What are the welfare implications of placing restrictions on internal migration? Given externalities in location choices, the answer is ambiguous. This paper empirically examines what is presumably the largest government intervention in internal migration in human history--the Hukou system in...

How does a relaxation of migration restrictions affect labor-market outcomes of incumbent migrants? In this paper, we answer this question by studying a significant internal migration policy change in China: the 2014 hukou reform. This reform substantially removed the migration barriers of...

How does an area’s proximity to big cities affect its growth? Using county-level data from China for 1990–2020, we find that an area’s being close to big cities (in the 150–250 km range) reduces the decadal population growth rate by 2.8–3.8 percentage points. Initial agricultural...