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In this paper, we use the Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) as a semi-natural experiment and apply a difference-in-difference analysis together with the propensity score matching approach to estimate the impact of the B&R on China’s A-Share listed firms with outbound FDI to the B&R countries during 2011–2017. We find that China’s firms investing in B&R countries, compared to those investing elsewhere in the world, tend to reduce their total employment, increase the share of skilled labor, and increase wages. Various tests show that the key results of B&R impacts remain robust. We also find that the adjustment after investing in B&R countries is mainly found in non-SOEs, the firms in key provinces that enjoy pilot B&R policies. Both vertical and horizontal FDI firms are found to significantly adjust their employment, skill structure, and wage payment, with the former as more responsive.

In India the formal, or organized, sector is not able to generate employment opportunities for the unskilled or semi-skilled workers on a large scale, forcing them to get residually absorbed in the unorganized sector. At the same time, the unorganized sector is believed to have work consignments from the organized sector and this ancillarization process is contributing to employment creation. In the backdrop of these views the present study, using the unit level data of the National Sample Survey (NSS, 2010-11), makes an attempt to estimate the employment elasticity and wage-productivity nexus in the unorganized sector. Although the employment function estimated in the paper suggests employment can be raised through wage reduction, it can affect the wellbeing of the workers because the wage rate in the unorganized sector is already very low. Further, subcontracting or ancillarization does not seem to be contributing to employment generation in unorganized manufacturing or trade related activities. However, in the services sector it shows a positive impact. The equation representing determinants of wages shows units with assets are better-off compared to those that do not have them. This has an important policy implication, suggesting that through asset creation, government may bring in improvements in livelihood of the unorganized sector enterprises.

The purpose of this study is to assess the three-factor production functions describing the dependence of the small enterprises (SEs) and microenterprises, which include turnover on the wages of their employees, investments in fixed capital and the entrepreneurial capital of a particular region. The authors propose the indicator that characterizes the level of entrepreneurial capital — the number of employees of large enterprises located in the respective regions. This study is based on the empirical spatial data specifying the activities of employees in all SEs and microenterprises, as well as a number of large enterprises. The official statistical information includes observations on business activity of 1,449 SEs and microenterprises in 80 Russian regions in 2015. The research determines the factors influencing the turnover of enterprises, proves the high quality of the source data approximation using the three-factor production functions and confirms the need for an increased number of small and microenterprises for the Russian regions’ economy. The authors discover tools for the evaluation of production functions, which are of academic and practical importance. They can be used in studies of the regions’ entrepreneurial sectors, for monitoring the efficiency of resource use, and the rationale for the entrepreneurship development programs.

India gradually started liberalizing its industrial, trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) related policies since the launch of economic reforms in 1991. The empirical evidence on the impact of FDI spillovers on industrial wages in India has generated mixed results so far. The current study analysed the impact of FDI inflows on the real wage rates of the workers using data from seven major industrial sectors between 2001–2002 to 2019–2020. The two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimation results suggest that FDI inflows positively influenced both the skilled and unskilled wage rates. Moreover, FDI inflows in productive sectors led to a greater rise in wages vis-à-vis the unproductive sectors. In addition, key government policy initiatives like the Make-in-India (MII) scheme and FDI reforms were found to be effectively enhancing wage rates, though the impact on skilled wage rates was greater. The paper stressed the need to create a holistic environment that can attract FDI in both upstream and downstream segments, facilitating India’s deeper participation in global value chains (GVCs) and IPNs on the one hand and realisation of associated dynamic benefits on the other.

In this paper, we use the Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) as a semi-natural experiment and apply a difference-in-difference analysis together with the propensity score matching approach to estimate the impact of the B&R on China’s A-Share listed firms with outbound FDI to the B&R countries during 2011–2017. We find that China’s firms investing in B&R countries, compared to those investing elsewhere in the world, tend to reduce their total employment, increase the share of skilled labor, and increase wages. Various tests show that the key results of B&R impacts remain robust. We also find that the adjustment after investing in B&R countries is mainly found in non-SOEs, the firms in key provinces that enjoy pilot B&R policies. Both vertical and horizontal FDI firms are found to significantly adjust their employment, skill structure, and wage payment, with the former as more responsive.

This paper uses survey data from Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) to document wages and returns to education for a large number of cities during China's economic transition. Between 1988 and 1995, average real wages and returns to education increased, yet their spatial dispersions across cities widened dramatically. While market-oriented reforms should help equalize returns to human capital across regions, there was no sign of significant wage convergence in Chinese cities during this period. I argue that coordinated reforms in pension systems, housing markets, hukou registration, and local government behavior are imperative for improving the integration of local labor markets in China.

Huge econometric literatures examine discrimination in wealthy countries, but very little is available on poorer countries. In this study we combine labor-market information, appraisals of respondents' beauty, and household expenditures to examine within a unified framework the role of beauty in economic success in China and the relative importance of the investment and consumption aspects of beautifying expenditures. We find that in China, beauty raises women's earnings adjusted for a wide range of controls. Additional spending on clothing and cosmetics has a generally positive marginal impact on a woman's perceived beauty. The relative size of the effect demonstrates, however, that such purchases pay back no more than 15 percent of additional expenditure in the form of higher earnings. Most such spending represents consumption. The overall effect of beauty on wages appears to be at least as high, or even higher, than in rich economies.