TY  - JOUR
AU  - Feenstra, Robert C
AU  - Hong, Chang
TI  - China's Exports and Employment
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13552
PY  - 2007
Y2  - October 2007
DO  - 10.3386/w13552
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13552
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13552.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Robert C. Feenstra
Department of Economics
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA  95616
Tel: 530/752-7022
Fax: 530/752-9382
E-Mail: rcfeenstra@ucdavis.edu

Chang Hong
Formerly, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Economic Research Service
Washington, D.C. 20250
E-Mail: bchong2006@gmail.com
M1  - published as Robert C. Feenstra, Chang Hong. "China's Exports and Employment," in Robert C. Feenstra and Shang-Jin Wei, editors, "China's Growing Role in World Trade" University of Chicago Press (2010)

M3  - presented at "China and World Trade Conference", August 3-4, 2007
AB  - Dooley et al (2003, 2004a,b,c) argue that China seeks to raise urban employment by 10-12 million persons per year, with about 30% of that coming from export growth.  In fact, total employment increased by 7.5-8  million per year over 1997-2005. We estimate that export growth over 1997-2002 contributed at most 2.5 million jobs per year, with most of the employment gains coming from non-traded goods like construction. Exports grew much faster over the 2000-2005 period, which could in principal explain the entire increase in employment. However, the growth in domestic demand led to three-times more employment gains than did exports over 2000-2005, while productivity growth subtracted the same amount again from employment. We conclude that exports have become increasingly important in stimulating employment in China, but that the same gains could be obtained from growth in domestic demand, especially for tradable goods, which has been stagnant until at least 2002.
ER  -