chinese across the full lifespan of Sino-US relations? How have historical and contemporary American images of China and the Chinese enabled and justified US China policy? What role does US China policy play in the production and reproduction of American images of China? Exploring and evaluating a wide-ranging variety of sources including films and television programmes, newspaper and magazine articles, the records and journals of politicians and diplomats and governmental documents including speeches and legal declarations this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of US foreign policy, American politics, China studies and international relations.

This open access book explores new research directions in social inequality and urban segregation. With the goal of fostering an ongoing dialogue between scholars in Europe and China, it brings together an impressive team of international researchers to shed light on the entwined processes of inequality and segregation, and the implications for urban development. Through a rich collection of empirical studies at the city, regional and national levels, the book explores the impact of migration on cities, the related problems of social and spatial segregation, and the ramifications for policy reform. While the literature on both segregation and inequality has traditionally been dominated by European and North American studies, there is growing interest in these issues in the Chinese context. Economic liberalization, rapid industrial restructuring, the enormous growth of cities, and internal migration, have all reshaped the country profoundly. What have we learned from the European and North American experience of segregation and inequality, and what insights can be gleaned to inform the bourgeoning interest in these issues in the Chinese context? How is China different, both in terms of the nature and the consequences of segregation inequality, and what are the implications for future research and policy? Given the continued rise of China’s significance in the world, and its recent declaration of war on poverty, this book offers a timely contribution to scholarship, identifying the core insights to be learned from existing research, and providing important guidance on future directions for policy makers and researchers.

The field of transnational American studies is going through a paradigm shift from the transatlantic to the transpacific. This volume demonstrates a critical method of engaging the Asian Pacific: the chapters present alternative narratives that negotiate American dominance and exceptionalism by analyzing the experiences of Asians and Pacific Islanders from the vast region, including those from the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Hawaii, Guam, and other archipelagos. Contributors make use of materials from “oceanic archives,” retrieving what has seemingly been lost, forgotten, or downplayed inside and outside state-bound archives, state legal preoccupations, and state prioritized projects. The result is the recovery of indigenous epistemologies, which enables scholars to go beyond US-based sources and legitimates third-world knowledge production and dissemination. Surprising findings and unexpected perspectives abound in this work. Minnan traders from southern China are identified as the agents who connected the Indian Ocean with the Pacific, making the Manila Galleon trade in the sixteenth century the first completely global commercial enterprise. The Chamorro poetry of Guam gives a view of America from beyond its national borders and articulates the cultural pride of the Chamorro against US colonialism and imperialism. The continuing distortion of indigenous claims to the sovereignty of Hawaii is analyzed through a reading of the most widely circulated English translation of the creation myth, Kumulipo. There is also a critique of the Korean involvement in the American War in Vietnam, which was informed and shaped by Korean economy and politics in a global context. By investigating the transpacific as moments of military, cultural, and geopolitical contentions, this timely collection charts the reach and possibilities of the latest developments in the most dynamic form of transnational American studies. “This collection offers a well-organized and intellectually coherent series of essays addressing issues of American imperialism in Oceania and the Pacific region. Covering history, politics, and literary culture in equal measure, the essays are theoretically well-informed, and their focus on Indigenous cultures speaks to the current scholarly interest in the ways in which Indigenous communities can be understood within a global context.” —Paul Giles, University of Sydney “This terrific volume offers the latest mapping of that complex terrain known as the ‘transpacific.’ Timely and capacious, the essays here from an all-star cast of international scholars offer the latest thinking on the ‘oceanic’ dimensions of global modernity. Essential reading for anyone interested in the current ‘Asian’ turn in American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Transpacific Studies.” —Steven Yao, Hamilton College