The health cost of living in a city: The case of France at the end of the 19th century

Despite a long standing debate over urban living conditions during industrialization, the impact of rural–urban migrations on health and mortality remains an open question. We observe both mortality and geographical mobility in a large longitudinal dataset of French males and show that rural–urban migrants benefited from clear advantages over those who already lived in the city. However, this benefit fades in a few years. Further we find no evidence of a spike in mortality among rural migrants as they encountered the more severe disease environment of cities, instead it seems their initially superior physical human capital was depleted over time.     

The rise of migration and the fall of self employment in rural China's labor market

When examining questions regarding the Lewis model, one of the most salient set of facts involves the shift of labor between agricultural and the off farm sectors. The goal of this paper is to answer several questions about the nature of this movement: How has the expansion of the economy after 2000 affected off farm labor market participation? Has off farm labor continued to rise? What is this rise being driven by—migrant wage earners or self employment opportunities? What is, in part, driving these trends? Using a national representative set of data that consists of two waves of surveys done in 2000 and 2008 in six provinces, the paper finds that off farm labor market participation has continued to rise steadily in the early 2000s. However, there has been a structural break in the trends of occupational choice before and after 2000. Unlike before 2000, after 2000 migration's growth accelerated; during this same period the self employed subsector stagnated. The number of wage earning migrants in 2008 was greater than the number of those in the self employed subsector. The data also show that the rise in wage-earning migration is mainly being driven by the younger cohorts. Our analysis also shows that the rise of migration is happening in conjunction with a rising unskilled wage.     

The impact of agricultural technology adoption on income inequality in rural China: Evidence from southern Yunnan Province

This study analyzes the impact on income inequality of government efforts to increase agricultural incomes in rural China. It collects and analyzes survey data from 473 households in Yunnan, China in 2004. In particular, it investigates the effects of government efforts to promote improved upland rice technologies. Our analysis shows that farmers who adopted these technologies had incomes approximately 15% higher than non-adopters. Despite this relatively large increase, we estimate that the impact on income inequality was relatively slight. This is primarily due to the fact that lower-income farmers adopted the improved rice technology at rates that were roughly equivalent to those of higher-income farmers.     

China has reached the Lewis turning point

In the past several years, labor shortage in China has become an emerging issue. However, there is heated debate on whether China has passed the Lewis turning point and entered a new era of labor shortage from a period of unlimited labor supply. Most empirical studies on this topic focus on the estimation of total labor supply and demand. Yet the poor quality of labor statistics leaves the debate open. In this paper, China's position along the Lewis continuum is examined though primary surveys of wage rates, a more reliable statistic than employment data. Our results show a clear rising trend of real wages rate since 2003. The acceleration of real wages even in slack seasons indicates that the era of surplus labor is over. This finding has important policy implications for China's future development model.     

Does family planning help the employment of women? The case of India

This paper gives some insight into the existence of a positive effect of family planning programmes on women's employment in developing countries. We study married women aged 15–49 living throughout India using a sample drawn from the National Health Family Survey (NFHS-2) for 1998–1999. We focus on a programme of doorstep services delivered by health or family planning (FP) workers who are sent to visit women in their assigned areas. Results derived from the estimation of fixed effect linear probability and conditional logit models show a positive and significant correlation of the share of women living in a local area (village, town or city) that has been visited by FP workers with the probability of women's employment. A multinomial analysis also shows that the largest positive effect of FP in rural India is to be found on paid work, as opposed to unpaid work, suggesting a potential empowering feedback of demographic measures through labour earnings.     

China''s land arrangements and rural labor mobility

Chinese farm families under the Household Responsibility System have the land use-rights but not the rights of alienation. If permanently leaving agriculture, they have to return the land to local authorities and consequently give up a stream of future land earnings. This paper analyzes the deterrent effect of this land arrangement on labor mobility by constructing a household model which considers both part-time farming and permanent migration decisions. The implications of the model are consistent with the recent Chinese experience of rural floating population in cities and the rapid growth of rural nonagricultural employment.     

A multidimensional analysis of poverty in China from 1991 to 2006

Most studies have reported non negligible improvements for China in terms of poverty during the last three decades. However, this result is potentially hampered by two limitations. First, it may be contingent to the specific choices made regarding the poverty line and the poverty indices used for the analysis. As a consequence, it may collapse if one uses alternative poverty lines or poverty measures. Second, it results from a focus on the sole monetary aspects of poverty. As income does not cover all facets of well-being and since the relationship between these two concepts are quite fuzzy, it may be worth using a broader view of well-being, hence opting for a multidimensional approach of poverty analysis. In the present paper, these two issues are addressed using multidimensional stochastic dominance procedures on the joint distribution of income, education and health in seven Chinese provinces.     

Development in Fujian: A county-level perspective

This research note describes a county-level data set for Fujian province. The set includes several hundred thousand observations on a wide range of social and economic attributes, for the period 1978–1993. The set also includes digitized maps showing prefecture and county boundaries, rivers, roads, rail lines, and county seats. This data set is available to all interested researchers, and is currently being used to investigate such issues as the spatial diffusion of new technologies, changes in the branch structure of industry during the reform era, and intercounty disparities in output and consumption.     

The rise and fall of spatial inequalities in France: A long-run perspective

This paper studies the evolution and determinants of spatial inequalities in France. To this end, we use a unique database providing data on value-added, employment, and population over the entire set of French “Départements” in 1860, 1896, 1930, 1982, and 2000. These data cover three sectors: Agriculture, Manufacturing, and Services. Firstly, we confirm the existence of a bell-shaped process of spatial concentration in Manufacturing and Services over time. In contrast, labor productivity has been converging across departments. Secondly, we find considerable agglomeration economies over the whole period. The spatial distribution of these gains is determined mainly by market potential in the first sub-period, 1860–1930, and higher education in the second, 1930–2000.     

Understanding openness and productivity growth in China: An empirical study of the Chinese provinces

This paper investigates the effects of openness on China's regional productivity growth. We build a model of technology diffusion in which follower economies achieve productivity growth by taking advantage of technology spillovers from the world technology frontier. We hypothesize that China's regional productivity growth is a positive function of regional openness and a negative function of the current level of regional productivity. Empirical analysis in this paper focuses on how openness affects productivity growth in the Chinese provinces. We examine two effects of openness on regional productivity growth in China: the direct growth effect and the convergence effect. By using a variety of panel data regression techniques, we show that the direct growth effect of openness is the main effect while the convergence effect is insignificant. The findings of this paper lend strong support to the claim that the opening-up of China promotes the country's economic growth.     

The Western European marriage pattern and economic development

For several centuries before the First World War women's age at first marriage in the west of Europe was higher than in the east (and in the rest of the world). In their low mortality regimes Western Europeans chose lower fertility in part through a higher female age at marriage. This allowed women to increase their human capital both formally and informally in the years before child bearing so that more informed mothers brought up better educated offspring. The demographic pattern influenced the stock of human capital and directly contributed to Western Europe's development advantage. The predicted relations of this economic model of the household are tested with two datasets, one at the county level for England for the second half of the nineteenth century and the other at the national level for Europe 1870–1910.     

The usefulness of earnings versus book value for predicting stock returns and cross corporate ownership in Japan

Using a sample of Japanese firms, this paper evaluates the usefulness of the two fundamental products of an accrual accounting system, namely accrual earnings and book value of equity for predicting stock returns. Our analysis shows that both earnings and book value for Japanese firms have the ability to provide for profitable trading strategies or improved portfolio decisions, and that relative to the trading strategy based on earnings or book value alone, the trading strategy based on a combination of both earnings and book value generates substantially higher returns for all cases. This suggests that book value (or earnings) captures certain aspects of equity values that are not captured by earnings (book value). Our multivariate regression results further indicate that the predictive ability of earnings is dominated by that of book value. Finally, it is found that the predictive ability of book value is sensitive to the degree of cross corporate ownership, while it is insensitive to the degree of real estate holding.     

The puzzle of migrant labour shortage and rural labour surplus in China

The paper examines the contentious issue of the extent of surplus labour that remains in China. China was an extreme example of a surplus labour economy, but the rapid economic growth during the period of economic reform requires a reassessment of whether the second stage of the Lewis model has been reached or is imminent. The literature is inconclusive. On the one hand, there are reports of migrant labour scarcity and rising migrant wages; on the other hand, estimates suggest that a considerable pool of relatively unskilled labour is still available in the rural sector. Yet the answer has far-reaching developmental and distributional implications. After reviewing the literature, the paper uses the 2002 and 2007 national household surveys of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to analyse and explain migrant wage behaviour, to predict the determinants of migration, and to examine the size and nature of the pool of potential rural–urban migrants. An attempt is also made to project the rural and urban labour force and migration forward to 2020, on the basis of the 2005 1% Population Survey. The paper concludes that for institutional reasons both phenomena are likely to coexist at present and for some time in the future.     

The direct impact of the relocation of farm labour on Chinese grain production

The shift from collective to household-based farming and the move towards a market economy have increased the opportunity cost of grain production and caused a withdrawal of labour from grain farming in China. Since Chinese grain production is important to both China and the world, there are concerns about whether such a farm labour relocation will have a destructive impact on China's grain production. The previous production function studies ignored the effects of changes in labour quantity and quality on grain production. Using recently available sample survey data on Chinese farm households, this paper incorporates production function analysis with human capital analysis to examine the direct impact of the relocation of farm labour on China's grain production. It has found that the relocation of farm labour has not harmed the Chinese grain production in general, but its impact varies across regions with different factor endowments that affect the choice of farming technology.     

Identifying the causal effect of alcohol abuse on the perpetration of intimate partner violence by men using a natural experiment

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is widespread and has substantial negative consequences. Researchers have documented a strong positive correlation between alcohol abuse and IPV. However, alcohol abuse is potentially endogenous to IPV. We deal with this problem by exploring a unique instrumental variable—the September 11 terrorist attack—in Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Ordinary least squares results confirm a strong positive correlation between alcohol abuse and IPV. However, our two‐stage least squares results are statistically insignificant. These results indicate that alcohol abuse might not have a causal effect on IPV and, therefore, have important policy implications.     

Transactional activities and total factor productivity growth in Taiwan

Total factor productivity (TFP) growth shows how rapidly an economy is enhancing technology and the efficiency with which it allocates resources. It has been argued that “miraculous” growth in East Asian economies may not be sustainable, due to relatively low rates of TFP growth. Among these economies, it appears that Taiwan has indeed exhibited substantial technological progress. Failure to control for transactional activities, however, can distort the impression of TFP growth. This study recalculates Taiwan's TFP growth for the 1957–1993 sample period, adjusting for transaction costs in the government and private sectors. For the early years of the sample, 1957–1973, the economy's technological progress is better than GDP-based calculations suggest. In recent years, 1983–1993, productivity improvement has been overstated, but the economy has still exhibited relatively fast TFP growth.     

Are China's energy markets cointegrated?

The paper investigates energy price co-movement over the period 01/1999–12/2005 for China as a whole, and over sub-periods and for seven regions, using panel unit root and panel cointegration tests developed by Pedroni (1999, 2004). The results suggest that not all energy sources are spatially homogenous in prices and the processes of energy price cointegration are different over sub-periods; over groups of fuels; and over regions. Coal and electricity prices have co-moved since 2003 while gasoline and diesel prices have co-moved since 1997. The results show that there are clearly variations in the emergence of energy price co-movement over regions, implying that regional fuel markets have emerged in China. Important lessons that can be learnt from the results are that an energy market has, to some extent, already emerged in China and, as a result, energy prices are substantially less distorted than before. If correct, these findings have significant global implications both in terms of future emission reductions, emission trading and trade negotiations where China should be treated as a ‘market driven economy’.     

The role of new media on teen sexual behaviors and fertility outcomes—the case of 16 and Pregnant

This article investigates the 2009 premiere of 16 and Pregnant as a shock to teen information sets and potential influence on sexual activity and fertility. The program, chronicling teen pregnancy and providing educational links on sex/contraception, began a continuing stream of teen pregnancy reality shows. My conceptual framework considers how such programs alter the expected (dis)utility or perceived risk of becoming pregnant. I test for differential effects across ages, state‐sex education requirements, and viewership levels in a quasi‐difference‐in‐difference framework that controls for confounding effects of coincident contraception policy changes, the economy, and downward trends in teen fertility. The results indicate that while fertility declined across all adolescents in the postperiod, there are stronger effects among young teens in states without sex education mandates and higher viewership. Supporting evidence from the National Survey of Family Growth shows increased hormonal contraception use in the postperiod for young relative to older teens.