A Paper Co-authored by Cai Hongbo, a Teacher of our School, was Officially Accepted by the Journal of Industrial Relations

Recently, Professor Cai Hongbo of the Department of International Trade of our School, Assistant Professor Liu Jianan of Renmin University of China and Associate Professor Carl Lin of Bucknell University co-authored the paper "Competition in the Labor Market: The Wage Effect of Employer Concentration in China "was officially accepted by the Journal Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society.

Industrial Relations, a multidisciplinary journal focused on the impact of change on business, government and workers, has been recognized by the ABS as a 4-star journal with an impact factor of 2.7 for the last five years.

Article information:

Jianan Liu, Cai Hongbo (corresponding author), Carl Lin. Competition in the Labor Market: The Wage Effect of Employer Concentration in China, Industrial Relations.

Introduction to the article:

Competition in the labor market theoretically leads to higher wages, yet empirical evidence to substantiate it, particularly in developing countries, has been sparse. Our study delves into the impact of increased competition in the labor market on workers’ wages using a panel dataset from Chinese industrial firms spanning 1998 to 2013. Employing OLS and IV regressions, we demonstrate that a decrease in employer concentration is significantly linked to higher wages. The elasticities of employer concentration on wages fall within the range of -0.034 and -0.107. Additionally, our findings suggest that state-owned enterprises gained the most from this upswing in competition, primarily due to restructuring. Furthermore, we demonstrate that total factor productivity serves as an important channel linking employer concentration to wages.

Contributed by Scientific Research Office

Edited by Sun Yue

Reviewed by Wei Hao