中国的劳动力市场扭曲、城乡差别和经济开放

LABOR MARKET DISTORTIONS, RURAL-URBAN INEQUALITY AND THE OPENING OF CHINA'S ECONOMY* Thomas Hertel Center for Global Trade Analysis, Purdue University Fan Zhai** Asian Development Bank Keywords: Labor market, Income distribution, WTO, Computable general equilibrium, China JEL Classification Code: C68; J60; D30; F13; O53 World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3455, November 2004 The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Policy Research Working Papers are available online at http://econ.worldbank.org. *Senior authorship is not assigned. This work was undertaken with partial support from the join Development Research Council/World Bank project on "China's WTO Accession and Poverty." **Corresponding author. Address: Asian Development Bank, PO Box 789, 0980 Manila, Philippines. Tel: 63-2- 6325956; Fax: 63-2-6362360; Email: fzhai@adb.org  Labor Market Distortions, Rural-Urban Inequality and the Opening of China's Economy Non technical Summary This paper evaluates the impact of two key factor market distortions in China on rural-urban inequality and income distribution. We find that creation of a fully functioning land market has a significant impact on rural-urban inequality. This reform permits agricultural households to focus solely on the differential between farm and non-farm returns to labor in determining whether to work on or off-farm. This gives rise to an additional 10 million people moving out of agriculture by 2007 and it lends a significant boost to the incomes of those remaining in agriculture. This off-farm migration also contributes to a significant rise in rural-urban migration, thereby lowering urban wages