Equ(al)ity and Community in China after Forty Years of Economic Reform

We suggest a methodology that combines a refined conceptual approach with a theoretically-inspired empirical assessment, to analyse how Sinicised Marxist theory as well as practice has invariably emphasised Marx’s philosophy of history, rather than any version of Marxist egalitarian political philosophy, and therefore developed a culturally distinctive version of Marxism as totalitarian and subsequently authoritarian (rather than democratic) socialism. We argue that Chinese socialism has appropriated and applied socialist ideals to China’s post-cultural-revolution development into an economic reform agenda without political transition. We suggest that China today runs an ethically and politically problematic regime under which the people enjoy neither sufficient social justice nor decent community values. Such lack of equality and community represents a major inherent contradiction of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” which has to accept and even accommodate increasing inequality to drive future growth. This contradiction also makes the so-called Chinese Dream more one of national aggregate prosperity than a dream for the Chinese people

Is labor flexibility a substitute to offshoring? Evidence from Italian manufacturing

We test whether labor flexibility acts as a substitute to delocalization. Using Italian survey data, we show that a higher share of temporary workers appears to reduce the likelihood of future offshoring. However, once reverse causality and spurious correlation are controlled for with IV techniques, the relationship vanishes. This finding suggests that a solid argument that labor flexibility and offshoring are substitutes has still to be made