On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of China's economic transition, this thesis deals with several facets of the integration of Chinese domestic market over such an exciting era. Chapter 1 discusses first a variety of institutional reforms aimed at reinforcing the central control over regional affairs and improving the integration of domestic market. Several stylised facts about the local protectionism, which come from a recent survey implemented by a respected institution, are also illustrated in the chapter. Chapter 2 offers a brief review of the literature relative to China's internal integration. Generally speaking, the studies have proceeded along six major lines: similarity of production structure, price convergence, synchronization of business cycles, domestic trade linkages, interregional capital mobility and population migration. Chapter 3 examines the trade pattern within China. In the spirit of McCallum (1995), we find that after controlling for various traditional gravity factors, the trade flows within a Chinese province are 23 to 28 times as dense as those between provinces over the period of 1992-2003. Such findings suggest a highly fragmented product market within China. A trend toward market integration is, however, derived from the evolution analysis. The regressions by sub-period samples show that since the mid-1990s, the magnitudes of border effects have exhibited a dramatic decline. Chapter 4 investigates the capital mobility and capital allocation efficiency among Chinese provinces. We show first that the provincial savings and investment rates are significantly and positively correlated over the period of 1978-2006. According to the Feldstein-Horioka's argument (1980), this relationship can be interpreted as evidence of low capital mobility. Furthermore, by testing the causality between provincial aggregate investment and income, we fail to provide consistent evidence to support the hypothesis of efficient capital allocation in China. Chapter 5 addresses the labor force migration among Chinese regions. After a short introduction of reforms of hukou system, we derive a simple wage gap equation including education level, market potential and provincial border indicator as explaining variables. In using city and sector-level data, we find that other things being equal, the wage dispersions within provincial borders are significantly less pronounced than those among provinces over the period of 2003-2005. According to the law of one price, such findings imply a weak mobility of labor force among provinces.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CCSD/oai:tel.archives-ouvertes.fr:tel-00559256 |
| Date | 19 June 2009 |
| Creators | Li, Cheng |
| Publisher | Université Paris-Est |
| Source Sets | CCSD theses-EN-ligne, France |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PhD thesis |
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