Trade Expansion and Employment Generation: How Mercantilist Does China Have to Be?

Xiao Jiang ()
Additional contact information
Xiao Jiang: Department of Economics, New School for Social Research

No 1109, Working Papers from New School for Social Research, Department of Economics

Abstract: We conduct an input-output analysis of China’s employment changes due to changes in trade structure on sectoral level. We find that between 2002 and 2007 China generated about 71 million jobs due to trade expansion. We also estimate the additional amount of trade that would be needed if China were using trade surplus as the main tool to absorb its excess labor. We find that given the enormous magnitude of this estimated amount, this “mercantilist” approach to excess labor absorption is not feasible. Finally, using Spearman rank correlation analysis, we find that the ranking of China’s sectors’ employment generation capacities is inversely related to the ranking of these sectors’ trade performances. This suggests that the “mercantilist” approach to excess labor absorption is not only infeasible but also inefficient. We end the paper by suggesting a more balanced growth path for China.

Keywords: International trade; labor; China; input-output; factor-content; growth; employment multipliers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F16 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2011-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/econ/2011/NSSR_WP_092011.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:new:wpaper:1109

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from New School for Social Research, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Setterfield ().