Lecture series of the Institute for Economic and Social Research (No.69)

Topic: Labor Skill, Industry Structure and Migration

Date:November 3, 2017

Time:1:30 - 2:45 p.m. 

Venue: Room 106B, Zhonghui Building

Speaker: Ma Xiang-jun

Sponsor: Institute for Economic and Social Research

ABOUT MA XIANG-JUN

Ma Xiang-jun, assistant professor, obtained his Ph.D in Economics from the University of Virginia in 2012. He have taught in the School of International Trade and Economics at the University of International Business and Economics since September in 2012. He is generally interested in international trade, applied microeconomics, urban economics and political economics. He has published several papers in international journals like Empirical Economics, Journal of International Trade and Economic Development, and Review of International Economics, and has presided over several youth projects of Natural Science Foundation of China.

ABSTRACT

Regional migrants consist of a large share of the labor market in China. While who selects into migration has been extensively studied, there has been absence of discussion on how heterogeneous these migrants are, particularly regarding their industry choice upon migration. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between regional migrants' industry concentration and the industry structure of the source (home) province and the host city in China. Using a unique nationwide survey data of regional migrants with more than 128,000 observations in each year we find that migrants are less likely to choose industries in which their home province has comparative advantage and more likely to select into industries in which the host city has comparative advantage. To explain the empirical findings, we construct a variant of the Roy Model, which provides theoretical prediction consistent with our empirical findings.