Lakshmi Iyer, Xin Meng, Nancy Qian, Xiaoxue Zhao. 2013. Economic transition and private-sector labor demand evidence from urban China. Working Paper 19733. National Bureau of Economic Research

http://www.nber.org/papers/w19733

ABSTRACT:This paper studies the policy determinants of economic transition and estimates the demand for labor in the infant private sector in urban China. We show that a reform that untied access to housing in urban areas from working for the state sector accounts for more than a quarter of the overall increase in labor supply to the private sector during 1986-2005. Using the reform to instrument for private-sector labor supply, we find that private-sector labor demand is very elastic. We provide suggestive evidence that the reform equalized wages across sectors and reduced private-sector rents.

摘要：本文研究经济转型的政策决定因素并对中国城市地区尚处于起步阶段的私营部门的劳动力需求进行估计。我们发现城镇住房改革从国有部门中释放了劳动力，而这部分劳动力在1986 – 2005年间的劳动力供给增长总额中比私营部门多占了超过25%。运用改革私营部门劳动力供给的工具，我们发现私营部门的劳动需求非常有弹性。我们得出了具有启发性的证据说明改革使部门间工资均等化并减少了私营部门的租金。

数据来源：China’s Urban Household Income and Expenditure Surveys(UHIES)；

  Province-level newspapers in the National Library achives in Beijing

研究方法：利用面板数据进行计量分析

Conclusion:The goal of this study is to make progress on two questions. What are effective policies for gradually transioning into the private sector? what is the labor demand elasticity in the new private sector during economic transition? Using the staggered timing of the Chinese urban housing reform, we show that untying housing benefits from state-sector employment accounts for 30% of the increase in private sector employment in Chinese cities during 1986-2005.By exploiting the plausibly exogenous variation in sector-specific labor supply induced by the urban housing reforms, we find that increasing private-sector labor supply by 10% reduce wages by 1.8 to 3.2%:the implied labor demand elasticities range from 3.1 to 5.5. 

Our results have several interesting implications. First,finding an elastic labor demand implies that capital and technology are quite mobile across sectors in urban China.Second and more importantly,it suggests that the private sector,even in its infancy,can absorb a significant amount of labor without large wage declines.However,the projected magnitudes of labor movement into the Chinese private sector are so large that they still imply drastic private-sector wage reductions,if capital and technology movements remain at the same rate as in our data.Thus,to minimize wage reductions,Chinese policy makers may want to consider policies that increase the mobility of other factors of production into the private sector.

Finally,the evidence that increasing labor mobility reduces rents earned by private-sector workers suggest that transition may be very unpopular with certain segments of the population despite its potential welfare benefits.This is important for policy makers to take into account from a political economy perspective.

In extrapolating our results to other contexts,it is important to note that the magnitude of the estimates are specific to the context of this study. In particular,relative to other transitioning economies,China experienced little political and social upheaval and steady economic growth.Nevertheless,the insights that reducing benefits tied to state-sector employment is an effective policy for gradually releasing workers from the state sector,that large movements into the private sector should ideally be accompanied by policies that facilitate the movement of other factors of production and that increased mobility can dissipate rents for workers initially in the private sector are generalizable.

Our study has two important implications for futher research on economic transition.First,the results suggest that understanding the determinants and the speed of the flow of the factors of production into private sector is an important avenue for future research.Second,and more generally,most past empirical studies of economic transition have been descriptive or focused on cross-country comparison.Our study provide an example of how policy experiments and newly availably micro-data from transitioning economics can be used to provide well-identified estimates and enhance our understanding of the transition process.

结论:本论文的目的是在两个问题上取得进展：逐渐把劳动力转到私营部门的有效政策是什么？处于经济转型期的新私营部门的劳动需求弹性是多少？通过分析中国城镇住房改革的不同阶段，我们发现从国营部门就业中放开住房福利导致1986 - 2005年期间中国城市私营部门就业提高30%。通过利用由城镇住房改革引起的行业劳动力供给的外生变化，我们发现私营部门的劳动力供给增加10%则工资减少1.8%-3.2%：这意味着劳动力需求弹性范围是从3.1到5.5。

我们的研究结果有几个有趣的含义。首先，一个富有弹性的劳动力需求意味着资本和技术在中国城市各部门之间极易流动。其次，也更为重要的是，它表明私营部门即使才处于起步阶段，也能在工资不大幅下降的情况下吸收大量劳动力。然而如果资本和技术的运动速度和我们的数据中保持一样的话，运动到中国私营部门的劳动力数量毕竟太大以致于这仍然意味着私营部门工资的减少。因此，为了抑制工资的下降，中国决策者可能会考虑增加其他流动到私人部门的生产要素的政策。

最后，提高劳动力流动性会降低私营部门工人所能得到的租金的证据表明，尽管转型具有潜在的福利效应，仍会遭到一些特定的群体的反对。这一点对于政策制定者来说很重要，必须从政治经济学的视角加以考虑。

当把我们的结果外推到其他情况时，必须要注意估计值的量级只适用于本文。特别地，相对于其他转型经济体，中国经历了较少的政治和社会动荡并因此带来了经济的稳步增长。尽管如此，减少与国有部门相关的福利是逐渐释放国有企业工人的一种有效政策；理想情况下，劳动力向私营部门的大幅运动应该伴随着同样能够促进其他生产要素运动的政策；而且增加的流动性可以减少起初就在私营部门工作的工人的租金，这些观点也是显而易见的。

我们的研究对经济转型的进一步研究有两点重要启示：首先，结果表明理解决定性因素和生产要素进入私人部门的流动速度是未来研究的一个重要途径。其次，也更为普遍的是，过去大多数关于经济转型的实证研究都是规范性的或只专注于跨国比较，我们的研究在此开了一个先例：如何运用政策实验和新型可获得的微观数据以提供有效的估计值并加深我们对转型过程的理解。

（By 杨帆)