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Did Chinese cities whose public health departments are headed by medical professionals fare better in fighting coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)?

The authors collected the professional background of the directors of the public health departments of 350 Chinese cities, which include 87% of the Chinese population. Excluding Wuhan, the epicenter of COVID-19, the authors analyzed the infection rates and death rates from COVID-19 between 131 Chinese cities whose public health departments are led by medical professionals and 218 cities whose public health departments are led by nonprofessionals. The authors employed a multivariate regression controlling for the number of people that traveled from Wuhan to each city, the local economic development and the number of hospital beds.

Chinese cities whose public health departments are led by medical professionals had 21 fewer confirmed cases per 10 million as of January 31, 2020 [95% CI, −40 to −3], 58 fewer cases per 10 million in the next 10 days [95% CI, −116 to 0], similar new cases between February 11 and February 20, 2020, and 3 fewer deaths per 10 million as of February 20, 2020 [95% CI, −7 to 0].

Association could not make a strong causal claim.

Local public health authorities are critical for combating a pandemic. The authors found that Chinese cities whose public health departments are headed by medical professionals were associated with lower infection rates and fewer death rates from COVID-19. The results were significant only at the start of the outbreak. This study’s results suggest that to better combat a pandemic, local public health authorities should be led by competent people who have a medical background.

The authors provide the first empirical evidence about the association between a local public health head's competence and the infection rate and death rate of COVID-19. The authors’ manually collected data also show that only 38% of the heads of the public health departments of Chinese cities have a medical background.

Since illiquidity risk is one of the most important pricing factors of assets, the aim of this paper is to evaluate the suitability of proxies of illiquidity prevalent in the asset pricing literature and their explanatory power in asset pricing tests.

Using the available high‐frequency intra‐day data, the paper constructs some proxies of illiquidity as benchmarks and then evaluates proxies of illiquidity based on inter‐day data.

The empirical results provide convincing evidence that turnover is the most suitable proxy of illiquidity in the Chinese stock market. It is not only hghly related to intra‐day data‐based proxies of illiquidity but also completely superior to other measures of illiquidity in asset pricing tests.

First, the paper applies illiquidity measurements from microstructure theory and the available high‐frequency data, and examines the suitability of illiquidity proxies in asset pricing literature in the Chinese stock market. Rational basics are provided to test the applicability of illiquidity measures in the Chinese stock market. Second, the paper introduces illiquidity proxies into asset pricing models to extend their explanatory power. The paper's results may help researchers to select illiquidity proxies more cautiously.