Publication Type
Working Paper
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
12-2020
Abstract
The household registration system (hukou system) in China has hampered rural-urban migration by posing large migration friction. The system has been gradually relaxed in the past few decades, but the reforms have been differential in city size and by the coastal-inland divide. We find a striking contrast in the migration patterns between years 2005 and 2015; rural people tended to move more to the coastal urban region in 2005, but more to the inland urban region in 2015. We calibrate a spatial quantitative model to the world economy in both years with China being divided into the rural, coastal urban, and inland urban regions. We find that alternative urbanization policies that are not differential and that are more laissez-faire would substantially improve national welfare, in magnitudes that are comparable to the welfare gains from the trade liberalization that China has put in place in the past.
Keywords
Hukou system, household registration system, differential reform, urbanization policy, economic development, spatial quantitative analysis
Discipline
Asian Studies | Growth and Development | Regional Economics | Urban Studies and Planning
Research Areas
Applied Microeconomics
First Page
1
Last Page
53
Publisher
SMU Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series, Paper No. 09-2020
City or Country
Singapore
Citation
HSU, Wen-Tai and MA, Lin.
Urbanization policy and economic development: A quantitative analysis of China's differential Hukou reforms. (2020). 1-53.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2366
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Asian Studies Commons, Growth and Development Commons, Regional Economics Commons, Urban Studies and Planning Commons
Comments
Published in Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2021 November, 91, Article number 103639. DOI: 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2020.103639