The employment shock of late 2008 in the People's Republic of China (PRC) may have been a product of three different events: (i) the contractionary macroeconomic policies introduced by the government and the central bank in 2007 to slow growth, (ii) the introduction of the new Labor Contract Law...

We use a unique data of representative migrants and urban local workers in 15 Chinese cities to investigate entrepreneurship and credit constraints under labour market discrimination. We divide self employed into prefer to be self-employed and prefer to have a salaried job but cannot find one;...

In this paper, we compare participants in an artefactual field experiment in urban China with the survey population of migrants from which they were recruited. The experimental participants were more educated, more likely to lend money to friends, and worked fewer hours than the general...

In a second-price sequential auction with both global and local bidders, we explore the optimal order for selling heterogeneous goods to maximize efficiency or revenue. Our findings indicate that selling the good with very small variance (almost-zero variance) first yields higher revenue, while...

The authors analyze the optimal reserve price in a second price auction when there are N types of bidders whose valuations are drawn from different distribution functions. The seller cannot determine the specific type of each bidder. First, the authors show that the number of bidders affects the...

This paper analyses the relation between individual migrations and the risk attitudes of other household members when migration is a household decision. We develop a simple model that implies that which members migrate depends on the distribution of risk attitudes among all household members,...

Fifty years ago, China sent more than 16 million urban youths aged 16–19 to rural villages to work and they spent between 1 and 10 years there. This is known as the 'sent-down youth' (SDY) program. This paper examines how this internal migration impacted rural economic development in the...

Labour economists have been increasingly interested in the impact of technological change upon employment and unemployment. However, the predominant focus of empirical studies has been on employment and unemployment stocks, whereas technological change is more likely to affect the flows of...

Although urban China has experienced a rapid income growth over the last twenty years, nutrition intake for the low income group declined in the 1990s. Does this imply a zero or negative income elasticity for the low income group? This paper examines this issue using large representative sample...

Although urban China has experienced spectacular income growth over the last two decades, increases in inequality, reduction in social welfare provision, deregulation of grain prices, and increases in income uncertainty in the 1990s have increased urban poverty. Using a large repeated...