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“Golden Ages”: A Tale of the Labor Markets in China and the United States

Hanming Fang, Xincheng Qiu, Dec 15, 2021

We examine the Chinese growth experience in the last three decades through the lens of the labor market, focusing on evolving cross-sectional earnings distributions. We contrast the Chinese labor market with that of the United States and provide an interesting tale of the two labor markets over the last 30 years.

Exporting out of Agriculture: The Effects of the China Shock in China

Jessica Leight, Jan 01, 2020

This paper analyzes the effect of China's 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization on structural transformation at the local level, exploiting cross-sectional variation in tariff uncertainty faced by county economies pre-2001. Using a new panel of 1,800 Chinese counties from 1996 to 2013, we find that counties more exposed to the reduction in tariff uncertainty post-accession are characterized by increasing exports...

Magnification of the “China Shock” Through the U.S. Housing Market

Yuan Xu, Hong Ma, Robert Feenstra, Jan 22, 2020

The “China shock” operated in part through the U.S. housing market, which is one important reason the China shock was as big as it was. If housing prices had not responded at all to the China shock, then the total employment effect would have been reduced by more than one-half. Even when fully recognizing that housing prices responded to the China shock, the independent employment effect of the China shock is still reduced by around 30%.

Do Multinationals Transfer Culture? Evidence on Female Employment in China

Heiwai Tang, Yifan Zhang, Nov 10, 2021

In our recent paper (Tang and Zhang 2021), we investigate the global diffusion of culture through multinationals. We study specifically how foreign affiliates serve as a vehicle to diffuse gender norms from their countries of origin to China. Based on Chinese manufacturing firm-level data, we find that foreign affiliates in China tend to employ proportionally more female workers than local Chinese firms within the same industry...

The Productivity Consequences of Pollution-Induced Migration in China

Gaurav Khanna, Wenquan Liang, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Ran Song, Apr 07, 2021

Severe air pollution induces workers to move from productive to unproductive regions, reducing their contribution to the aggregate productivity in China. In this paper, we quantify the productivity and welfare consequences of this important new pattern of migration. We find that the productivity losses from pollution through the indirect migration channel are approximately as much as the direct health costs of pollution.