The impact of China's WTO accession on internal migration

Giovanni Facchini, Maggie Liu, Anna Maria Mayda and Minghai Zhou ()

No 422, Development Working Papers from Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano

Abstract: In this paper we focus on the changes in internal migration flows triggered by China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). We use a difference-in-difference empirical specification based on variation across Chinese prefectures before and after 2001. We relate changes in internal migration rates to the reduction in trade policy uncertainty faced by Chinese exporters to the U.S., as measured by the normal-trade relations (NTR) gap (Handley and Limao 2013, Pierce and Schott 2015). We find that Chinese prefectures facing a larger decline in their average NTR-gap experience a greater increase in internal migration. Our results also show that the impact on skilled and unskilled internal migration rates is consistent with the average skill intensity of export industries of a prefecture.

Keywords: Immigration Policy; Trade Policy; Political (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52
Date: 2017-02-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-int, nep-mig and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csl:devewp:422

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