Exports, income and regional inequality in China: value chain analyses
| PhD ceremony: | Ms Y. (Yuwan) Duan |
| When: | January 14, 2021 |
| Start: | 11:00 |
| Supervisors: | prof. dr. H.W.A. (Erik) Dietzenbacher, prof. dr. B. (Bart) Los |
| Where: | Academy building RUG |
| Faculty: | Economics and Business |
Three of the most typical characteristics of China’s exports are: the large scale of processing exports; the important role of Foreign Invested Enterprises in exports; and the seriously unbalanced distribution of export activities across domestic regions. By fully taking these characteristics into account, this thesis offers new insights into several empirical questions about the income effects of China’s exports. It investigated the role of exports on national income growth (Chapter 3) and regional income inequality (Chapter 5), and the role of structural changes on income effect of exports (Chapter 2). Chapter 4 developed and constructed new interregional input-output (IO) tables for China. At the regional level, they explicitly distinguish the production of processing exports from ordinary production. The new IO tables were used to address the roles of processing exports and ordinary exports to regional economic growth. Not taking processing trade into full account at the regional level seriously biased the results.