Migration Externalities in Chinese Cities

Pierre-Philippe Combes, Sylvie Démurger and Shi Li (lishi@bnu.edu.cn)

No 1503, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: We analyse the impact of internal migration in China on natives’ labour market outcomes. We find evidence of a large positive correlation of the city share of migrants with natives’ wages. Using different sets of control variables and instruments suggests that the effect is causal. The large total migrant impact (+10% when one moves from the first to the third quartile of the migrant variable distribution) arises from gains due to complementarity with natives in the production function (+6.4%), and from gains due to agglomeration economies (+3.3%). Finally, we find some evidence of a stronger effect for skilled natives than for unskilled, as expected from theory. Overall, our findings support large nominal wage gains that can be expected from further migration and urbanisation in China.

Keywords: Migration; urban development; agglomeration economies; wage disparities; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J61 O18 O53 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-geo, nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-tra and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

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ftp://ftp.gate.cnrs.fr/RePEc/2015/1503.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Migration externalities in Chinese cities (2015)
Working Paper: Migration Externalities in Chinese Cities (2015)
Working Paper: Migration Externalities in Chinese Cities (2015)
Working Paper: Migration externalities in Chinese cities (2015)
Working Paper: Migration Externalities in Chinese Cities (2015)
Working Paper: Migration Externalities in Chinese Cities (2015)
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