Wang, F, Milner, C and Scheffel, J orcid.org/0000-0001-9932-5881 (2021) Labour market reform and firm-level employment adjustment: Evidence from the hukou reform in China. Journal of Development Economics, 149. 102584. ISSN 0304-3878
Abstract
This paper empirically investigates whether the nature of firm-level employment adjustment is affected by the flexibility of the labour market. Specifically, we take advantage of differences in local labour market conditions created by the non-uniform implementation of the hukou reform in China. Variations in the implementation across cities and time allow us to identify the employment effects of the reform by comparing firms in regions with hukou reform to those in regions without. Combining firm-level data and city-level hukou reform data from 1998 to 2007, we adopt a difference-in-differences approach to address this question. The empirical results show that firms exposed to the hukou reform have higher employment adjustment rates on average than similar firms without reform, indicating that an increase in labour market flexibility allowed more employment adjustment. We also find evidence that tariff reductions are associated with greater employment adjustment in reform than non-reform cities.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020, Elsevier. All rights reserved. This is an author produced version of an article published in Journal of Development Economics. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Labour market reform; Hukou; Employment adjustment; Trade liberalisation |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Economics Division (LUBS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 26 Jan 2021 16:03 |
Last Modified: | 12 Nov 2022 01:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102584 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:170378 |