Family Background, Government Policy, and Doing Business in China
Seminar of economic and social research college (No. 40)
Lecture| April 14, 2017/13:30-14:45 | 106B meeting room in Zhonghui building of Jinan University

Speaker: Lan Xiaohuan
Sponsor: Economic and social research college of Jinan University

ABOUT LAN XIAOHUAN
Lan Xiaohuan, doctor of economics graduating from University of Virginia in U.S., assistant professor of School of Economics at Fudan University, researcher of Research Institute of Chinese Economy at Fudan University, mainly studies China-oriented development economics and public economics.

ABSTRACT
This paper investigates how the political background of parents affect children’s involvement in business in China. We first evaluate the advantage of having cadre parents for becoming a business owner, using multiple waves of a nationally representative survey between 2005 and 2012. Then we document that the effect varies greatly with respect to government policies. Specifically, by exploiting variation in government spending across provinces and the Fiscal Stimulus Package in 2009, we find that the advantage of having cadre parents is significantly larger in regions where governments spend more on business-related activities. Further evidence from firm-level subsidies and subjective evaluation of factors that matter for career success also sheds light on the mechanism.