EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Economics of Communist Party Membership: The Curious Case of Rising Numbers and Wage Premium during China's Transition

Simon Appleton, John Knight, Lina Song and Qingjie Xia

Journal of Development Studies, 2009, vol. 45, issue 2, 256-275

Abstract: As the Chinese Communist Party has loosened its grip in a more market-oriented economy, why have membership and the economic benefits of joining risen? We use three national household surveys over 11 years to answer this question for wages in urban China. Individual demand for Party membership is treated as an investment in 'political capital' that brings monetary rewards in terms of a wage premium that has risen in recent years. However, this does not explain why the wage premium is higher for the personal characteristics that reduce the probability of membership. Rationing with a scarcity value for members with those characteristics provides an explanation.

Date: 2009
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220380802264739 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Economics of Communist Party Membership: The Curious Case of Rising Numbers and Wage Premium during China’s Transition (2008) Downloads
Working Paper: The economics of Communist Party membership - The Curious case of rising numbers and wage premium during China’s transition (2008) Downloads
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:taf:jdevst:v:45:y:2009:i:2:p:256-275

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FJDS20

DOI: 10.1080/00220380802264739

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Studies is currently edited by Howard White, Oliver Morrissey and Ken Shadlen

More articles in Journal of Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-31
Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:45:y:2009:i:2:p:256-275