Yang Jiao

Privatizing the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is a major step in China's economic transition. This paper examines the impact of privatization reform on gender wage gap in urban labor market based on a comprehensive nationwide survey, the Chinese Household Income Projects (CHIP). We observe that gender wage gap widens between 1995 and 2007, and privatization is associated with increase in women's relative productivity and wage premium for more-educated women. The results of decomposition show the rapid growth of non-state sector has contributed to the increasing gender wage gap, and the rising gap is mainly attributed to the increase in gender discrimination. We also find that, although privatization increase gender segregation in occupational attainments, it is less obvious that segregation can account for the gender wage gap.

This paper explores the welfare implications of an optimal tax-transfer schedule to two-earner households. In the analysis, each household member is considered as a rational economic agent who optimizes his or her labor supply over market work and home production. I present a model to examine the impact of both joint-and individual-based taxation on non-cooperative couples, taking into account their altruistic preferences. An intra-family transfer program is proposed to examine whether it plays a role in household decisions. The impacts of such an income redistributive program on household's decisions are shown to vary by taxation. Under joint taxation, when husband's wage is sufficiently low, he supplies more time to home production if the share of transfer he receives is larger; by contrast, when the wife's wage is sufficiently high, she supplies more time to home production if the share of transfer she receives is smaller. Under individual taxation, the transfer program is shown to have no impact on the time allocation decisions of both spouses. Results from numerical estimation suggest that a move from individual to joint taxation improves the overall welfare of the altruistic spouses.