New paper published with CSD input: “Earnings Premium in State Jobs Across Urban China” by Yuanyuan Ma, Patrick Paul Walsh and Liming Wang. Asian Economic Papers, Volume 16 | Issue 2 | Summer 2017, p.167-184
© 2017 by the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Using the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) data, we find a 30 percent raw differential in earnings in favor of state workers in 2002. We examine the degree to which this differential is a pure premium by using a Heckman two-step selection model, where we instrument workers’ preference for state jobs with family political connections, among other factors. We find that 22 percent of the observed earnings differential is a pure premium to a worker in a state job in urban China. In the absence of a political transition in China, state jobs remained the privileged constituency in a dual-track transition that attracted the best politically connected workers in urban China and offered them a pure earnings premium.
Asian Economic Panel
This publication is an outcome of the The Asian Economic Panel (AEP) meeting in Dublin June 21-23, 2016 (pictured above). 30 scholars from America, Australia, China, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Phillips, UK and other countries attended the conference. At the conference, eight high-quality academic papers in total were presented and followed by discussions from assigned discussants as well as open discussions from all participants. The rigorous discussions of the conference covered a broad range of hot topics in the fields of employment, monetary policy and industrial development in Asia. Prof. Wing Thye Woo and Prof. Deborah Swenson from University of California, Davis chaired the three sessions of the conference.