We document dramatic rising wages in China for the period 1978-2007 based on multiple sources of aggregate statistics. Although real wages increased seven-fold during the period, growth was uneven across ownership types, industries and regions. Since the late 1990s, the wages of state-owned...

The Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1961 is puzzling, since despite the high death rates, there is no discernable diminution in height amongst the majority of cohorts who were exposed to the famine in crucial growth years. An explanation is that shorter children experienced greater mortality and...

This paper investigates the determinants of employment choice of rural migrant workers across state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and various subtypes of non-state owned enterprises (non-SOEs) by taking into account unobservable characteristics that link the choice to migrate with the choice of...

Earnings inequality and earnings determination in urban China 2002 and Russia 2003 are compared using samples covering large parts of the two countries. The results from estimated earnings functions are put in perspective of the outcome from a similar comparison made at the end of the 1980s. We...

We analyze the effect of rising Chinese import competition between 1990 and 2007 on U.S. local labor markets, exploiting cross-market variation in import exposure stemming from initial differences in industry specialization and instrumenting for U.S. imports using changes in Chinese imports by...

We analyse the impact of internal migration in China on natives' labour market outcomes. We find evidence of a large positive correlation of the city share of migrants with natives' wages. Using different sets of control variables and instruments suggests that the effect is causal. The large...

Using a national sample of Urban Household Surveys, we document several profound changes in China's wage structure during a period of rapid economic growth. Between 1992 and 2007, the average real wage increased by 202 percent, accompanied by a sharp rise in wage inequality. Decomposition...

In the absence of discrimination, there should be no wage-productivity differentials as relative wages should be equal to the relative marginal productivity levels of workers. This paper investigates the role of globalization on the structure and evolution of gender differentials in China by...

This paper examines change in wage gaps in urban China by estimating quantile regressions on CHIPS data. It applies the Machado and Mata (2005) decomposition, finding sharp increases in inequality from 1988 to 1995 and from 2002 to 2008 largely due to changes in the wage structure. The analysis...