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Plastic waste trade has grown considerably in the last decades and has caused severe environmental problems in recipient countries. As the largest recipient, China has permanently banned the imports of plastic waste since 2018. This paper examines the causal effect of plastic waste imports on air pollution by exploiting China's experience of importing plastic waste and the recent import ban. Combining data on plastic waste imports with PM2.5 data at the city level for the years 2000-2011, we find that plastic waste imports increased PM2.5 density significantly. This effect is linked to expanded production in the waste processing sector and an increased number of incineration. To evaluate the impact of the import ban on air quality, we employ daily data on air pollution between 2015 and 2020. Our difference-in-differences results show that affected cities, relative to other cities, experienced a significant improvement in air quality following the ban. These findings suggest potential environmental gains from banning plastic waste imports in other countries.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, China's mask and vaccine diplomacy have been widely discussed, but the debate relies on a few stylized data points. This article introduces a systematic way to measure China's foreign aid in almost real-time through official customs records of exported aid goods. Our results show significant shifts in China's aid after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, medical aid skyrocketed after the outbreak. It was initially dominated by face masks and other protective equipment and later by vaccines. This came at the expense of non-medical aid, which was 16.3 percent below its pre-pandemic level. Second, China's aid became global, clearly extending beyond the Global South. Third, in the aftermath of the initial outbreak in March 2020, China's aid became less responsive to both recipient need and political friendship, which can be mainly attributed to the rise of aid through non-government sources. However, in the vaccine diplomacy period of 2021, economic needs and political factors have regained their original importance.

This paper investigates the effects of trade liberalisation induced labour demand shocks on informal employment in China. We employ a local labour market approach to construct a regional measure of exposure to import tariffs by exploiting initial differences in industrial composition across prefectural cities and then link it with the employment status of individuals. Using three waves of household survey data between 1995 and 2007, our results show that workers from regions that experienced a larger tariff cut were more likely to be employed informally. Further results based on firm-level data reveal a consistent pattern; tariff reductions increased the share of informal workers within firms. Such effects are more salient among smaller and less productive firms. Our findings suggest an important margin of labour market adjustment in response to trade shocks in developing countries, i.e. employment adjustment along the formal-informal dimension.

This paper investigates the impact of import liberalization induced labor demand shocks on male and female employment in China. Combining data from population and firm census waves over the period of 1990 to 2005, we relate prefecture-level employment by gender to the exposure to tariff reductions on locally imported products. Our empirical results show that increasing import competition has kept more females in the workforce, reducing an otherwise growing gender employment gap. These dynamics were present both in the local economies as a whole and among formal private industrial firms. Examining channels through which tariff reductions differentially affected males and females, we find that trade induced competitive pressures contributed to a general expansion of female intensive industries, shifts in sectoral gender segregation, reductions in gender discrimination in the labor market, technological upgrading through computerization and general income growth.

China ist einer der weltweit wichtigsten Exporteure von Medizinprodukten wie beispielsweise Gesichtsmasken oder Desinfektionsmittel. Daher nahmen chinesische Unternehmen eine herausragende Rolle als Lieferant dieser Produkte während des globalen Ausbruchs der COVID-19-Pandemie im Frühjahr 2020 ein. Die Autoren untersuchen mithilfe monatlicher Handelsdaten, die von der chinesischen Zollverwaltung erhoben und veröffentlicht werden, die Veränderungen der Handelsströme für medizinische Güter während der Krise. Dabei unterteilen sie die Daten in kommerziellen Handel und Hilfslieferungen. Sie kommen zu dem Ergebnis, dass sowohl Handelsbeziehungen, die bereits vor der Krise bestanden, als auch politische Verbindungen zu den jeweiligen chinesischen Provinzen für importierende Staaten hilfreich waren, um Zugang zu den knappen Gütern während der Krise zu erlangen. China assumed an important role during the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 as the main exporter of critical medical goods such as face masks and disinfectants. We use official monthly trade data from China Customs to investigate the emerging trade patterns, both for commercial exports and donations of medical goods. We find that both existing trade linkages and political ties to Chinese provinces can help to attract Chinese medical goods.