CHINA's REFORM PERIOD ECONOMIC GROWTH: HOW RELIABLE ARE ANGUS MADDISON's ESTIMATES?

Chinese economic growth statistics are controversial. In recent years they have been challenged on technical grounds as well as on suspicions of data falsification. Angus Maddison in a 1998 OECD study goes further in that he questions China's long-run growth statistics and proceeds to provide an alternative time series. His average annual real GDP growth rate for China in the reform period (1978 through 1995) is 2.39 percentage points below the official one. Angus Maddison's revisions were subsequently incorporated into the Penn World Tables; his GDP estimates for China, thus, have found their way into numerous cross-country studies. This paper critically examines the validity of Angus Maddison's revisions to official data.     

Environmental Protection and Trade Liberalization in a Small Open Dual Economy

The author investigates the conditions under which environmental protection and trade liberalization might improve urban unemployment and welfare in a small open Harris–Todaro model with polluting urban manufacturing. While a tariff reduction decreases manufacturing employment, a rise in the pollution tax rate may increase it when a dirty input is complementary to capital. Environmental protection and trade liberalization are consistent in reducing the level of urban unemployment because they lower it under the same condition. They are consistent in increasing GDP if a rise in the pollution tax rate decreases manufacturing employment. Otherwise, trade liberalization will mitigate a decrease in GDP because of environmental protection if the degree of urbanization is low and if rural technology exhibits weak diminishing returns to labor. This GDP effect plays a central role in welfare improvement.     

Labor market dynamics over the business cycle: evidence from Markov switching models

This paper explores the evolution of the U.S. labor market across the business cycle and specifically the relationship between the unemployment rate and the average duration of unemployment. Labor market recoveries have long been thought of as lagging recoveries in broad economic activity. In particular, the unemployment rate peaks several months after official business cycle troughs and the average duration of unemployment lags further behind. Using estimates from Markov switching models of the unemployment rate, average duration of unemployment, jobless claims, and the exhaustion rate of regular unemployment insurance, this paper dates contractionary and expansionary phases of various aspects of the labor market and their relationship to the official phases of the business cycle. Evidence from these models suggests that inflows into unemployment recover almost contemporaneously with broad economic activity, while outflows recover almost a year after the end of official recessions. The differential timing in the recoveries of unemployment inflows and outflows, which is not a characteristic of most macro models of the labor market, accounts for the observed pattern between the unemployment rate and average duration of unemployment. Finally, when comparing the phases of the labor market to periods where Congress extends unemployment insurance benefits, it appears that policymakers target periods where the job finding rate is low, rather than periods where the stock of unemployed workers is high.     

Wages,participation and unemployment in the economic transition of urban China1

Wages, participation and unemployment are major topics for researchers of the labour market. How have these measures evolved in the economic transition of urban China? Have they evolved in accordance with those in the Statistical Yearbook of China (produced by the National Bureau of Statistics, China) and previous studies? We find that the estimated wage level based on Urban Household Survey (UHS) data was higher than that in the Statistical Yearbook in earlier years, but the relationship has reversed since 1999. Our estimated participation rate is lower than that of Giles et al. (2006) but higher than Dong et al. (2007) and Maurer‐Fazio et al. (2007) . The analysis shows that the unemployment rate is lower than that estimated with the China Urban Labor Survey data in Giles et al. (2005) . Our estimation results on unemployment rates turn out to be more similar to those in Dong et al. (2007) but are different from those in Hu and Sheng (2007) . This analysis provides the first systematic comparison of the wage level from different sources, and supplements the existing estimates on participation and unemployment using a more representative dataset for urban China.     

Policy Issues of China's Urban Unemployment

This article investigates causes and characteristics of urban layoff and unemployment. Chinese statistics show that the worsening urban unemployment problem is mainly caused by China's institutional changes, sectoral shifts, and cyclical fluctuations. Workers who are middle-aged, less educated, and female have experienced a higher risk of being laid off and unemployed. This article also discusses policy issues of China's urban layoff and unemployment. Supply-side policies include those that expand education, establish job-training programs, limit massive rural–urban migration in the short run, and rationalize labor force participation rate. Demand-side policies aim to create jobs, including policies such as promoting the service industry, attracting foreign investment, and developing the nonstate economy.     

The evolution of female labour force participation in urban China

Starting from the late 1980s, despite rapid economic growth, female labour force participation in urban China has shown a general declining trend. Using repeated cross‐sections from the Chinese Household Income Project Series (CHIP), this paper attempts to systematically relate the decrease in the labour force participation of married women to the socio‐economic changes happening in urban China during the same period of time. Adopting both linear and nonlinear decomposition techniques, the results indicate that the changes in married women's labour force participation during the periods 1995–2002 and 2007–2013 can be explained by the concurrent changes in the distribution of socio‐economic variables, while the changes during the periods 1988–1995 and 2002–2007 are mostly driven by the leftward shift of married women's participation function.     

Unemployment flows,participation, and the natural rate of unemployment: Evidence from turkey

We use a parsimonious unobserved components model with flow rates to estimate a time-varying unemployment rate trend for Turkey. Our approach is grounded in the modern theory of labor market search. This trend estimate yields a level that the unemployment rate would converge to in the absence of cyclical shocks that move different flow rates away from their underlying trends. By the end of 2018, the unemployment rate trend for Turkey stood at 12 percent, gradually increasing since the end of the global recession. The key drivers of the unemployment rate trend have been rising separation and unemployment exit rate trends in the first decade of our sample period. Since 2012, these trends have stagnated somewhat, but the labor force participation rate has continued trending up.     

Okun's Law Does the Austrian unemployment–GDP relationship exhibit structural breaks?

Okun's Law postulates an inverse relationship between movements of the unemployment rate and the real gross domestic product (GDP). Initial empirical estimates for US data indicate that a two to three percent GDP growth rate above the natural or average GDP growth rate causes unemployment to decrease by one percentage point and vice versa. In this investigation we check whether this postulated relationship exhibits structural breaks by means of Markov-Chain Monte Carlo methods. We estimate a regression model, where the parameters are allowed to switch between different states and the switching process is Markov. As a by-product we derive an estimate of the current state within the periods considered. Using quarterly Austrian data on unemployment and real GDP from 1977 to 1995 we infer only one state, i.e. there are no structural breaks. The estimated parameters demand for an excess GDP growth rate of 4.16% to decrease unemployment by 1 percentage point. Since only one state is inferred, we conclude that the Austrian economy exhibits a stable relationship between unemployment and GDP growth. First version received: January 2000/Final version received: October 2000     

中国劳动力市场发育与就业变化

本文通过梳理关于劳动力市场发育和就业状况的统计数据,并结合微观调查数据,对城乡就业增长和结构变化进行了描述,批评了传统的关于"就业零增长"、"农村剩余劳动力一成不变"等判断。本文提供了有关劳动力市场的指标,准确地反映了伴随着经济增长和改革开放的深入,劳动力市场发育水平的提高、就业总量增长和结构多元化、以及城镇就业压力的缓解和农村剩余劳动力大幅度减少的事实。此外,本文还通过对人口转变过程的阐释,预测了劳动力市场供求的变化趋势,做出刘易斯转折点即将到来的判断,并揭示了这个转折点对中国经济持续增长提出的挑战。     

The shadow economy in three Mediterranean countries: France,Spain and Greece. A MIMIC approach

This paper offers estimations of the evolution of the shadow economy in three Mediterranean countries, namely France, Spain and Greece. A multiple indicators and multiple causes model based on the latent variable structural theory has been applied. As established by Giles (Working paper on monitoring the health of the tax system, 1995), filtered data to solve the non-stationary problems are used. The model includes the tax burden (both as a whole and disaggregated into direct taxes, indirect taxes and social security contributions), a proxy of regulation burden, theu nemployment rate and self-employment as causes of the shadow economy and the GDP growth rate, the labour force participation ratio and the currency ratio as indicators of the underground economy. The results confirm that unemployment, the fiscal burden and self-employment are the main causes of the shadow economy in these countries, and confirm that an inverse relationship exists between the official GDP growth rate and that of the unofficial economy. This paper has benefited from the comments and suggestions of the anonymous referees. The usual disclaimer applies. The paper was partly written when third author was visiting Real Colegio Complutense at Harvard University. The hospitality of this Institution is gratefully acknowledged.     

THE VALUE OF VOLUNTEER LABOR AND THE FACTORS INFLUENCING PARTICIPATION: EVIDENCE FOR THE UNITED STATES FROM 2002 THROUGH 2005

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of people who volunteered rose from 59.8 million in 2002 to 65.4 million in 2005. Those volunteering benefit from their activity in various ways; however, these benefits are non-pecuniary and are generally not recognized in the national economic accounts used to measure gross domestic product (GDP). This paper uses data from the 2002–05 Current Population Survey Volunteer Supplements to assign a dollar value to volunteering. Different methodologies yield annual estimates from $116 to $153 billion (in 2005 dollars) over the four years (between 0.9 and 1.3 percent of 2005 GDP). Additionally, characteristics of individuals most likely to volunteer are identified. The volunteer rate varies by demographic characteristics in addition to geographic location, labor force participation, and business sector. Furthermore, the data suggest that volunteering is a "normal good" because participation increases with income even after controlling for observables.     

The consequences of labor market flexibility: Panel evidence based on survey data

We introduce a new data set on hiring and firing restrictions for 21 OECD countries for the period 1984-1990. The data are based on surveys of business people in the countries covered, so the indices we use are subjective in nature. Controlling for country and time fixed effects, and using dynamic panel data techniques, we find evidence that increasing the flexibility of the labor market increases both the employment rate and the rate of participation in the labor force. A conservative estimate suggests that if France were to make its labor markets as flexible as those in the US, its employment rate would increase 1.6 percentage points, or 14% of the employment gap between the two countries. The estimated effects are larger in the female than in the male labor market, although both groups seem to have similar long-run coefficients. There is also some evidence that more flexibility leads to lower unemployment rates and to lower rates of long-term unemployment. We also find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that inflexible labor markets produce “jobless recoveries” and introduce more unemployment persistence.     

The nonobserved economy in the European Union

To better understand the share of the nonobserved economy (NOE) in the European Union, especially on the PIIGS, we estimate, through the multiple indicators multiple causes model, the path between 1980 and 2013. The model includes (i) the tax burden (disaggregated into direct and indirect taxes), a proxy of regulation burden, the unemployment rate and self-employment as causes of the NOE economy; (ii) the GDP and the labour force participation ratio as indicators of the NOE economy. In particular, the estimated weight of NOE as a percentage of official GDP was always higher in the PIIGS group.     

人口老龄化对中国劳动力供给的影响

本文描述了我国劳动力供给的总体数量以及变化趋势,并从劳动参与率、城乡结构、人力资本三方面进行考察,探讨人口老龄化对于劳动力供给的影响。我国劳动参与率还存在较大增长空间,将会是未来劳动力供给的重要增长点;农村剩余劳动力存量仍看似充足,但其老龄化情况较严重,难以维持当前农民工向城市转移的速度;另外我国年轻劳动力的教育程度和人力资本已有显著提升。因此虽然人口老龄化已经对我国劳动力供给产生了一定负面影响,但由于人口和劳动力的变化是一个长期过程,并不会给经济发展带来突发的、灾难性的冲击。     

Twenty-five Years after Kramer: An Assessment of Economic Retrospective Voting based upon Improved Estimates of Income and Unemployment

Several studies in economics have derived estimates of economic activity in the years prior to World War II that differ significantly from official statistics. In this paper we examine the possibility that the impact of economic retrospective voting upon congressional election outcomes has been at least partially obscured by shortcomings in the official data series. To that end we re-estimate various specifications of the basic Kramer model with these revised measures of income and unemployment. Although the effect of changes in real per capita income does not depend much upon which particular income series we used, the observed impact of unemployment doubles in size when the new estimates of historical unemployment rates made by Romer (1986b) and by Darby (1976) are used. Although the evidence is less than definitive, the results of our analyses also lend credence to the proposition that economic conditions have a greater impact upon congressional voting in on-year elections than in off years, and that the incumbent party is bound to suffer a midterm penalty.     

Exploring different measures of wage flexibility in a developing economy context: the case for Turkey

In this paper we use Turkish household labor force data to address a number of conceptual issues pertaining to the wage curve, an empirically derived negative relationship between the real wage level and the local unemployment rate. First, we show that in developing economies where labor markets are prone to high degree of segmentation by skill level, local unemployment rates disaggregated by education provide more accurate measures of the degree of group-specific wage competition and hence yield more robust results of the wage curve analyses. Second, we estimate the wage curve using various definitions of the unemployment rate, including discouraged and marginally attached workers, and the long-term unemployment rate to explore the most relevant measure of local labor market tension in the wage setting process. We find that broader definitions of unemployment serve as a more effective reference point in measuring wage flexibility for women, whose attachment to the labor market is substantially weak in the Turkish context; while for men the official and long-term unemployment rates perform well. Finally, using quantile regression we show that wage responsiveness to unemployment cannot be assumed to be constant along the wage distribution. In the Turkish case, we find a higher unemployment elasticity of wages around the median segment of wage distribution. This effect is more pronounced for women.     

人口迁移流动对城镇区域劳动力市场的影响

人口迁移流动对于城镇劳动力供给和区域劳动力市场一体化均有显著影响。农村迁移劳动力与城镇居民就业存在一定的替代关系,但对城镇劳动力就业冲击不大。城-城迁移人口对迁入地人口的失业率和劳动参与率均无明显影响。我国劳动力市场从计划经济时期的高度一体化逐步演变为省际之间的分割,再次走向大经济区之间的分割和区内的融合。这种融合是借助农民工的迁移流动来实现的,因而在本质上依旧是分割的。     

UNANTICIPATED EFFECTS OF CALIFORNIA'S PAID FAMILY LEAVE PROGRAM

We examine the effect of California paid family leave (CPFL) on young women's labor force participation and unemployment, relative to men and older women. CPFL enables workers to take at most 6 weeks of paid leave over a 12‐month period in order to bond with new born or adopted children, or to care for sick family members or ailing parents. The policy benefits women, especially young women, as they are more prone to take such a leave. However, the effect of the policy on overall labor market outcomes is less clear. We apply difference‐in‐difference techniques to identify the effects of the CPFL legislation on young women's labor force participation and unemployment. We find that the labor force participation rate, the unemployment rate, and the duration of unemployment among young women rose in California compared to men (particularly young men) and older women in California, and to other young women, men, and older women in states that did not adopt PFL. The latter two findings regarding higher young women's unemployment and unemployment duration are unanticipated effects of the CPFL program. We utilize robustness checks as well as unique placebo tests to validate these results.(JEL H43, J13, J18, J48)     

Labor and behavior determinants of remittances in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is the second largest sender of international remittances. These remittances constitute large foreign capital inflows to labor‐exporting remittee economies. This study is the first to structurally decompose remittance dynamics into behavioral and labor market outcomes of migrants. Remittance outflows are decomposed into migrant labor supply, unemployment and participation rates, wage earnings, and the marginal propensity to remit (MPR) out of migrant earnings. The estimates suggest that migrant labor supply is highly elastic. The important driver of remittance dynamics is the MPR, migrant wages, and the labor supply of migrants. The MPR is found to respond counter‐cyclically to foreign gross domestic product.     

Intergenerational Income Persistence in Urban China

Intergenerational income elasticities are estimated using samples for urban China (covering many cities) for the years 1995 and 2002 and compared with results from other studies. We find that the income relation between the pairs—sons and fathers, sons and mothers, and daughters and mothers—are in 2002 all similar in magnitude. In contrast the relation between daughters' and fathers' income is weaker. The income relationship between offspring and mothers was weaker in 1995 than in 2002. Our preferred estimates of income persistence for the son/father pairs of 0.47 for 1995 and 0.53 for 2002 are higher than those which have been reported in the literature for several high‐income countries with large welfare states. The strength of the income link between sons and fathers in urban China appears to be not very different from what has been reported for countries such as Brazil, Chile, and the U.S.