Suchergebnisse

Degree of market integration has often been used as a gauge of the success of market liberalisation and structural adjustment policies in developing countries. China is both an emerging economy and the world's largest transitional economy. The target of its economic reform is the formation of an efficient market-oriented economy. Since it provides a wealth of evidence of the workings of a transitional economy, the performance of China's market is of great interest to transitional economists. There are two reasons to believe that market integration must be tested if the progress of economic reform in China is to be determined. The first reason relates to debates about assessment of market performance. On the one hand, China has been praised for facilitating market competition amongst state-owned, collective and private sectors. On the other hand, Young argues that, despite market-oriented reform, segments of the Chinese economy freed from central control tend to exploit rent-seeking opportunities implicit in distortions of the economy. As Young puts it, 'distortions beget distortion'. It is possible China's ongoing reform will stimulate sustained economic growth. If Young's prediction is accurate, however, China's markets have been getting less rather than more integrated and sustained economic growth in the future is unlikely. It is necessary, then, to test rather than assume market integration. The second reason to believe market integration must be tested has to do with China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the end of 2001. Although China is classified as a developing country, no one doubts that its markets will be more integrated with world markets after its WTO entry. A well-functioning market needs many different forms of support, such as infrastructure, institutions and policies. Studies on key determinants of market integration have promising policy implications for the establishment of Chinese market institutions. Agricultural markets are indispensable for China, and they emerged at the very beginning of reform. Ever since, however, they have been subject to strong government intervention. A high level of agricultural market integration will benefit Chinese agriculture in various ways. For example, it will be possible to allocate endowments more efficiently. Existing studies show that allocation has an effect on patterns of regional economic growth and disparity, and that price and production fluctuate less in more integrated markets. Many other ongoing reform strategies, such as urbanisation, industrialisation and so one, are related to level of agricultural market development. Methodologically, the agricultural markets, especially the grain markets, provide an excellent window for examining market development during transition. Unlike factor markets (for example, labour markets), commodity markets (for example, grain markets) are ideal for the study of market integration because their product homogeneity makes prices comparable in different regions and across time.

Preliminary Material -- 1. A New Era in China's Demographic Dynamics /Gu Baochang -- 2. The Impact of Demographic Change on Labor Supply in China /Liao Shaohong and Zheng Zhenzhen -- 3. China's Process of Aging before Getting Rich /Cai Fang and Wang Meiyan -- 4. The Demographic Dividend and Sustainability of China's Economic Growth /Wang Dewen and Cai Fang -- 5. Transforming Unemployment Shock into Labor Market Development /Wang Meiyan and Cai Fang -- 6. Labor Cost Increase and Growth Pattern Transition /Cai Fang and Wang Meiyan -- 7. The Counterfactuals of Unlimited Surplus Labor in Rural China /Cai Fang and Wang Meiyan -- 8. Rural Labor-force Allocation Report—An Investigation of 2,749 Villages /Han Jun , Cui Chuanyi and Fan Aiai -- 9. Wage Arrears and Discrimination against Migrant Workers in China's Urban Labor Market /Wang Meiyan -- 10. The Potentials of Labor Supply and Policy Reactions to the Lewis Turning Point /Du Yang -- 11. The Lewis Turning Point and Its Implications to Labor Protection /Du Yang , Gao Wenshu and Wang Meiyan -- 12. Educational Return and Resource Allocation between Rural and Urban Areas /Wang Meiyan -- 13. Industrialization Process in China: The Need to Break through the Conventional Mode /Pan Jiahua and Feng San -- 14. Globalization, Shortage, and Demand for Labor /Wang Dewen -- Index.

When social security is established to provide pensions to parents, their reliance upon children for future financial support decreases, and their need to save for retirement also falls. In this study, the expansion of pension coverage from the state sector to the non-state sector in urban China is used as a quasi-experiment to analyze the intergenerational impact of social security on education investments in children. In a difference-in-differences framework, a significant increase in the total education expenditure is found to be attributable to pension expansion. The results are unlikely to be driven by other observable trends. They are robust to the inclusion of a large set of control variables and to different specifications, including one based on the instrumental variable method.

Using data from a national survey of Chinese manufacturing firms conducted in 2009, the authors analyze the impact of implementation of China's 2008 labor contract law on the employment of production workers. The authors found that cities with lax prior enforcement of labor regulations experienced a greater increase in enforcement after 2008 and slower employment growth, and that this finding is robust to inclusion of a rich set of city-level controls and the use of alternative measures of enforcement effort. Although firms affected by the global economic crisis did not report less strict enforcement of the new law, there is evidence that their employment adjustment was less sensitive to enforcement of labor regulations than firms not affected by the crisis.