IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/12065.html

Accounting for Labor Input in Chinese Industry, 1949-2009

Author

Listed:
  • Harry WU
  • Ximing YUE

Abstract

Following the user cost theory on measuring labor input, after a careful scrutiny of available information, we construct employment and compensation matrices for China's industrial workforce over the period 1949-2009. Our measures are able to capture both individual and interactive effects of changes in gender, age, education, industry and ownership types of China's industrial workforce, and decompose the growth of labor input in Chinese industry into quantity and composition ("quality") effects. We find that the annual growth of the labor input in Chinese industry experienced a substantial decline from 6.9% per annum in the pre-reform period to 3.8% per annum in the post-reform period. Change of labor composition accounted for about 12% in the planning period (or 0.8% growth per annum), but it made little contribution during the reform period. We also find that the changes in industrial structure and age structure (reflecting the effects of seniority and experience) almost explained for the entire (positive) change in labor composition in the planning period. However, the change of education turned into negative after 1965 which made the average contribution of education negative in the planning period. Following the reform, education showed the most important contribution in the 1990s when the reform deepened, but the effect turned into negative again alongside China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Suggested Citation

  • Harry WU & Ximing YUE, 2012. "Accounting for Labor Input in Chinese Industry, 1949-2009," Discussion papers 12065, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:12065
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/12e065.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. D. W. Jorgenson & Z. Griliches, 1967. "The Explanation of Productivity Change," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 34(3), pages 249-283.
    2. Christensen, Laurits R & Jorgenson, Dale W & Lau, Lawrence J, 1973. "Transcendental Logarithmic Production Frontiers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 55(1), pages 28-45, February.
    3. Edward F. Denison, 1961. "United States Economic Growth," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35, pages 109-109.
    4. John W. Kendrick, 1961. "Productivity Trends in the United States," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kend61-1, January-J.
    5. Gregory C. Chow, 1993. "Capital Formation and Economic Growth in China," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 809-842.
    6. The Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, 1961. "Output, Input, and Productivity Measurement," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number unkn61-1, January-J.
    7. Barro, Robert J & Lee, Jong-Wha, 2001. "International Data on Educational Attainment: Updates and Implications," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 541-563, July.
    8. John W. Kendrick, 1961. "Productivity and Economic Growth," NBER Chapters, in: Productivity Trends in the United States, pages 78-110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Guanghua Wan & Peter J. Morgan & Harry X. Wu, 2016. "Sustainability of China's Growth Model: A Productivity Perspective," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 24(5), pages 42-70, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Harry WU & Ximing YUE & George G. ZHANG, 2015. "Constructing Annual Employment and Compensation Matrices and Measuring Labor Input in China," Discussion papers 15005, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    2. Prados de la Escosura, Leandro & Rosés, Joan R., 2008. "Proximate causes of economic growth in Spain, 1850-2000," IFCS - Working Papers in Economic History.WH wp08-12, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Instituto Figuerola.
    3. Charles R. Hulten, 2000. "Total Factor Productivity: A Short Biography," NBER Working Papers 7471, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Li, Kui-Wai & Liu, Tung, 2011. "Economic and productivity growth decomposition: An application to post-reform China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 366-373.
    5. Unknown, 1980. "Measurement of U.S. Agricultural Productivity: A Review of Current Statistics and Proposals for Change," Technical Bulletins 157718, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    6. Nazrul Islam & Erbiao Dai & Hiroshi Sakamoto, 2006. "Role of TFP in China's Growth," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 127-159, June.
    7. Boskin, Michael & Lau, Lawrence, 1992. "Capital and Productivity: A New View," Working Paper Series 366, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    8. Laurits R. Christensen & Dianne Cummings & Dale Jorgenson, 1980. "Economic Growth, 1947–73: An International Comparison," NBER Chapters, in: New Developments in Productivity Measurement and Analysis, pages 595-698, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Almas Heshmati, 2003. "Productivity Growth, Efficiency and Outsourcing in Manufacturing and Service Industries," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 79-112, February.
    10. Wang, Miao & Wong, M. C. Sunny, 2012. "International R&D Transfer and Technical Efficiency: Evidence from Panel Study Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 1982-1998.
    11. Ulrich Kohli, 2025. "Measuring productivity in the open economy: Törnqvist perspectives," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 64(1), pages 1-21, August.
    12. W. Erwin Diewert, 1995. "Price and Volume Measures in the System of National Accounts," NBER Working Papers 5103, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Kui-Wai Li & Tung Liu & Lihong Yun, 2007. "Technology Progress, Efficiency, and Scale of Economy in Post-reform China," Working Papers 200701, Ball State University, Department of Economics, revised Apr 2007.
    14. Scott L. Baier & Gerald P. Dwyer & Robert Tamura, 2006. "How Important are Capital and Total Factor Productivity for Economic Growth?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 44(1), pages 23-49, January.
    15. Chong-En Bai & Qiong Zhang, 2017. "Is the People's Republic of China's current slowdown a cyclical downturn or a long-term trend? A productivity-based analysis," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 29-46, January.
    16. Marc-Andreas Muendler & Sascha O. Becker, 2010. "Margins of Multinational Labor Substitution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 1999-2030, December.
    17. Voxi Heinrich S Amavilah, 2004. "Human Capital: Infrastructural and Superstructural Constraints to Economic Performance across U.S. Native American Reservations and Trust Lands," GE, Growth, Math methods 0405001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Voxi Heinrich S Amavilah, 2005. "Human Capital and Income across U.S. Native American Reservations and Trust Lands," GE, Growth, Math methods 0505001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Yuko Arayama & Katsuya Miyoshi, 2004. "Regional Diversity and Sources of Economic Growth in China," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(10), pages 1583-1607, November.
    20. Bibhudutta Panda, 2017. "Schooling and productivity growth: evidence from a dual growth accounting application to U.S. states," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 193-221, December.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:eti:dpaper:12065. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: TANIMOTO, Toko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.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.