Seminar «Trade Liberalization and the Gender Employment Gap in China»

IZA-HSE University International Labor Seminar will be held on Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 16:00 (MSK).

Speaker: Feicheng Wang (Göttingen).

Title: Trade Liberalization and the Gender Employment Gap in China.

This paper investigates the impact of import liberalization induced labor demand shocks on male and female employment in China. Combining data from population and firm censuses between 1990 and 2005, we relate prefecture-level employment by gender to the exposure to tariff reductions on locally imported products. Our empirical results show that increasing import competition has kept more females in the workforce, reducing an otherwise growing gender employment gap in the long run. These dynamics were present both in local economies as a whole and among formal private industrial firms. Examining channels through which tariff reductions differentially affect males and females, we find that trade-induced competitive pressures contributed to a general expansion of female-intensive industries, a shift in sectoral gender segregation, reductions in gender discrimination in the labor market, technological upgrading through computerization, and general income growth. Joint paper with Krisztina Kis-Katos and Minghai Zhou.

Working paper (PDF, 1.37 Мб) 

Discussant: Björn Gustafsson (University of Gothenburg and IZA).

Working language is English.

Seminar will be online via Zoom
The link to join Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/96156784379
Meeting ID: 961 5678 4379
Password: 207702


If you have questions please contact Liliya Gubaidullina ( lgubajdullina@hse.ru ).