Human capital is indispensable for firms in developing countries to adopt new technologies and improve productivity, especially in industries that employ technologies more complementary to skilled labor, given that new technologies available after the 1970s tend to be skill-biased. Taking advantage of an exogenous surge in college-educated labor force in China starting in 2003 due to a drastic centrally-devised higher education expansion policy starting in 1999 and using a generalized difference-in-differences framework, this paper finds that industries that employ more human-capital intensive technologies experience a larger gain in total factor productivity post-2003 relative to prior years; they also show larger increases in import of advanced capital goods, R&D expenditure, capital intensity, employees with more education and in skilled occupations, and total value-added. The extra productivity gains however are much weaker for domestic private firms than foreign-owned firms.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2605660_code452507.pdf?abstractid=2342708&mirid=1&type=2

Human Capital, Technology Adoption, and Firm Performance: Impacts of China's Higher Education Expansion in the Late 1990s

Using the China Family Panel Studies, we identify the subjects studied by vocational college and university graduates, with the latter group further divided into ordinary and key universities. Whil...

/pdf/returns-to-higher-education-subjects-and-tiers-in-china-4j28zd5xov.pdf

Returns to higher education subjects and tiers in China: evidence from the China Family Panel Studies

Empowering women and closing the gender gap are key issues for economic and social development. This paper explores whether higher education expansion could empower women by influencing gender norms and the level of gender equality in both the labor market and the marriage market. I evaluate the impact of China's higher education expansion since 1999. The results show that the reform significantly increases higher educational attainment for both women and men. However, women's gender-role attitudes tend to become less progressive after the expansion. The retreat in egalitarian gender views could be attributed to the findings that women's opportunities in the labor market become more disadvantaged relative to those of men. The results are significantly driven by married women and people who live in high sex ratio areas. The practical conditions that women confront in the labor market and households may shape their gender-role attitudes in the reverse direction.

Higher Education Expansion and Women's Empowerment: Evidence from China

Higher education expansion and the rise of China in economics research

Measuring the provincial supply of higher education institutions in China

China experienced a 47% expansion in higher education enrolment between 1998 and 1999 and a sixfold expansion in the decade to 2008. Using a fuzzy discontinuity in the months of births, we show tha...

/pdf/returns-to-higher-education-in-china-evidence-from-the-1999-16lr2zf3zg.pdf

Returns to higher education in China – evidence from the 1999 higher education expansion using a fuzzy regression discontinuity

China experienced a 47% expansion in higher education enrolment between 1998 and 1999, and a six-fold expansion in the decade to 2008. In this paper, we explore a fuzzy discontinuity in the months of births induced by the expansion to study the returns to higher education in China. We find that the mean years of education increased by roughly one full year around the cut-off point of the 1999 expansion as defined by months of births. Importantly, each additional year of university education induced by the 1999 higher education expansion increases monthly wage income by 21%, whereas the corresponding OLS estimate is only 8%. Our findings are insensitive to alternative window widths, functional forms, or the exclusion of the self-employed. Moreover, the returns to degrees also appear to vary by gender, with lowers returns to women except when they are the only child in the family.

Fengyan Dai

Papers

Returns to higher education in China – evidence from the 1999 higher education expansion using a fuzzy regression discontinuity

Returns to Higher Education in China: Evidence from the 1999 Higher Education Expansion Using Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity