Fact of the Week: Four and a Half Decades Later, the Cultural Revolution is Still Harming China’s Economy

Source: Zhangkai Huang, et al., “Education and Innovation: The Long Shadow of the Cultural Revolution,” NBER Working Paper No. w27107.

Commentary: China’s Cultural Revolution resulted in colleges and universities being closed from 1966 to 1976. This meant that an entire cohort of Chinese students missed the opportunity to receive a higher education. A new study has found that firms with CEOs who turned 18 during the Cultural Revolution, spend less on R&D, generate fewer patents, and receive fewer citations to these patents.