Dataset and code for: Does gift exchange shape household financial decisions?

Description

Gift exchange, a distinctive cultural feature in China, exerts a significant influence on household financial decisions. Utilizing data from the China Household Financial Survey (CHFS) covering over 60,000 households, we find a robust positive association between gift exchange and households' participation in financial market investment. These results withstand extensive robustness checks and endogeneity tests. Further analysis reveals that gift exchange promotes financial investment primarily through informal credit and social trust channels. The effect is heterogeneous: it is more pronounced in urban areas, and especially among lower-income families. This study enriches the household finance literature by highlighting the role of traditional cultural practices in shaping modern financial behaviors.

Steps to reproduce

Use Stata/MP 18.0 on Windows. Set the current working directory to the extracted package root and run 00_run_all.do. Nointernet connection is needed because the validated community command files are included under ado. The master file cleans each CHFS wave, appends and constructs the analysis data, links the required supplementary variables, creates the final sample, and reproduces Tables 1-8.

Institutions

• Central South University

  Hunan, Changsha

Categories

Licence