International Trade Liberalization and Domestic Institutional Reform: Effects of WTO Accession on Chinese Internal Migration Policy

Yuan Tian
Additional contact information
Yuan Tian: University of Nottingham

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2024, vol. 106, issue 3, 794-813

Abstract: Economic institutions that impede factor mobility become more costly when an economy experiences substantial transitions such as trade liberalization. I study how trade triggers changes in labor institutions that regulate internal migration in the context of China’s Hukou system. Using a newly collected dataset on prefecture-level migration policies, I document an increase in promigrant regulations following WTO entry and estimate the impact of prefecture-level tariffs on exports on migration regulations from 2001 to 2007. I find that regions facing more export market liberalization enacted more migrant-friendly regulations.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01175
Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

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:tpr:restat:v:106:y:2024:i:3:p:794-813

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().