IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbewp/0059.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labor Market Distortions, Rural-Urban Inequality, and the Opening of People's Republic of China's Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Hertel, Thomas

    (Purdue University)

  • Zhai, Fan

    (Asian Development Bank)

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of some key factor market reforms on rural–urban inequality and income distribution, using a household-disaggregated, recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of People's Republic of China. It also explores how these factor market reforms interact with product market reforms currently under way as part of the country's WTO accession process. The simulation results show that reforms in the rural land rental market and hukou system, as well as increasing off-farm labor mobility, would reduce the urban–rural income ratio dramatically. Furthermore, the combination of WTO accession and factor market reforms improves both efficiency and equality significantly.

Suggested Citation

  • Hertel, Thomas & Zhai, Fan, 2004. "Labor Market Distortions, Rural-Urban Inequality, and the Opening of People's Republic of China's Economy," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 59, Asian Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:0059
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/28344/wp059.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    factor market reforms; income distribution; Peoples Republic of China; rural-urban inequality; WTO accession;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D58 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:0059. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Orlee Velarde (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eradbph.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.