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Cosponsored by the International Center for the Study of Institutions
and Development (ICSID) at the Higher School of Economics (HSE),
HKUST IEMS hosted this two-day workshop at the HKUST campus.
The focus of the workshop was on the latest empirical research on
the political economy of local governance and state-business relations
in Russia and China, featuring leading scholars from Russia, China,
Hong Kong, and the US specializing in the analysis of micro-datasets
on local government officials and firms in Russia and China.
Ora John Reuter,
Assistant Professor of Political Science at the
University of Wisconsin, began the workshop with his study on the
curious fact that officials in competitive authoritarian regimes such
as Russia are appointed and reappointed regardless of the economic
performance of their assigned region. Prof Reuter analyzed the
variation in political appointment patterns across Russia’s 89 regions,
focusing on over 3,500 regional vice governors with economic
policymaking responsibilities between 2001 to 2012. His results
show that performance-based appointments were significantly more
prevalent in the less politically-competitive regions of the country. As
for the more politically-competitive regions of the country, Prof Reuter
attributed the lack of performance-sensitivity to “electoral-machine
politics”, where the ability to deliver votes and to establish personal
connections with top leaders dominate economic performance when
it comes to appointments, an argument corroborated by previous
qualitative studies.
Pierre Landry,
Professor of Political Science and Director of Global
China Studies at NYU-Shanghai, presented his work on political
selection along the Chinese administrative ladder. Specifically, Prof
Landry attempted to reconcile the mixed evidence connecting
economic performance to political loyalty in China’s cadre promotion
system. To measure both promotion and the fiscal competence of
China’s officials, Prof Landry examined the political appointments of
party secretaries and government executives between 1997 to 2007
across a wide swath of China’s provinces, and controlling for such
factors as fiscal revenue, local GDP, and relative growth rates. His
main finding was that economic performance drives promotions at
the lower levels of the Chinese government, whereas loyalty drives
promotions at higher levels of government.
WORKSHOP ON COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF REGIONAL GOVERNANCE IN CHINA
AND RUSSIA
HKUST IEMS – ICSID HSE Workshop (2015.09.24-25)
On the topic of how and why new electoral arrangements in China
affect who gets elected to local and regional congresses,
Melanie
Manion,
Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison, discussed the new electoral rules
for township and county congresses in China, where Chinese voters
share selectorate power with the Communist Party, but where the
Party has veto power over which nominees can appear on the ballot.
Prof Manion analyzed data from surveys of over 4,000 popularly-
elected delegates in 24 township congresses and 18 county
congresses in 4 Chinese provinces. Prof Manion’s analysis shows that
voter-championed ballot nominees exhibit qualities that suggest
they will represent community interests, such as being a longtime
community resident or recognized as a community leader. On the
other hand, Communist Party-championed ballot nominees display
a different set of qualities, such as Communist Party membership,
holding an official party or government post, a higher-education
degree, or having trained at higher-level Communist Party schools.
Thomas Remington,
Professor of Political Science at Emory
College, presented his work comparing pension reform in the
authoritarian regimes of Russia and China and contrasting the history
of the pension policies in the two countries since the 1980s. Among
the many points of comparison and contrast, Prof Remington
highlighted two key differences: administrative decentralization
(where China is much more administratively decentralized than
Russia) has a significant influence on pension policymaking, whereas
leadership turnover (where Russia has a much more stable roster of
top officials than China) did not.
Other presenters at the workshop included
Chenggang Xu
(HKU),
Andrei Yakovlev
(HSE),
Zhigang Tao
(HKU),
Michael Rochlitz
(HSE),
Cheryl Xiaoning Long
(Xiamen University),
Daniel
Berowitz
(University of Pittsburgh),
Franziska Keller
(NYU),
James Kung
(HKUST),
Li Han
(HKUST),
Chen Ting
(HKUST), and
Yiqing Xu
(HKUST).
Find out more about the event at
As an institutional member of the World Bank’s Network on
Jobs and Development, HKUST IEMS hosted a public three-day
conference at its HKUST campus. The conference brought together
leading researchers with both macroeconomic and microeconomic
perspectives to present and discuss original research on a variety of
topics related to the economic transformation of emerging market
and developing countries, including urbanization, determinants of
growth and structural change and consequences for labor demand,
and the employment effects of globalization and technological
change.
Sir Prof Christopher Pissarides,
Nobel Laureate, Professor
of Economics at the London School of Economics, HKUST IAS
Professor-at-Large, and HKUST IEMS Faculty Associate, began the
conference by discussing China’s labor transition from agricultural
to non-agricultural sectors, with overall employment declining as
a result of China’s urban-rural household registration system acting
as a migration barrier. Drawing from his analysis of a 2-sector
model using the migration barriers imposed by China’s urban-rural
household registration system, Sir Christopher suggests that the
removal of this registration system could increase the flow of workers
to urban jobs, reduce the prices of urban goods, and increase
welfare in general.
Joseph Kaboski,
Professor of Economics at the University of Notre
Dame, detailed his study into agglomeration and competition—
or the lack thereof—in China’s Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Prof
Kaboski's analysis centered on data from the annual survey of
Chinese Industrial Enterprises comprising all state-owned enterprises
(SOEs) and large non-SOEs from the period of 1999 to 2009. His
results suggest that 10.6% of Chinese firms located outside of SEZs
engage in collusion, whereas 45.3% of firms located within SEZs
engage in collusion.
Xin Meng,
Professor of Economics at the Australian National
University, described her research on China’s current labor market
tensions, and challenges to its future urbanization plans. Between
2012 and 2013 the real wages of migrant workers in China increased
by 12.3% – even though real GDP per capita only increased by
7.7% – and increased a further 7% between 2013 and 2014. While
many regard this trend as a sign of unskilled labor shortages due to
reduced labor supplies from rural areas or as the inevitable effect of
industrial upgrading, Prof Meng insists that urban labor shortages
are due to restrictions on rural-urban migration. She bolstered her
case by analyzing a variety of micro-data from the Chinese Bureau
of Statistics such as migrant worker wage distributions, changes in
urban minimum wages, and industrial upgrading data.
On the problems associated with megacities in the developing
world, Professor of Agricultural Economics at National Taiwan
University
Chu-Ping Lo
outlined the impact of foreign direct
investment (FDI) on the phenomenon of rapid urban concentration.
To test his theory that urban concentration is reduced with greater
trade liberalization, Prof Lo created a two-country model with a
developed and developing country, using labor as the single factor
of production, an inelastic labor supply in the developing country,
a freely mobile workforce, and imported-good tariffs present for the
developing country but absent in the developed country. His main
conclusions were that, in order to avoid the formation of megacities,
developing countries should not only open their doors to traditional
trade, but increase their acceptance of FDI. However, before carrying
out such liberalization policies, it’s imperative that governments in
these developing countries first improve their infrastructure in order
to reduce local transportation costs, as sufficiently low transportation
costs will help discourage workers from migrating from rural areas to
burgeoning megacities.
Other presenters at the conference included
Xiaodong Zhu
(University of Toronto),
Feicheng Wang
(University of Nottingham
Ningbo),
Rachel Ngai
(London School of Economics),
Ping Wang
(Washington University at St. Louis),
Ming Lu
(Shanghai Jiaotong
University),
Loren Brandt
(University of Toronto),
Gary Fields
(Cornell University),
Todd Schoellman
(Arizona State University),
Alessio Moro
(University of Cagliari),
Yong Wang
(HKUST),
Yang
Du
(Chinese Academy of Social Science),
Piotr Lewandowski
(Institute for Structural Research Warsaw),
Timo Boppart
(Stockholm
University),
Roberto Samaniego
(George Washington University),
Sebastian Monroy
(World Bank),
Pankaj Vashisht
(ICRIER), and
Albert Park
(HKUST).
Video recordings available at
CONFERENCE ON URBANIZATION, STRUCTURAL CHANGE,AND EMPLOYMENT
HKUST IEMS – World Bank Network on Jobs and Development (2015.12.11-13)
