经济与社会研究院SEMINAR第159期

题目：The Interaction between Environment and Endowment: Evidence from a Social Experiment on Twins

主讲人：郭汝飞，武汉大学

时间：2019年5月23日，10:00-11:30

地点：暨南大学中惠楼106B室

主讲人简介：

郭汝飞，香港中文大学经济学博士，武汉大学经济与管理学院特聘副研究员，世界经济系副主任。研究方向为劳动与发展经济学。论文发表于Journal of Comparative Economics, Annals of Economics and Finance和《经济研究》等学术期刊。主持国家自然科学基金青年科学基金项目。

Abstract：

Does endowment moderate the effect of environmental adversities? This question has profound implications for income inequality, but few studies provide a clean identification of the endowment-environment interaction. We explore a social experiment, i.e., China's send-down campaign, and birthweight differences in genetically identical twins to obtain exogenous variations in environment and endowment, respectively. The send-down campaign forced millions of Chinese urban youths to do hard agriculture work in rural areas during China's cultural revolution. We find that the send-down experience strengthens a child with a higher endowment relative to the one with a lower endowment. If the higher endowed male was sent down to the countryside, he earns a higher wage, receives more wedding gifts from his parents, and marries a better educated wife than his brother does. If the higher endowed female was sent down, she obtains more schooling years and is heathier than her sister does. Intra-household allocation drives the results for males but not for females. Our findings imply that adverse environmental shocks tend to enlarge income inequality.