Seminar «Import Competition and Informal Employment: Empirical Evidence from China»

IOS-IZA-HSE University International Labor Seminar will be held on Tuesday, October 5, 2021 at 15:00 (MSK, GMT+3).

Speaker: Feicheng Wang (University of Göttingen).

Title: Import Competition and Informal Employment: Empirical Evidence from China

This paper investigates the effects of trade liberalisation induced labour demand shocks on informal employment in China. We employ a local labour market approach to construct a regional measure of exposure to import tariffs by exploiting initial differences in industrial composition across prefectural cities and then link it with the employment status of individuals. Using three waves of household survey data between 1995 and 2007, our results show that workers from regions that experienced a larger tariff cut were more likely to be employed informally. Further results based on firm-level data reveal a consistent pattern; tariff reductions increased the share of informal workers within firms. Such effects are more salient among smaller and less productive firms. Our findings suggest an important margin of labour market adjustment in response to trade shocks in developing countries, i.e. employment adjustment along the formal-informal dimension. Co-authors: Zhe Liang and Hartmut Lehmann.

Working paper

Working language is English.

Seminar will be online via Zoom
The link to join Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83858823352
Meeting ID: 838 5882 3352
Passcode: 205502


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