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on Transition Economics |
| By: | Céline BONNEFOND; Matthieu CLEMENT; François COMBARNOUS |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to identify and characterize the Chinese urban middle class. We propose to improve the description of the middle class using an innovative approach combining an economic approach (based on income) and a sociological approach (based on education and occupation). The empirical investigations conducted as part of this research are based on the China Health and Nutrition Survey (2009). First, we define the middle income class as households with an annual per capita income between 10,000 yuan and the 95th percentile. On this basis, approximately fifty percent of urban households may be said to belong to the middle class. Second, we use information on employment and education to characterize the heterogeneity of the middle income class. Using clustering methods, we identify four groups: (i) the elderly and the inactive middle class, mainly composed of pensioners; (ii) the old middle class, composed of self-employed workers; (iii) the marginal middle class, composed of skilled and unskilled workers; and (iv) the new middle class, composed of highly educated wage earners in the public sector. We show that the different groups have distinctive features based on variables such as housing and household appliances and equipment. |
| Keywords: | social stratification, income distribution, middle class, urban China, clustering methods. |
| JEL: | O53 P25 P36 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2013-19&r=tra |
| By: | Julian di Giovanni; Andrei A. Levchenko; Jing Zhang |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the global welfare impact of China's trade integration and technological change in a quantitative Ricardian-Heckscher-Ohlin model implemented on 75 countries. We simulate two alternative productivity growth scenarios: a balanced" one in which China's productivity grows at the same rate in each sector, and an \unbalanced" one in which China's comparative disadvantage sectors catch up disproportionately faster to the world productivity frontier. Contrary to a well-known conjecture (Samuelson 2004), the large majority of countries in the sample, including the developed ones, experience an order of magnitude larger welfare gains when China's productivity growth is biased towards its comparative disadvantage sectors. We demonstrate both analytically and quantitatively that this fnding is driven by the inherently multilateral nature of world trade. As a separate but related exercise we quantify the worldwide welfare gains from China's trade integration. |
| Keywords: | Production (Economic theory) ; Technological innovations ; Welfare |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-2013-08&r=tra |
| By: | Polterovich, Victor |
| Abstract: | I discuss goals of institutional experimentation as well as obstacles for its realization. The special attention is given to regional experiments. Institutional experiment reduces transformation costs, in particular, by diminishing probability of formation of erroneous reforms trap. The analyses of introduction of a pay-as-you-go pension component in several tens of countries and the history of introduction of the Unified State Examination in Russia show the importance of planning the experiments in advance and using objective procedures of assessment of their results. The reasons for adopting a law on the institutional experiment are given. |
| Keywords: | interim institution; transformational cost; line of institutions; Unified State Examination; pension reform; evaluation of an experiment |
| JEL: | D02 E02 H75 L85 O1 P5 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:50071&r=tra |
| By: | Andrei A. Levchenko; Jing Zhang |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates both aggregate and distributional impacts of the trade integration of China, India, and Central and Eastern Europe in a quantitative multi-country multi-sector model, comparing outcomes with and without factor market frictions. Under perfect within-country factor mobility, the gains to the rest of the world from trade integration of emerging giants are 0.37%, ranging from –0.37% for Honduras to 2.28% for Sri Lanka. Reallocation of factors across sectors contributes relatively little to the aggregate gains, but has large distributional effects. The aggregate gains to the rest of the world are only 0.065 percentage points lower when neither capital nor labor can move across sectors within a country. On the other hand, the distributional effects of the emerging giants' trade integration are an order of magnitude larger, with changes in real factor returns ranging from –5% to 5% across sectors in most countries. The workers and capital owners in emerging giants' comparative advantage sectors such as Textiles and Wearing Apparel experience greatest losses, while factor owners in Printing and Medical, Precision and Optical Instruments normally gain the most. |
| Keywords: | Emerging markets ; Labor market |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-2013-10&r=tra |
| By: | Vatthanamixay Chansomphou (Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation); Masaru Ichihashi (Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation) |
| Abstract: | In this study, we seek to understand the patterns of structural change, labor productivity growth and convergence in BRIC countries. In the first part, we employ the dataset of labor productivity from de Vries et al. (2012) and the Groningen Growth and Development Center (2013) and utilize the shift and share analysis to investigate the contribution of within shift, static shift and dynamic shift effects on growth of labor productivity. In the second part, we use the convergence tests to check for the cross-country convergence in each economic sector. Our aggregate shift-share decomposition results report that labor productivity growth within sector itself is the main source of aggregate growth, while an effect of labor movement exists (shift effect) but not substantial. Among BRIC, we found that, during 1980-2008, China had the highest rate of labor productivity growth, following by India, Russia, and Brazil, respectively. The results of the convergence analysis show that service sectors in BRICs have faster catching-up rates than industrial sectors, and there is no convergence in agriculture. Among service sectors, financial, insurance, and real estate sector has highest speed of convergence. The BRICs results are then used to compare with the four OECD countriesf results. It is found that in OECD countries, the sectors that converge fastest are mining and finance, insurance, and real estate. Nevertheless, the magnitudes of speed of convergence in OECDs are not comparable to BRICs. This confirms the growth theory in that less developed countries converge faster than developed nations. In sum, our findings imply that service sectors are the driving force of economic growth and economic convergence in BRICs. |
| Keywords: | Structural change, shift-share analysis, sectoral convergence, BRICs |
| JEL: | C80 N10 O10 O11 O41 O47 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hir:idecdp:3-5&r=tra |