The need to lay off redundant employees emerged as an important policy issue in urban China in the 1990s. The degree of over-manning can be estimated by comparing estimates of the marginal product of labor with estimates of the full wage, including bonuses, subsidies, and non-cash benefits. We...

We examine the contrast in the experience of ownership reforms between urban SOEs and rural TVEs using a panel of industrial enterprises in Nanjing municipality for the period from 1994 to 2001. Our objectives are twofold. First, we study how the reform program of “grasp the large and let go...