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Going Green in China: Firms’ Responses to Stricter Environmental Regulations

Haichao Fan, Joshua Graff Zivin, Zonglai Kou, Xueyue Liu, Huanhuan Wang, Apr 29, 2020

Evidence from China shows that firms respond to stricter enforcement of the emission reduction target by reducing their pollution. This effect is stronger for firms in industries with higher pollution intensity. Stricter environmental regulations also lead to sharp declines in firms’ profits, capital, and labor. A sequence of tests of the underlying mechanisms reveals...

The Impact of Rapid Aging and Pension Reform on Savings and the Labor Supply: the Case of China

Hui He, Lei Ning, Dongming Zhu, Jun 26, 2019

Individuals can use savings and labor supply to self-insure against uncertainties over their life cycle, such as idiosyncratic income shocks and changes in longevity and pension benefits. Using China as a case study, we investigate, both empirically and quantitatively, the impact of rapid aging and pension reform on savings and the labor supply, and the roles...

China’s Mobility Barriers and Employment Allocations

Rachel Ngai, Christopher Pissarides, Jin Wang, Mar 07, 2018

Despite reforms to the hukou household registration system and the very large rural-urban migration experienced in China, rural households are still experiencing a risk of losing their land allocation if they migrate. We argue that this risk leads to an inefficient rental market with low rents and is an impediment to migration, with consequent over-employment in agriculture and low productivity.

Does China’s Place-Based Land Policy Lead to Spatial Misallocation?

Min Fang, Libin Han, Zibin Huang, Ming Lu, Li Zhang, Nov 17, 2021

After 2003, the Chinese central government implemented an inland-favoring land supply policy that distributed more construction land quotas to underdeveloped non-eastern regions. We investigate the effect of the policy and find that it drastically increased land and housing prices in more-developed eastern regions, which consequently created substantial spatial misallocation of land and labor. The policy seems to reduce regional output gaps; however, it hurt...

China’s Rebalancing and Gender Inequality

Mariya Brussevich, Era Dabla-Norris, Bin Grace Li, Jun 23, 2021

This study documents women’s declining relative wages and labor force participation in China over the last two decades, in contrast with the predictions of the structural transformation literature, suggesting that rising service sector share is associated with narrowing gender gaps. We show that women’s labor supply elasticity to spouse’s wages increased dramatically between 1995 and 2013, which is consistent with a U-shaped relationship between economic development and women’s...