Impact of Development Zone Construction on Labor Share in China

The decline in the share of labor income is associated with rising income inequality, which raises a series of economic and social problems. These problems seriously threaten the sustainability of economic development. To maintain sustainable economic development, China’s government has invested hun...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ziyu Liu, Yanlin Yang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2020-05-01
Series:Sustainability
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/9/3642
Description
Summary:The decline in the share of labor income is associated with rising income inequality, which raises a series of economic and social problems. These problems seriously threaten the sustainability of economic development. To maintain sustainable economic development, China’s government has invested hundreds of billions of dollars to build economic development zones by attracting high-tech enterprises into the zones. In our paper, we aim to analyze whether the construction of economic development zones can effectively increase the share of labor income. We use PSM-DID (Propensity Score Matching Difference-in-Difference) to evaluate the impact of establishing economic development zones in China on the labor income share of enterprises in economic development zones in 2006. We found that the establishment and construction of economic development zones increased the share of labor income through the “agglomeration effect” and “policy effect”. Estimation of the level of heterogeneity among economic development zones shows that, compared with provincial economic development zones, the construction of national economic development zones has a greater effect on increasing the labor income share of enterprises in those zones. Economic development zones in the eastern, central, and western regions should also increase their share of labor income areas.
ISSN:2071-1050