Title: Place-Based Policies, Creation and Agglomeration Economies: Evidence from China's Economic Zone Program

Speaker: Jin Wang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)

Time: April 1st, 2019 13:30–15:00

Venue: Conference Room 106B, Zhonghui Building (IESR, JNU College of Economics)

About the speaker:

Jin Wang is an Associate Professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She did her B.A. and M.A. in Economics at Tsinghua University in China before getting a Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research, which has a policy focus, is mainly in the areas of Development Economics, Public Economics and Chinese Economy. She worked on a variety of topics, such as place-based policies, government hierarchy and incentives, and the labor mobility barriers that are embedded in the hukou household registration system of China. Her work has appeared in a range of economics journals including Journal of the European Economic Association, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Development Economics and Journal of Comparative Economics.  

Abstract:

Combining rich firm and administrative data, this paper examines the incidence and effectiveness of a prominent place-based policy in China: Special Economic Zones. Establishing zones is found to have had a positive effect on capital investment, employment, output, productivity and wages, and to have increased the number of firms in the designated areas. Net entry plays a larger role in generating those effects than incumbents. The special zone program's net benefits over three years are estimated to amount to about US$15.42 billion. Capital-intensive industries benefit more than labor-intensive ones from the zone programs.