Topic: Entrepreneurship during An Economic Transition
Abstract: This paper explores the impact of the massive layoffs resulting from SOE reforms on entrepreneurial activity during China's transitional period. By employing a variant of pre-reform potential SOE layoffs across cities, the difference-in-differences estimator shows that after 1997, in cities with many layoffs, there was an in-crease in the establishment of both privately owned and self-employed businesses. An increase of 10,000 laid-off workers resulted in]44 entrants of business in the private sector. Self-employments were created mainly in service sector and manufacturing sector. Newly formed firms were more labor-intensive and capital-intensive industries also benefited from layoffs. In the long run, while the overall survival rate of new entrants in the period was lower, those in cities with more layoffs emerged with higher survival rates, greater likelihood of job creation, and as regional leaders in terms of employmentsize. As for the mechanism of reallocation of labor, top executiveswho quit from SOEs are more likely to become entrepreneurs thangeneral workers, and the firms created by the former tend to employmore of the latter. The results demonstrate that, during China's eco-nomic transition, the human capitals shed from the SOE sector hasbeen partially reallocated and reintegrated into the private sector.
Presente: Wan Qian
Dr. Wan is a full-time researcher at IIDPF. He graduated from the School of Economics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a PhD in Economics and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics, Xiamen University from 2018 to 2020. His research interests include public expenditure on education, economic and social inequality, Chinese economic issues and policy evaluation. He has published in leading journals such as The Journal of World Economy, China Economic Review and Economic Modelling. He is in charge of the Youth Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the General Project of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation and the Innovation Project of the ZUEL, and participates in the major projects of the National Social Science Foundation of China.
Time: 11:00-12:30, 1 June 2023 (Wednesday)
Moderator: Zhang Fan (full-time researcher of IIDPF)
Venue: Conference Room 119, Wenqin Building