Distortions and industrial upgrading in China

In the recent decade, researchers have been increasingly interested in the Chinese economy due to its decade-long 2-digit growth and the fact that China became the world’s second-largest economy in 2010 in terms of total GDP. Despite the rapid growth, there are still concerns about the inefficient allocation of production resources in China and the technological gaps between China and developed countries such as the US.
This dissertation contains three chapters. The first two chapters give a big picture of the impact of the inefficient allocation of production resources while the third chapter zooms into the Chinese electric vehicle industry to understand whether and how developing countries can use industrial policies to close the technological gaps with developed countries.