A recent paper by IIDPF researcher Yan Weibo, “Evolution and the Impetus Mechanisms of the Labour Dispatch in China”, has been officially published in The Journal of World Economy, Issue 11, 2023.
Abstract
Labour dispatch has gained popularity in China in recent decades, yet there is limited study of this area. This paper focuses on evolution process and the impetus mechanisms of the labour dispatch in China. First, this paper exploits the full sample of China's administrative enterprise registration data and focuses on labour dispatch enterprises. From a historical perspective, it categorises the evolution of labour dispatch between 1994 and 2021 into five stages: undertaking policy tasks, acceleration, blowout, normative popularisation, and contraction. Moreover, it reveals that labour dispatch displays little regional disparity and the labour dispatch industry practices a mixed operation. Second, it investigates the impetus mechanisms of the labour dispatch from the perspective of labour market regulation, i.e., the effects of the enactment and amendment of the Labour Contract Law. Using the regression discontinuity design (RDD) and difference-in-differences (DiD), it demonstrates that the enactment of the Labour Contract Law in 2008 led to an increase in labour enterprises of 42.4% and the amendment of the Labour Contract Law in 2013 led to a decrease in labour enterprises of 51.4%. Third, while the number of dispatched labourers decreased and employers' costs increased in the two years following 2013, the labour dispatch increased after 2015. It should be highlighted that the labour dispatch is a phenomenon and a consequence of the conflict between market power and countermovement: flexible jobs are endogenously ingrained in developing countries. When institutions develop a rigid or flexible industrial relationship, the labour dispatch increases or decreases correspondingly.
Brief Bio
Yan Weibo is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Finance and Taxation of ZUEL, a researcher at IIDPF, and a joint PhD of Xi'an Jiaotong University and the University of California, Berkeley. His main research interests are public economics and labour economics. He has published several papers in journals including Economic Research Journal, The Journal of World Economy, Journal of Financial Research, Statistical Research, Chinese Rural Economy, China Economic Review, Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, and Applied Economics, etc.