Import Competition and Informal Employment: Empirical Evidence from China

Feicheng Wang, Zhe Liang, H. Lehmann
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Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of trade liberalisation induced labour demand shocks on informal employment in China. We employ a local labour market approach to construct a regional measure of exposure to import tariffs by exploiting initial differences in industrial composition across prefectural cities and then link it with the employment status of individuals. Using three waves of household survey data between 1995 and 2007, our results show that workers from regions that experienced a larger tariff cut were more likely to be employed informally. Further results based on firm-level data reveal a consistent pattern; tariff reductions increased the share of informal workers within firms. Such effects are more salient among smaller and less productive firms. Our findings suggest an important margin of labour market adjustment in response to trade shocks in developing countries, i.e. employment adjustment along the formal-informal dimension.
进口竞争与非正规就业:来自中国的经验证据
本文研究了贸易自由化引发的劳动力需求冲击对中国非正规就业的影响。我们采用当地劳动力市场方法,通过利用地级市之间产业构成的初始差异,构建一个衡量进口关税风险的区域指标,然后将其与个人就业状况联系起来。利用1995年至2007年间三波家庭调查数据,我们的结果显示,来自关税削减幅度较大地区的工人更有可能找到非正式工作。基于企业层面数据的进一步结果揭示了一种一致的模式;降低关税增加了企业中非正规工人的比例。这种影响在规模较小、生产率较低的企业中更为明显。我们的研究结果表明,在应对贸易冲击的发展中国家,劳动力市场调整的重要幅度,即沿正式-非正式维度的就业调整。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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