Essays on quantitative macroeconomics and international finance
This thesis investigates the impact of male abundance on the marriage market matching outcomes in China and its implication on household income inequality, it also studies how capital controls affect the promotion of Chinese currency internationalization. In the first chapter, a brief introduction of the topics in this thesis is presented and I also highlight the significance of the research questions. Chapter 2 provides an empirical analysis of the impact of the rising male abundance on the degree of assortative matching in the Chinese marriage market, and investigates its influence on household income inequality. I find that the sex ratio in the marriage market is negatively correlated with the degree of assortative matching, and this negatively affects household income inequality, an instrumental variable analysis is also presented. In Chapter 3, we develop a general equilibrium model to structurally interpret the impact of the sex ratio in the marriage market on the degree of assortative matching, the quantitative results highlight that sex ratio negatively associates with household sorting and negatively affects household income inequality, these results are consistent with data sample and the literature’s finding. We also endogenize the education decision for males and females before they enter the marriage market, the result indicates that males and females are more likely to increase education investment with the rising male abundance in the marriage market. Chapter 4, looks at the open economy issues in China, in which we quantitatively study how capital account restriction affects Chinese currency usage in the rest of the world countries, the result points out that an increase in capital control limits the promotion of Chinese currency internationalization.
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/476578/
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/476578/1/Final_Thesis_Chen_Huang.pdf