On the Role of Openness in the Chinese Industrial Growth Process - A city-level assessment.

This paper is concerned with the empirical relationship between the Chinese open door policy and the ensuing industrial growth process. Using cross-section data relating to Chinese cities throughout the 1988-93 period, we intend to stress the respective impact of foreign investment and export growth on short-term growth performance. The results first highlight the leading role of foreign investment compared to those of domestic factors and exports. Moreover they not only point out the overall predominance of foreign investment but also indicate that foreign investment tends to dominate export growth as an engine of growth. In terms of balance in regional development, they suggest that foreign investment favours a geographically concentrated development.

Human Capital and Growth: What Can we Learn from Micro-data? Evidence from Taiwan (1976-95)

This paper uses micro-data to define aggregate human capital stock indicators and proposes various specifications to test for the role of human capital accumulation on economic growth. An empirical evaluation on the Taiwanese experience over the 1975-96 period suggests that: (i) the use of alternative human capital measures does not allow for the identification of significant differences with usual indicators when estimating the direct contribution of human capital accumulation to economic growth, (ii) specifying indirect channels through which human capital accumulation may affect economic growth allows for a clear identification of external effects arising through intersectoral interactions.Taiwan., externality, experience, human capital, economic growth

Éléments de comptabilité de la croissance chinoise

This paper investigates the current state of growth accounting in China. The growing empirical literature on Chinese economic growth is based on several stylised facts which stress high but erratic long-term economic growth, strong accumulation of capital and rapid population growth. From these preliminary observations, growth accounting exercises found in the existing empirical literature suggest that production factors and total factor productivity have had different contributions to growth since the beginning of the People's Republic of China. However, a closer look at this literature reveals some weaknesses which question its validity. Two constraints appear particularly important: one is of a statistical nature, because Chinese data are more or less reliable; the other is of a methodological nature, because existing growth decomposition is not based on econometric estimations of the underlying production function. Considering those weaknesses, we propose an exercise in growth accounting on a long-term basis and an estimation of the aggregate production function for the period from 1978 to 1995 in order to check conclusions which can be considered as robust. Our results tend to confirm the major role of capital accumulation in accounting for growth during the pre-reform period and the relatively important contribution of total factor productivity growth in the current economic growth of China. They also show that, in spite of the improvements made by the Chinese State Statistical Bureau in measuring economic change, provided data remain dubious and may consequently lead to biased estimation of the amplitude of growth and its sources. This uncertainty constitutes a serious handicap in the search for a relevant analysis of Chinese growth both in the long run and for recent years and suggests that statistical measurement of Chinese growth performance needs to be improved in order to be able to draw valid inference about its sources. Our results finally show that during the period from 1978 to 1995, the productivity gains can be partly, but not fully explained by a process of labour reallocation from low-productivity to higher-productivity activities.China., total factor productivity, economic growth

Urban income inequality in China revisited (1988–2002)

Using newly available spatial price deflators, this paper shows that inequality evaluations in the literatureoverstate the magnitude of inequality and inequality changes in China, as well as the role played by regional differences in the recent inequality rise.Inequality; China; Spatial price deflators; Inequality decomposition

The Evolution of Gender Earnings Gaps and Discrimination in Urban China: 1988-1995

This paper analyzes the impact of market liberalization on gender earnings differentials and discrimination against women in urban China at the beginning of the 90s. The observed stability in the overall gender earnings gap between 1988 and 1995 is shown to result from a complex set of evolutions across enterprises, earnings distributions and time. Our results highlight the interplay of opposing forces, economic reforms contributing to changes in managers’ behaviors in different dimensions. On the one hand, by bringing more competition, liberalization favored a reduction in discriminating behaviors in both urban collectives and foreign-invested enterprises; on the other hand, by relaxing institutional rules, it led to a loosening of the government’s egalitarian wage setting policies, leaving more space for discrimination in state-owned enterprises.gender earnings differentials, discrimination, enterprise ownership, urban China

Wage Differentials and Ownership Structure in Chinese Enterprises

This paper analyses the determinants of wage differentials among different ownership enterprises in urban China in 1955,using an extended version of Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methods. We find higher wages in state-owned and foreign-invested enterprises compared to urban collectives, but no significant difference in hourly wages between central state-owned and foreign-invested enterprises. Moreover, we find strong evidence for segmentation on the Chinese labor market, the conjunction of segmentation and differences in hours worked being the major determinant of observed differences. We also show that, although foreign-invested enterprises allow for higher global annual income, it is at the cost of longer working hours.China., enterprise ownership, segmentation, labour market

Urban income inequality in China revisited, 1988-2002

Using newly available spatial price deflators, this paper shows that inequality evaluations in the literature overstate the magnitude of inequality and inequality changes in China, as well as the role played by regional differences in the observed inequality rise duringthe 1990s.Inequality; China; Spatial price-deflators; Inequality decomposition

Wage Differentials and Ownership Structure in Chinese Enterprises

This paper analyses the determinants of wage differentials among different ownership enterprises in urban China in 1955,using an extended version of Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methods. We find higher wages in state-owned and foreign-invested enterprises compared to urban collectives, but no significant difference in hourly wages between central state-owned and foreign-invested enterprises. Moreover, we find strong evidence for segmentation on the Chinese labor market, the conjunction of segmentation and differences in hours worked being the major determinant of observed differences. We also show that, although foreign-invested enterprises allow for higher global annual income, it is at the cost of longer working hours.China., enterprise ownership, segmentation, labor market

Geography, Economic Policy and Regional Development in China

Many studies of regional disparity in China have focused on the preferential policies received by the coastal provinces. We decomposed the location dummies in provincial growth regressions to obtain estimates of the effects of geography and policy on provincial growth rates in 1996–99. Their respective contributions in percentage points were 2.5 and 3.5 for the province-level metropolises, 0.6 and 2.3 for the northeastern provinces, 2.8 and 2.8 for the coastal provinces, 2.0 and 1.6 for the central provinces, 0 and 1.6 for the northwestern provinces, and 0.1 and 1.8 for the southwestern provinces. Because the so-called preferential policies are largely deregulation policies that allowed coastal Chinese provinces to integrate into the international economy, it is far superior to reduce regional disparity by extending these deregulation policies to the interior provinces than by re-regulating the coastal provinces. Two additional inhibitions to income convergence are the household registration system, which makes the movement of the rural poor to prosperous areas illegal, and the monopoly state bank system that, because of their bureaucratic nature, disburses most of its funds to its large traditional customers, few of whom are located in the western provinces. Improving infrastructure to overcome geographic barriers is fundamental to increasing western growth, but increasing human capital formation (education and medical care) is also crucial because only it can come up with new better ideas to solve centuries-old problems like unbalanced growth.China’s Western, Preferential Policies, economic geography, China’s Regional Growth Pattern

Volunteer and satisfied? Rural households' participation in a payments for environmental services programme in Inner Mongolia

Using survey data from Inner Mongolia, this paper explores the role of stakeholder engagement in the implementation of the Sloping Land Conversion Programme, a payments for environmental services (PES) programme designed to restore forest in degraded land. Based on the idea that volunteerism and satisfaction with the programme's outcome are two important components of the programme's viability, we successively analyse the intensity of households' participation in the programme and their reported satisfaction with its economic achievement, which we relate to their stated volunteerism. We show that households' participation intensity in the SLCP is primarily driven by land and location characteristics, and that these findings hold true whether or not the households voluntarily enrolled in the programme. Moreover, as far as participants' satisfaction can be interpreted as an indicator of potential long-term support for the programme, our findings also support plausible sustainability for the programme