Supply Chain Structure and the Rise of China's Electric Vehicle Industry

Speaker: Weiting Miao, Postdoctoral Scholar, Environmental Social Sciences, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

China has emerged as the global leader in electric vehicles (EVs), with a substantial price advantage relative to other major economies. This research studies how the density and geographic proximity of the supply chain contribute to this advantage. Using transaction-level buyer–seller data from the Chinese auto industry, we show that supplier proximity increases matching probability and that greater input market thickness lowers input prices. Exploiting policy exposure as an instrument, we further document that shorter buyer–supplier distance reduces prices while improving quality. Motivated by these findings, we develop and estimate a structural model that integrates upstream matching and pricing with downstream competition under heterogeneous consumer demand. The model quantifies how alternative market structures affect equilibrium outcomes. When we adjust China’s supply chain and product structure to match the 2018 US market, EV parts costs increase by about 60%, final vehicle prices rise by roughly 50%, and sales decline by 57%.

About the Workshops

Our Young Researcher Workshops offer emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each workshop features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Workshops are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Patients' Value of Physician Continuity: Evidence from China

Speaker: Yuli Xu, Postdoctoral Fellow, APARC Asia Health Policy Program, Stanford University

Continuity of medical care is widely observed, but it is often difficult to disentangle patients’ intrinsic preferences from system-imposed switching costs. Our research exploits the Chinese healthcare setting, where patients can freely choose physicians at each visit and flexibly switch across hospitals and departments, to isolate patients’ value of physician continuity. Estimating a discrete choice model, we show that patients strongly prefer to see the same physician despite minimal institutional barriers to switching, indicating an intrinsic preference for continuity. We then examine how physicians’ temporary leave affects patient behavior using a stacked difference-in-differences design. A physician’s absence leads to significant reductions in patient visits, both within the physician’s department and across other departments in the same hospital, with no substitution toward other hospitals and no detectable effects on health outcomes. Patients return to their original physicians once they resume practice. Moreover, patients with more severe conditions incur higher spending when forced to see a new physician. Overall, our findings demonstrate that patients place substantial intrinsic value on physician continuity, even in a healthcare system with highly flexible provider choice.

About the Workshops

Our Young Researcher Workshops offer emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each workshop features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Workshops are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Institutional Barriers and Venture Finance Under Export Controls: Evidence from China’s High-Tech Sectors

Speaker: Yikai Cao, PhD Candidate in Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Export control measures have emerged as a critical institutional shock reshaping global political and economic dynamics. While prior studies have focused on how institutions shape entrepreneurial behavior and firm-level responses, our study adopts an institutional theory lens to examine the impact of export controls and industrial policy on venture capital (VC) investment decisions. Integrating firm-level financing data with policy analysis, we find that following export controls, domestic VC funding increases significantly and concentrates in key technological fields. To isolate the causal effects of these regulatory changes, we employ a difference-in-differences approach. Our findings contribute to institutional theory by demonstrating how regulatory shocks reshape investor risk-return assessments and provide valuable insights for policymakers and investors navigating geopolitical tensions.

About the Workshops

Our Young Researcher Workshops offer emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each workshop features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Workshops are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Yes, Standing Committee: Majority Rule in Non-Democracies

Speaker: Haokun Sun, PhD candidate, Cornell University; IvyPlus Exchange Scholar, Doerr School of Sustainability

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) espouses a principle of collective leadership, in which the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) makes important decisions by consensus. However, it is not known whether such a majority rule is employed in practice. This paper studies the appointment of party cadres into positions of power as a means of uncovering a general decision-making mechanism within the CCP. We provide reduced-form results showing that appointments are decided by the PSC, who selectively promote candidates in their social networks. This motivates a novel model of collective leadership in which PSC members play a coalition game to promote their preferred candidates. The majority rule is represented by a minimum constraint on the size of winning coalitions. Estimating our model, we show that appointments to positions above the vice-provincial minister level requires support from 75\% of the PSC members on average. This cut-off varies depending on the President in power, ranging from 50\% under Deng to 80\% under Jiang and Hu. Estimating political factions using modularity clustering, we find that factional penalties operate in parallel to the majority rule. Our method can be useful for understanding decision-making in non-democracies more generally.

About the Workshops

Our Young Researcher Workshops offer emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each workshop features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Workshops are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Effectively Targeting Perinatal Home Visiting Interventions: Estimating Heterogeneous Treatment Effects on Infant Hemoglobin, Breastfeeding, and Diet Using Sorted Effects

Speaker: Siva Balakrishnan, PhD, University of Nevada, Reno

In this paper, we explore heterogenous treatment effects (HTE) of a stage-based home counseling intervention on exclusive breastfeeding (EBF), child hemoglobin and dietary diversity (DDS). In a cluster randomized controlled trial, pregnant women and caregivers of infants <6 months of age were enrolled in intervention or control arms in rural Sichuan, China. Community health workers delivered educational modules tailored to participants’ stage of development for 12 months. A novel sorted effects method was used to estimate HTE. Individual treatment effects were modeled by regressing baseline characteristics, treatment, and interactions thereof on outcomes. Characteristics of the 20% most and 20% least affected families were compared using multiple t-tests and adjusted p-values to identify those associated with HTE. Evidence of HTE on outcomes was strong with significant individual CATE on EBF and DDS among the 20% most affected families. Mothers with higher baseline caregiving knowledge or who gave birth vaginally saw greatest increases in EBF. Mothers pregnant at baseline or with less social support saw the most benefits on hemoglobin. Mothers with lower caregiving knowledge had greatest increases in DDS. The evidence supports the use of stage-based curricula and targeting mothers from pregnancy to obtain the greatest increases in child hemoglobin. To improve overall effects on EBF, breastfeeding modules may need to adjust content for first-time mothers and those with low caregiving knowledge. Partnering with hospital staff may improve EBF, particularly after c-section. Engaging family members to strengthen maternal social support may improve infant DDS.

About the Workshops

Our Young Researcher Workshops offer emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each workshop features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Workshops are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Each year, more than ten million students across China pin their hopes on the gaokao, the nationwide college entrance exam. Unlike in the United States, where standardized tests are just one factor, in China college admission is determined entirely by gaokao performance. It is no wonder the test has become a national obsession.

Drawing on extensive surveys, historical research, and economic analysis, and informed by Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li’s own experiences of the gaokao gauntlet, The Highest Exam reveals how China’s education system functions as a centralized tournament that serves the needs of the Chinese Communist Party and drives much of the country’s economic growth. The book examines the gaokao’s far-reaching effects on China’s society and beyond. As Chinese-American families bring the expectations of the highest exam with them, their calls for objective, transparent metrics in the education system increasingly clash with the more holistic measures of achievement used by American schools and universities.

About the Authors
 

Hongbin Li is the Co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Li obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 before joining the economics department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University from 2007 to 2016 in the School of Economics and Management and was the founder and Executive Associate Director of the China Social and Economic Data Center. 

Li’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world. He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics and co-author of the book, The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China, published by Harvard University Press.
 

Ruixue Jia is a professor of economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. She also serves as Co-director of the China Data Lab, executive secretary of the Association of Comparative Economic Studies (ACES) and co-chair of the China Economic Summer Institute (CESI). 

Jia’s research lies at the intersections of economics, history and politics, with a focus on how power structures evolve and shape economic development. Her recent work examines the political economy of idea formation and diffusion, including the interplay between the state, education, science and technology. She is the co-author of The Highest Exam, a book that explores how China’s education system both mirrors and molds its society.
 

Claire Cousineau  is a writer and former researcher at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, she is currently pursuing her MBA at Duke University.

Since studying and working in Beijing and Kunming, Claire is passionate about fostering a deeper public understanding of China’s role on the global stage and creating cross-cultural relationships. Claire is the co-author of the book, The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China, along with Hongbin Li and Ruixue Jia, published by Harvard University Press in 2025.