Three essays on economic development in China

Ph.D.This dissertation is composed of three essays on the economic development in China.The first essay explores the assortative mating and intra-household bargaining. A growing body of literature focuses on marriage matching patterns and intra-household resource allocations. This essay tests positive assortative mating on wages and education by using a unique dataset, the Chinese Adult Twin Survey data. The empirical analysis presents direct evidence on assortative mating and address the direction of relevant biases by comparing different estimation methods and samples. This essay also identifies the selection effect in assortative mating on both wages and education.Besides, this study contributes to the intra-household bargaining literature by determining proxies to study the correlations between matching traits and bargaining power.The second essay discusses the possible effects of political capital on individuals. Mao’s Mass Send-Down Movement from the 1960s to the 1970s in China can be considered a source of achieved political capital. This essay analyzes the effects of rustication on individuals’ labor and intra-household behavior by employing a unique dataset—the Chinese Adult Twin Survey. Further, this paper examines the effects of rustication on individuals’ labor market outcomes by the types of employer, labor supply, and hourly wage rate. This paper also identifies the direction of across-household selection and the negative effects of within-household selection. In addition, this essay investigates marriage outcomes and intra-household allocations, and probes gender difference and timing effect for rustication.The third essay discusses the relationship between borrowing constraints and schooling.Many of the studies inspired by Becker (1967) discussed the role of credit access in investment decisions related to human capital; however, these studies did not provide a clear consensus on the impact of borrowing constraints on education because of data and modeling restrictions. This essay uses data from 2010 China Family Panel Studies to examine the impact of borrowing constraints on schooling. We use age spacing as a proxy for eligible educational financial aid and find different estimation results for borrowing-constrained and unconstrained groups. Educational financial aids tend to improve the educational attainment of children from constrained families. However,educational financial aid has no statistically significant impact on the educational attainment of children from unconstrained families. This result remains valid if we control birth cohort, household wealth level, and parental attitude toward education and risk.本論文集收錄了三篇有關中國經濟發展的研究論文。第一篇文章探討了婚姻生活中的選型交配和家庭內的討價還價現象。大量文獻研究了婚姻的配對模式和家庭內部的資源配置。本文使用了一個獨特的數據庫——中國成年雙胞胎調查數據——來探討婚姻配對中的基於工資和教育水平的正向選型交配。實證分析提供了證明正向選型交配的直接論據，并通過對不同估計方法和樣本的結果比較，來討論相關偏差的傾向。本文也識別了存在於基於工資和教育水平的正向選型交配中的選擇效應。除此之外，本文使用了衡量家庭內部議價能力的代理變量，研究了配對因子和議價能力的關係，從而對現有的家庭內部討價還價的文獻做出了補充貢獻。第二篇文章討論了政治資本對個人發展的可能影響。十九世紀六十年代到七十年代，發生在中國的上山下鄉運動，可以作為獲得性政治資本的一個來源。本文使用中國成年雙胞胎調查數據，探討了上山下鄉運動對個人的勞動力以及家庭內部行為的可能影響。在探討個人勞動力方面，本文從僱主類別，勞動力供給，小時工資水平三個方面進行討論。本文也討論了家庭之間和家庭內部的可能的選擇效應。除此之外，本文也討論了婚姻結果和家庭內的資源配置，并討論了上山下鄉的性別差異和時機因素。第三篇文章研究了借貸約束和教育的關係。基於貝克(1967)的很多文獻都討論了借貸的使用權和人力資本投資決策的關係，但是由於數據和建模的約束，文獻中並沒有提供一個清晰的討論借貸使用和教育水平的一致意見。本文使用2010年中國家庭追蹤調查數據，探討了借貸約束對於教育水平的影響。文章以年齡跨度作為衡量有資格得到的教育資助的代理變量，以受借貸約束和不受接待約束樣本為考察對象，來進行實證分析。教育資助傾向於提高來自受借貸約束家庭的兒童的教育水平，但是卻對來自不受借貸約束家庭的兒童的教育水平沒有顯著影響。控制了出生年代，家庭財富水平，父母對教育和風險的態度這些因素之後，本文的結果仍舊成立。Liu, Lu.Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2017.Includes bibliographical references.Abstracts also in Chinese.Title from PDF title page (viewed on …)