the distribution of income in china preface notes on the contributors introduction k griffin z renwei part 1 the distribution of income household income and its distribution a r khan k griffin c riskin z renwei three features of the distribution of income during the transition to reform z renwei part 2 income and wealth in rural china the determinants of household income in rural china a r khan the distribution of wealth in rural china t mckinley income distribution and poverty in rural china c riskin part 3 employment and human capital workers in china s rural industries j knight s lina why urban wages differ in china j knight s lina the determinants of educational attainment j knight l shi annex the 1988 household sample survey m eichen z ming index

more shock than therapy market transition employment and income in russia 1991 1995 sixteen predictions from market transition theory are assessed using survey data on employment earnings and income in russia during the first five years of market reform although the private sector has grown self employment is still rare incomes are down and unemployment is up a distended income distribution reflects unprecedented income inequality distinctive features of late soviet era stratification persist low returns to education a gender gap in earnings and low earnings among professionals the russian market transition offers more opportunity in trade consumer services and speculation and less in manufacturing than do other emerging makets this corresponds to merchat capitalism and contradicts the predictions of market transition theory everything the communists told us about communism was a lie everything they told us about capitalism turns out to be true popular russian joke circa 1996

the geography of endaka industrial transformation and regional employment changes in japan 1986 1991 edgington d w 1994 the geography of endaka industrial transformation and regional employment changes in japan 1986 1991 reg studies 28 521 535 the paper assesses the implications of japan s severe currency realignment of the mid 1980s endaka for national and regional employment trends disaggregated data are used to show that the sudden deterioration in the japanese labour market following 1985 and its subsequent recovery up to 1991 had unequal spatial outcomes the adverse effects of endaka and the impact of the subsequent economic bubble based on asset price inflation were highly differentiated between the sectors of the economy and also between the regions of japan it is argued that from 1986 to 1991 a new geography of japan s economy and labour markets emerged at the prefectural level comprising increasing service sector jobs in tokyo osaka and nagoya strong growth of production jobs in tokai chukyo and tohoku and a much slower recovery in employment opportunities for japan s

regional variation in earnings inequality in reform era urban china this article studies the regional variation in earnings inequality in contemporary urban china focusing on the relationship between the pace of economic reforms and earning determination through

economic transformation and income inequality in urban china evidence from panel data using panel data of 4 730 urban residents drawn from 20 cities in china this article examines changes in income determinants between the prereform and reform eras to guide this empirical study a conceptual model is developed that emphasizes the coevolution of politics and markets to synthesize theoretical ideas in the recent debate on the transformation of state socialist societies the findings show significant changes in returns to education and in the rise of private hybrid firms in the reform era there is also strong evidence of institutional persistence in returns to positional power and in the organizational hierarchy these findings reveal multifaceted processes of transformation that call for more sophisticated theoretical models and in depth institutional analyses

political connections and entrepreneurial investment evidence from china s transition economy abstract recent literature in entrepreneurship suggests that market and legal institutions matter for entrepreneurial investment yet prior studies have focused on the role of formal institutions building on new institutional theory and political connections literature this study aims to evaluate the role of political connections in entrepreneurial reinvestment in less developed and transition economies the purpose of this paper is threefold first it aims to demonstrate systematically how political connections affect entrepreneurial reinvestment second it applies this relationship to a subsample group i e small and medium enterprises smes in order to empirically test whether political connections are more beneficial for large firms or smes third it demonstrates that political connections substitute for rather than complement formal market and legal institutions the empirical test uses a nationally representative sample of entrepreneurial firms from china s transition economy

tightening up declining class mobility during russia s market transition this study analyzes intergenerational occupational mobility in late soviet and post soviet russia using data from six surveys belying claims that class differences did not matter in the soviet union the authors find that social origin did affect occupational opportunity during russia s soviet period but the transition from state socialism to a market economy tightened the link between origins and destinations men and women were equally constrained by their social origin even though they faced significantly different opportunity structures in both periods as the economic transformation took hold fewer russians experienced upward mobility and more were downwardly mobile political and economic transition not the demographic replacement of retiring cohorts by younger ones strengthened the association between origins and destinations career mobility during the 1990s took the form of a regression toward origins as workers who had the most upward mobility during the soviet era lost the most in the tr

between markets and politics organizational responses to reform in china in china s economic transition firms diversify assets through investments in the rapidly expanding service sector in response to organizational uncertainty using data from a random sample of firms in shanghai the author shows that there are two situations that cause this uncertainty economic instability where weak firms struggle to survive in the rapidly changing market system and administrative instability where large firms that were the most protected are now being forced to handle the responsibilities that were previously handled by the state the result is that both types of firm seek stability by spreading out risk through investment in low risk fast return markets revealing much about the economic reforms the overall strategy of a firm reflects at any given point in time important organizational facts any decision to fundamentally alter the deployment of internal resources represents a major structural change these kinds of changes do not occur often when they do they provide us wit

market transition industrialization and social mobility trends in postrevolution china1 this study examines trends in intergenerational class mobility in china by analyzing six comparable nationally representative surveys between 1996 and 2012 defying a simplistic unidirectional ac

institutional environment public private hybrid forms and entrepreneurial reinvestment in a transition economy abstract many less developed and especially transition economies have had high levels of entrepreneurial reinvestment for relatively long periods despite the absence of developed government institutions to resolve this puzzle this study proposes that many entrepreneurial firms in these economies have been actively engaged in political activities through which organizational arrangements are created to co opt government agencies into their organizational structures to manipulate and even control unfavorable institutional environments it empirically evaluates the role of one such organizational arrangement public private hybrid forms in china s gradual reform period it suggests that through protecting property rights and facilitating access to key resources and opportunities public private hybrid forms may act as a substitute for deficient market and legal institutions thus facilitating entrepreneurial reinvestment the findings from a national sample of chinese entrepreneurial firms support our propositions in general entrepreneurial firms adopting public private hybrid forms enjoy higher entrepreneurial reinvestment rates than pure private firms during gradual reform and this may be the case because such forms help to both protect private property rights and access key resources and opportunities in addition the association between the forms and reinvestment rate is found higher under less developed government institutions

productivity convergence in japan s manufacturing industries abstract this paper studies the question of convergence of labor productivity in 12 manufacturing industries in japan during 1985 to 1997 using the transition matrix for analysis our results indicate that manufacturing industries do not display a pattern of convergence

industrial diversification and city size the case of yugoslavia the theoretical explanation for the industrial diversification city size relationship is studied as an explanation on the basis of variation in factor prices is not adequate attention is paid to

market expansion state intervention and wage differentials between economic sectors in urban china a multilevel analysis the rising earnings inequality in china has sparked a heated debate on the socioeconomic outcomes of market transformation while a large body of literature has focussed on the temporal trend of wage inequality during the reform period much less attention has been devoted to the structural causes of regional variations in sectoral wage differentials using a micro data sample from the 2005 one percent population sample survey and multilevel methods this article examines the geographic variability of wage differentials between economic sectors in urban china with a particular focus on the combination effects of market expansion and state intervention the results indicate that sectoral wage differentials vary substantially across regions and that market expansion interacts with state intervention to reconfigure earnings outcomes specifically prefectures located in the interior region tend to exhibit a large wage premium for the state sectors while prefectures located in the coastal region tend to di

adapting to radical change strategy and environment in piece rate adoption during china s transition adaptation to radical change is central to research in organization theory and some of the most dramatic examples of environmental change have occurred recently in transition economies such as china i take advantage of change during china s economic reform to study the relative importance of organizational and environmental factors in producing innovative managerial response i find that strategic choice predicted innovation in the early stages of reform but environmental factors increased in salience over time intrafirm support communist party connections and a market orientation produced innovation early in reform simple imitation of others was also salient in early years as reform progressed managers increasingly imitated other profitable firms and drew on their own experience my results inform an understanding of both the process by which innovation occurs and firm behavior in transition economies

a theory of market transition from redistribution to markets in state socialism state socialist redistributive economies are characterized by the allocation and distribution of goods through central planning this paper develops a theory of market transition which argues that in reforming socialist economies the transition from redistributive to market coordination shifts sources of power and privilege to favor direct producers relative to redistributors the shit improves incentives for direct producers stimulates the growth of private markets and provides to entrepreneurs an alternative path for socioeconomic mobility a set of hypotheses test the market transition theory with householdand village level data

markets and income inequality in rural china political advantage in an expanding economy when market reform generates rapid growth in an agrarian subsistence economy changes in inequality may be due to economic growth and structural change rather than to the intrinsic features of markets the case of post mao china is examined using nationally representative survey data gathered in 1996 to address unresolved questions about findings from 1980s surveys well into reform s second decade political officeholding has a large net impact on household income comparable to that of operating a private enterprise contrary to findings based on earlier surveys and expectations about the impact of growth cadre household advantages are stable across levels and forms of economic expansion returns to entrepreneurship however decline sharply with the spread of wage employment future declines in relative returns to political position are therefore unlikely to occur due to the further spread of private household entrepreneurship and theories of change based on this mechanism appear untenable

the economics of communist party membership the curious case of rising numbers and wage premium during china s transition 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

getting ahead in urban china this article argues that structural segmentation is a universal phenomenon in all complex societies and across political economies each political economy uses specific criteria in delineating segments of its economic and work organizations furthermore it is argued that segmentation identification constitutes a critical destination status for individuals engaged in the status attainment process a representative sample of the working population in tianjin china is analyzed to show that entrance into the core sectors state agencies and enterprises rather that the job per se constitutes the primary goal of status attainment entering into a more desirable work unit sector in china takes on differential significance and process for males and females formales the direct effect of intergenerational factors i e the effect of father s work unit sector is evident for females such an effect is only indirect instead to a great extent their status attainment also upward occupational mobility acr

the emergence of a market society changing mechanisms of stratification in china this article examines the effect of institutional change the shift from redistribution to markets in altering the mechanisms of stratification new institutionalists maintain that interests are emb

education s role in china s structural transformation abstract we explore education s role in improving the allocation of labor between china s agricultural and nonagricultural sectors and measure the portion of china s recent growth attributable to this channel using detailed micro level data and an empirical model that allows for the endogenous selection of education and sector of employment we estimate the relationship between an individual s educational attainment sector and income we find that about 11 of aggregate growth in output per worker from 1978 to 2004 is accounted for by increased education with 9 coming through the labor reallocation channel and 2 attributable to increased within sector human capital

estimating returns to education using twins in urban china abstract this paper empirically estimates the return to education using twins data that the authors collected from urban china our ordinary least squares estimate shows that one year of schooling increases an individual s earnings by 8 4 if we use a within twin fixed effects model the return is reduced to 2 7 but rises to 3 8 after the correction of measurement error these results suggest that a large portion of the estimated returns to education is due to omitted ability or the family effect we further investigate why the true return is low and the omitted ability bias high and find evidence showing that it may be a consequence of china s education system which is highly selective and exam oriented more specifically we find that high school education may mainly serve as a mechanism to select college students but as a human capital investment per se it has low returns in terms of earnings in contrast both vocational school education and college education have a large return that is comparable to that found in the united states

returns to education in china a meta analysis within labour economics returns to education is an area of focused research moreover amongst studies looking at emerging economies china is the most widely studied economy while there is a gen

health human capital height and wages in china abstract we estimate the returns to height using data from 12 chinese cities we present both ordinary least squares ols and two stage least squares tsls estimates in the latter height is instrumented using proxies for health human capital accumulated in childhood and adolescence which influence adult height the tsls estimates are much higher reflecting the fact that the ols estimates are determined by the random genetic factors influencing height while the tsls estimates also take into account returns from investment in health human capital during childhood and adolescence these results imply considerable returns to investment in health human capital

social inequalities in reforming state socialism between redistribution and markets in china this article extends market transition theory to an analysis of inequality under the conditions of partial reform in china logit regression analysis indicates cadres officials have no greater odds than other households of being among the privileged or avoiding poverty entrepreneurs andformer team cadres however are advantaged despite the rise of a hybrid elite of entrepreneurs who are currently cadres that capitalizes on redistributive power to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace increases in income inequality are modest when market reform stimulates improved economic performance the poor appear to benefit and experience comparable improvements in household income as a result there is only a slight increase in inequality at least in the early stages of market reform the empirical analysis is based on survey data collected in rural china in 1985

ownership organization and income inequality market transition in rural vietnam in transitional economies the scale of economic enterprise and the allocation of property rights shape social structures and influence income distribution in agrarian economies where labor intensive family enterprises dominate political officials income advantages decline rapidly relative to those of private entrepreneurs larger enterprises however provide greater income opportunities for officials especially when a government retains an ownership stake in the initial phases of reform this article replicates the findings from an earlier study of rural china using comparable survey data from vietnam we find that during the first two decades of rural market reform in vietnam and china the scale and ownership of firms differed radically small family enterprises dominated rural development in vietnam whereas china s development was dominated by larger firms initially established by rural governments consequently while cadre income advantages have kept pace with those of private entrepreneurs

economic segmentation worker power and income inequality how economic segmentation generates income inequality constitutes a central question for theories of economic and social organization and of socioeconomic achievement previous research emphasizes two sources of the structural variation in income 1 employers with large amounts of resources for a variety of reasons may find it in their interests to pay workers higher wages and 2 some workers are able to acquire power against their employers as well as against other workers and can therefore extract higher earnings in this paper we investigate several issues involved in the links among economic segmentation worker power and income inequality we argue that the structure of economic segmentation is multidimensional and reflects such distinct concepts as concentration economic scale state intervention in the market capital intensity and organization size worker power also is derived from diverse sources such as union membership occupational skill and licensing class position and tenure wi

getting personal networks and stratification in the russian labor market 1985 2001 the authors use employment histories from survey data to examine personal network use and stratification in the russian labor market from 1985 to 2001 institutional changes associated with the soviet collapse increased the use of networks and shaped their prevalence and benefits in theoretically coherent ways in russia networks positively affect job quality whether measured by occupation current earnings or wage arrears these findings relate to recent debates over whether job contacts provide advantages and how social capital relates to postsocialist inequalities involving gender communist party membership and education russia also exhibits a previously overlooked relationship between network use and locality type

membership has its privileges the socioeconomic characteristics of communist party members in urban china this article compares the relative importance of political capital in the form of membership in the chinese communist party and human capital in the form of higher education in urban china survey data from urban china strongly support two key elements of the intellectual new class theory intellectuals will have privileged access into the party and the importance of education relative to political reliability will increase over time the data also show how political capital and human capital are converted into high paying and prestigious jobs there is also evidence of a separate path of career mobility for the most socially prestigious jobs a college degree not a party card is the key economic reforms of the post mao era are creating a gap between political power on one hand and social prestige and economic power on the other this gap can be expected to grow as the reforms continue

diversification specialization convergence and divergence of sectoral employment structures in the british urban system 1991 2001 o donoghue d and townshend i j 2005 diversification specialization convergence and divergence of sectoral employment structures in the british urban system 1991 2001 regional studies 39 585 601 this paper examines the changing employment structure of 150 travel to work areas ttwas in britain from 1991 to 2001 using data from the annual employment survey and the annual business inquiry 20 sectors of economic activity are defined and investigated the analysis clearly identifies the continued shift away from primary and manufacturing employment as increasingly more people are employed in the so called service based and informational economy clear spatial patterns emerge associated with employment change across sectors and these are also explored given the changing pattern of employment and the spatial characteristics of each sector new patterns of specialization and diversification are expected to emerge the analysis identifies these patterns and places their explanation into the context

property rights and stratification in socialist redistributive economies in socialist economies work organizations differ widely in the compensation they provide employees despite the absence of key product and labor market processes thought to ex plain such inequalities in market economies existing theories of stratification in socialist economies focus on the power and privilege of elites but inequalities among organizations are not created by political particularism or elite power in this paper i sketch elements of an institutional theory of stratification anchored in a conception of property rights the right to derive income from productive assets two aspects of property rights guide the analysis 1 the dispersion of property rights across a hierarchy of governmentjurisdictions and 2 the exercise of these rights by government jurisdictions as they extract revenues primarily through taxation extraction of revenues from a work organization varies with the budgetary resources of a government jurisdiction and the dependence of that jurisdiction on the out puts of the organization variation in revenue extraction in turn creates inequalities among work organizations in their abilities to provide benefits to employees an analysis of survey data on the provision of housing and benefits by work organizations in the large industrial city of tianjin china provides provisional support for these ideas s tudents of communist states have had little reason to dispute lenski s 1966 claim that the distribution of rewards in a society is a func tion of the distribution of power p 63 as ex emplified in szelenyi s wedding of elite theory to institutional economics this idea has been de veloped primarily in terms of the power of class es or occupational groups szelenyi 1978 be gan with the observation that planned economies operate according to redistributive rather than market principles however the process of re

the first shall be last entrepreneurship and communist cadres in the transition from socialism this article reviews the sociological literature on the transition from socialism to capitalism it distinguishes between the erosion and transition phases and between traditional and corporate segments in the emerging private sector panel survey data from hungary show that during the transition ex communist cadres maintain their advantageous position and do especially well in the more dynamic corporate segment they are successful because human capital is important in both capitalism and socialism and because the cadres are able to convert past political power to economic advantage contrary to the findings of studies based only on agriculture the transition increases income inequalities

gender and the new inequality explaining the college non college wage gap the new inequality is often characterized by the increasing wage gap between workers with a college education and those without yet although the gap in hourly wages between college educated and non college educated women is high and rising the topic has been overshadowed by research on gender inequality and wage inequality among men using the 1990 5 percent public use microdata samples independent sources of macro data and controls for individual human capital characteristics i examine the association between the college non college wage gap and key aspects of local economic conditions for women and men while the college non college wage gap among women is comparable in size to the gap among men significant gender differences emerge in the underlying sources of high wage gaps in over 500 labor markets across the united states compared with men flexible and insecure employment conditions e g joblessness casualization and immigration are more important in fostering high wage gaps among women than are technology trade and industrial composition the prevailing explanations of rising wage inequality over time based on these gender differences i reconsider the debate on labor market restructuring and inequality and discuss a new analytical focus on differences in within gender inequality

incentives allocation and labour market reforms during transition the case of urban china 1986 1990 has the reform process in china resulted in the introduction of incentives directed at a more efficient allocation of resources using data on individual earnings in urban liaoning province for the period 1986 1990 and a wage equation approach we address this issue in the context of labour market reforms focusing specifically on returns to education our results indicate that failure to address the issue of endogenous selection of more able individuals into state owned enterprises soes can severely bias returns downwards unlike in soes returns in collective owned enterprises coes increased the latter having been allowed to grow out of the plan more quickly and subject to more competition in factor and product markets we conclude that decentralization without competition is unlikely to result in the introduction of an efficient incentive mechanism the more administratively determined regular wages are one avenue for increased returns we find evidence of differentiated bonuses in coes but

productivity change and decomposition analysis of japanese regional economies this study examines the productivity growth and its four components for japanese regional economies by analyzing 47 prefectures for the period 1995 2012 the productivity changes are measured by th

the interruption of income convergence and income growth in large cities in the 1980s recent studies have documented the divergence of per capita personal income among regions of the us in the 1980s following many decades of income convergence this paper establishes the same patter

the great proletarian cultural revolution disruptions to education and returns to schooling in urban china in determining whether a country s higher education system should be expanded it is important for policymakers first to determine the extent to which high private returns to post secondary education are an indication of the scarcity of graduates instead of the high unobserved ability of students who choose to attend post secondary education to this end the paper identifies the returns to schooling in urban china using individual level variation in educational attainment caused by exogenous city wide disruptions to education during the cultural revolution from 1966 to 1976 for city cohorts who experienced greater disruptions children s educational attainment became less correlated with that of their fathers and more influenced by whether their fathers held administrative positions the analysis calculates returns to college education using data from the china urban labor survey conducted in five large cities in 2001 the results are consistent with the selection of high ability students into higher education the analysis also demonstrates that these results are unlikely to be driven by sample selection bias associated with migration or by alternative pathways through which the cultural revolution could have affected adult productivity

patterns and strategies of foreign direct investment the case of japanese firms this paper is to study globalization motives and strategies of japanese manufacturing industries by analyzing the causes and patterns of foreign direct investment fdi of japanese manufacturing firms we use regression analysis to determine internally driving out factors and externally inducing factors japanese fdi strategy has gone through three different stages from natural resource seeking investment in the 1950s and 1960s to market expansion investment in the 1970s and 1980s and to a combination of cost reducing low cost labor seeking investment and market penetrating investment in the 1990s our findings show that japanese fdi in asia and other developing countries tends to be in labor intensive sectors where japanese firms are losing their comparative advantages at home the main motive for fdi into these regions is low cost resource seeking on the other hand japanese fdi in the us and europe tends to be knowledge intensive sectors where japanese firms attempt to internalize transaction and i

exchange structures in transition lending and trade relations in chinese business groups the networks of interfirm relations that developed in business groups during economic transition are central to china s reform and are becoming an important part of the country s emergent economic structure using a recent and original data set that includes direct observations of economic choices made by firms the process by which these interfirm lending and trade ties emerged and evolved in the early stages of reform is explored initially information from sources external to the network dominated the formation and direction of exchange relations firms turned to their prior connections took advantage of market position and drew on bureaucratic power to develop alliances over time internal influences gained importance and managers increasingly drew on internal nontrade relations and other indicators inside the business group to identify lending and trade partners the results demonstrate the central but changing role that social relations and environmental cues played in the creation of economic structure during china s transition this study also contributes to an understanding of the processes of organizational adaptation to a major economic transition and interfirm alliance formation more generally the findings reveal that firms select exchange partners of known reputation and solicit relations that reduce uncertainty even when there is a cost involved

revolution reform and status inheritance urban china 1949 1996 do regime change and market reform disrupt patterns of intergenerational mobility china s political trajectory is distinctive from that of other communist regimes in two ways during its first three decades the regime enforced unusually restrictive barriers to elite status inheritance and during the subsequent market transition unlike most of its counterparts the communist party survived intact data from a multigeneration survey suggest that despite their obvious exclusion from the party and related administrative careers in the mao era certain prerevolution elites transmitted one type of elite status to their offspring to a surprising degree party elites in contrast were hit hard by radical maoism but recovered quickly afterward and their offspring inherited elite status at much higher rates

forces shaping urban europe the paper describes seven major forces which are currently affecting the spatial structure of urban europe globalisation of the world economy has emphasised comparative advantage leading to the deindustrialisation of many older cities and the emergence of a very select group of eurocities changes in east central europe will provide a new stimulus to the growth of capital and second order cities in which new investment will be concentrated the urban impact of the shift to the informational sector is twofold major capitals will intensify their dominance but at a lower level of function there will be dispersal technological innovations in transport and communications are likely to lead to more polycentric cities lastly the impacts on european cities of urban marketing and socio demographic changes are described

industrial structure and manufacturing growth during japan s bubble and post bubble economies kobayashi n 2004 industrial structure and manufacturing growth during japan s bubble and post bubble economies reg studies 38 429 444 this paper considers the effects of changing industrial structure and region specific factors on the regional increase decrease of manufacturing shipments during the bubble and post bubble economies in japan although industrial structure affected performance during the bubble economy and was closely related to location it became less clearly linked in the 1990s specialization in materials and consumer goods industries had negative effects on growth electronics industries dramatically changed their component mix during the 1990s and regions that successfully implemented these changes enjoyed sustainable growth

returns to education in china we were fortunate in having access to a survey of 800 adults in nanjing that was conducted by the international wool secretariate in 1986 the survey was intended for market research e g brand recognition but questions were asked about the respondent s age occupation income and education level these questions though not ideally worded were sufficient for the undertaking of a returns to education study we believe the data to be unique and of course the issue of interest is whether a member of the workforce in china faces investment decisions on education similar to those faced elsewhere the influence of sex and marital status on the level of income achieved by an individual was also examined the basic equation modeled personal income as a nonlinear function of schooling and experience but multicollinearity problems were encountered as a result a production function approach was successfully adapted to the returns toeducation model the collinearity problem was overcome and this approach allowed the ease of substitution of education for experience in income generation to be examined more formally an additional problem of errors in variables arose from a failing in questionnaire design and was handled statistically

the evolution of regional labour productivities in japanese manufacturing 1968 2004 essletzbichler j and kadokawa k the evolution of regional labour productivities in japanese manufacturing 1968 2004 regional studies the success of the japanese economy in the post war period was predicated on the rapid productivity catch up of its manufacturing sector to western economies although productivity varied widely among japanese regions this paper examines the evolution of labour productivity in japanese prefectures over the period 1968 2004 employing markov chain analysis variance shift share analysis and analysis of variance the paper demonstrates that during the period of fast productivity growth the japanese economy was characterized by an increasing polarization of productivity levels while the period of slow growth since the early 1990s produced convergence in regional productivity levels essletzbichler j et kadokawa k l evolution de la productivite regionale du travail dans l industrie japonaise de 1968 a 2004 regional studies la reussite de l economie japonaise pendant

structural change and post socialist stratification labor market transitions in contemporary russia in russia market transition has led to sweeping structural changes a long recession growth of the private sector expansion of certain branches of the economy and contraction of others a decrease in average firm size and regional differentiation in economic performance these structural changes had important consequences for stratification through their effects on individual labor market outcomes analyses of nine types of individual labor market transitions in russia using 1991 1997 work history data show that structural location has strong effects human capital and membership in the communist party of the soviet union also influence labor market prospects but not in ways consistent with general theories about how market transition affects stratification processes structural change plays a key role in determining the impact of market reforms on stratification but market transition produces variable patterns of structural change in different countries and in different regions within a single country the structural perspective demonstrates why market transition has variable consequences for stratification different prior conditions and reform policies produce different patterns of structural change

economic diversification and group stability in an urban system the case of canada 1951 86 researchers have shown relatively little recent interest in the study of the economic diversification and classification of urban systems if we are to understand contemporary urban structures older studies must be brought up to date this study of the economic character of towns greater than 30 000 in canada demonstrates the degree of diversification of the centres between 1951 and 1986 and provides a succinct classification of the centres the expected decrease in the general level of diversification between the two dates is complemented by the finding that differences in this single summary measure between the regions of canada can no longer be found cluster analysis procedures are used to derive seven groups of places in 1986 which are very similar to the categories found in 1951 even though there has been a transformation in the size and economy of the places this relative stability in the categories of places is parallelled by similarities in the membership of the groups however at the most f

labor migration and returns to rural education in china this paper provides an answer to the following question why do empirical studies find low returns to schooling in rural china and yet the schooling rates are high i find that schooling played a significant role in raising the accessibility of urban formal employment to rural people in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the face of the government s restrictive policy on labor migration from rural to urban areas the large urban rural income difference provided a strong incentive for senior high school education the theory also explains the drop in the senior high school attendance in the mid 1980s

elite opportunity in transitional economies command economies gave communist era elites administrative control and material privilege but severely restricted money income and private wealth markets and privatization have injected new value into public assets and create unprecedented opportunities for elite insiders these opportunities depend on the extent of regime change and barriers to asset appropriation regime change varies from the survival of the entire party hierarchy to its rapid collapse and defeat in competitive elections barriers to asset appropriation vary with the extent pace and form of privatization and the concentration and liquidity of assets different combinations of such circumstances jointly affect the extent to which prior elites obtain ownership or control of privatized assets use political office to extract larger incomes move into salaried elite occupations or fall out of the elite altogether regime change and barriers to asset appropriation affect change at the national level but outcomes vary across economic sectors because of characteristics of organizations elite positions and assets this elementary theory serves to integrate varied findings from recent research on central europe china and russia and yields predictions for other regions

interregional income differentials and migration their interrelationships tabuchi t 1988 interregional income differentials and migration their interrelationships reg studies 22 1 10 the major objective of this paper is to demonstrate that interregional income differential is exogenous to interregional net migration but not conversely utilizing japanese prefectural based data for 1954 82 we conduct the following three kinds of analyses to confirm this statement firstly a simple comparison of the crests of interregional time series plots was made to see which occurred first secondly sims 1972 test of causality was done to investigate causation between urban rural income differential and net migration finally per capita income and population share were examined by two dimensional phase diagram for nine regions tabuchi t 1988 le rapport des ecarts de revenus inter regionaux a la migration reg studies 22 1 10 cet article vise a demontrer que l ecart de revenus inter regional est exogene par rapport a la migration inter regionale nette ii n en va pas de

returns to investment in education a global update the author updates compilations of rate of return estimates to investment in education published since 1985 and discusses methodological issues surrounding those estimates some key patterns among the three main levels of education primary education continues to exhibit the highest social profitability in all world regions private returns are considerably higher than social returns because of the public subsidization of education the degree of public subsidy increases with the level of education which is regressive social and private returns at all levels generally decline by the level of a country s per capita income overall the returns to female education are higher than those to male education but at individual levels of education the pattern is more mixed the returns to the academic secondary school track are higher than the vocational track since unit cost of vocational education is much higher and the returns for those who work in the private competitive sector of the economy are higher than in the public noncompetitive sector and the returns in the self employment unregulated sector of the economy are higher than in the dependent employment sector controversies in the literature are discussed in the light of the new evidence the undisputable and universal positive correlation between education and earnings can be interpreted in many ways the causation issue on whether education really affects earnings can be answered only with experimental data generated by randomly exposing different people to various amounts of education given the fact that moral and pragmatic considerations prevent the generation of such pure data researchers have to make do with indirect inferences or natural experiments some have been attempted the author looks at the research on overeducation or surplus schooling the conclusions reinforce earlier patterns they confirm that primary education continues to be the number one investment priority in developing countries they also show that educating females is marginally more profitable than educating males that the academic secondary school curriculum is a better investment than the technical vocational tract and that the returns to education obey the same rules as investment in conventional capital that is they decline as investment is expanded