Gender Inequalities in Labor Market Outcomes of Informal Caregivers near Retirement Age in Urban China

ABSTRACT

This study examines the impacts of unpaid family care on labor supply and earnings of women and men near retirement age in urban China. Using the 2011 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and ordinary least squares (OLS) and instrumental variable approaches, it finds that grandchild care is negatively associated with both women's and men's labor force participation, while there are no effects for eldercare. For women caregivers, caring for grandchildren substantially lowers paid labor hours compared to noncaregivers. No significant relationships are found between eldercare and paid labor hours of women workers. For men workers, neither grandchild care nor eldercare is significantly associated with labor hours. The study also finds no statistically significant relationships between grandchild care and labor earnings for either women or men. Eldercare, however, is positively associated with the earnings of men workers.     

Industrialization and poverty reduction in East Asia: Internal labor movements matter

A number of developing East Asian countries have achieved both rapid economic growth and poverty reduction by effectively utilizing global value chains. An essential, but often neglected, condition for their economic development is smooth labor movements from the rural to urban sectors. This paper demonstrates that such labor movements have played an important role in the process of industrialization with global value chains. After conducting some international comparisons, we examine the case of Thailand for its massive labor movements until the mid–2000s as well as discussing stagnant moves in recent years.     

The labor market effects of introducing unemployment benefits in an economy with high informality

Unemployment benefit systems are nonexistent in many developing economies. Introducing such systems poses many challenges which are partly due to the high level of informality in the labor markets of these economies. This paper studies the consequences on the labor market of implementing an unemployment benefit system in economies with large informal sectors and high flows of workers between formality and informality. We build a search and matching model with endogenous destruction, on-the-job search, and intersectoral flows, where agents in the economy decide optimally whether or not to formalize jobs. We calibrate the model for Mexico, and show that the introduction of an unemployment benefit system, where workers contribute when employed in the formal market and collect benefits when they lose their jobs, even if they obtain informal jobs, can lead to an increase in formality in the economy, while also producing small increases in unemployment. The exact impact of incorporating such benefits depends on the relative strength of two opposing effects: the generosity of the benefits and the level of the contributions that finance those benefits. We also show important policy complementarities with other interventions in the labor market. In particular, combining the unemployment benefit program with policies that reduce the cost of formality, such as lower employment taxes and firing costs, can produce greater decreases in informality and lower impacts on unemployment than when the program is applied in isolation.     

Heterogeneous beliefs and the choice between private restructuring and formal bankruptcy

We present a theory for the puzzling issue regarding why certain firms in financial distress, prefer a costlier formal bankruptcy procedure over direct renegotiations. We show that claimholders’ heterogeneous beliefs about the results of a formal plan and about judicial discretion may lead to such a preference. The proposed model predicts which resolution would be chosen under claimholders’ beliefs about the determinants driving the outcome of a formal procedure, such as the extent to which firm value is affected by bankruptcy, the likelihood of deviation from the absolute priority rule, and the probability of the court adopting a reorganization plan.     

The crowding-out effect of formal insurance on informal risk sharing: An experimental study

This paper investigates the crowding-out effect of formal insurance on informal risk-sharing arrangements via theory and laboratory experiment. Our model and simulation predict that the crowding out of private transfers is often more than one-for-one and will reduce the total risk coverage. Furthermore, the existence of a moderate degree of altruism exaggerates the crowding-out effect, especially when there is an ex-ante income inequality. These predictions are mostly supported by the laboratory experiment, except that the crowding-out effect is not more than one-for-one, and hence the total risk coverage is not significantly reduced by formal insurance.     

国有上市公司董事会非正式层级与财务绩效关系的研究

在公司董事会中,始终存在着一股隐性力量影响董事会的决策结果,进而影响公司的财务绩效。已有研究大多以董事会正式结构或人口统计学特征为切入点,本研究区别于其他学者的关注点,基于董事会非正式层级视角,引入基尼系数模型对董事会非正式层级清晰度进行量化,并以国有上市公司为样本进行实证研究,研究发现：董事会非正式层级的清晰度越高,越有利于提升公司的财务绩效,但是董事会非正式层级清晰度对公司财务绩效的边际促进作用会减少。     

农村非正规金融的微观机理与政策测度:国外文献评述

通过对国外文献关于农村非正规金融问题的研究进行概览,本文发现,农村非正规金融不仅能够降低农户借贷的外生交易费用,还能够降低制度性的内生交易费用;农村非正规金融自发生成的各种内在机制具有较高的制度效率,农村非正规金融可以与农村正规金融共存;以家庭为结点的社区网络是农村非正规金融私人治理机制的基础;为了缓解农户贷款难的问题,由发展中国家政府推出的各种扶贫项目的作用却很有限,因而政府要想有效干预农村金融市场,就必须考虑并充分利用农村非正规金融的作用。但已有研究并未定量分析农村非正规金融与正规金融之间的复杂关系,鲜有文献计量农村非正规金融的经济增长效应;相关的理论研究比较零散,尚未形成一致的理论框架。这就为进一步的研究指明了可选方向。     

产权界定、市场禁入与农村非正规金融——由我国第一家私人钱庄兴衰引发的思考

通过对改革开放后第一家私人钱庄兴衰的史实进行重新考察和审视,本文经研究发现,尽管权力当局把资金自由交易权界定给了监管部门,但因监管成本和信息成本过高而无法保障该产权,个人会通过参与各类非正规金融活动来攫取一部分置于公共领域的权利。本文还基于交易费用理论解释了我国金融市场禁人政策出现松动的原因,也即维持扭曲型二元金融制度的成本以及严禁农村非正规金融活动的费用都越来越高,而且国内的经济形势也提出了放松监管的要求,在这些因素的作用下监管部门执行原有金融抑制政策的力度终于降低了。     

Persistent poverty and informal credit

This paper explores the consequences of nonlinear wealth dynamics for the formation of bilateral credit arrangements to help manage idiosyncratic risk. Using original data on expected wealth dynamics, social networks and informal loans among southern Ethiopian pastoralist households, we find that the threshold at which expected wealth dynamics bifurcate serves as a focal point at which lending is concentrated. Informal lending responds to recipients' losses but only so long as the recipients are not “too poor”. Our results suggest that when shocks can have long term effects, loans are best understood as providing a safety net rather than a scale-neutral insurance mechanism. Furthermore, the persistently poor are excluded from social networks that are necessary to obtain loans given in response to shocks.     

论我国农村金融组织体系的现状、存在问题及对策

现阶段我国农村金融组织体系存在的问题主要有:正规性的农村金融组织严重不足,农村金融体系结构与运作机制存在缺陷,机构网点少,产品和服务单一,支农功能不强,农村资金外流严重,"三农"贷款难等。针对上述问题,必须并加快农村金融改革,完善农村金融体系,建立以政策性金融组织为基础、商业金融为发展方向的分工协作的农村金融服务组织体系,包括构建分工合理、投资多元、功能完善、服务高效的农村金融市场体系和业务品种比较丰富的农村金融产品体系,增强为"三农"服务功能。