جهانی شدن، تمرکز زدایی و نابرابری درآمد : در مورد چین

The current study examines the effect of trade liberalization and expansion of foreign direct investment inflows, together with the pursuit of decentralization, on China's income inequality between 1985 and 2007. As the degrees of integration of the concerned variables are revealed to be different,Stock and Watson (1993) dynamic ordinary least squares method is employed to reveal the cointegrating relationship. The empirical evidence shows that trade liberalization has led to the higher income inequality, discrediting the Stolper–Samuelson theorem in international trade. There is mixed evidence relating to the effect of FDI inflows on income inequality. Decentralization is shown not to influence it.

For the past thirty years since its economic reform, China has recorded very rapid economic growth. It has pursued globalization by attracting a huge amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) and rapid expansion of international trade values. Due to the lack of infrastructure and capital stock, China started by developing the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) Mah (2008). FDI inflows have been directed to such selected areas as the Shenzhen SEZ and international trade-related production activities have prospered in those selected areas. Rapid economic growth accompanied by FDI inflows and exports has gradually propagated to the neighboring provinces. Together with the progress of globalization, the Chinese government has gradually pursued decentralization. The share of local government expenditure in total government expenditure has risen from about 60 percent in the mid-1980s to over 75 percent in the late 2000s. In the meantime, whatever its primary cause, a significant rise in income inequality has been observed in China. Since significant deterioration of the income inequality situation can be regarded as a serious social problem, many works have tried to reveal the causes of China's income inequality. Khan et al. (1999), without providing empirical evidence, guessed that substantial expansion of employment due to labor-intensive industrialization promoted by freer trade might have offset, at least in part, China's greater income inequality, although they did not provide empirical evidence. Meanwhile, one can also conjecture that the pursuit of globalization might have led to a rapid deterioration in income inequality in China. Several papers have tried to test whether or not the progress of globalization has been the cause of rising income inequality, including Zhao (2001), Wei and Wu (2001), Kanbur and Zhang (2005), and Ma (2006). Although most of those papers use cross-section data, Kanbur and Zhang (2005) use time series data and analyze the effect of globalization, decentralization and industrialization on China's income inequality. Although Kanbur and Zhang (2005) try to deal with the effect of globalization on income inequality, they actually analyze the effect of international trade on income inequality, ignoring that of FDI inflows. Since China has attracted a huge number of FDI inflows, omitting FDI inflows in analyzing the effect of globalization on China's income inequality may lead to the wrong conclusions.

The current paper examines the effect of globalization and decentralization on China's income inequality for the period from 1985 to 2007. The decile ratio and the RIPO ratio, which is defined in the current paper as the average income of the top 10 percent divided by that of the bottom 40 percent, are used in order as the dependent variable, and variables representing international trade liberalization and FDI inflows together with the measure of decentralization are tested for their effect on income inequality. Since the concerned variables are revealed to be integrated of different orders, the current paper applies Stock and Watson's (1993) test which is based on the dynamic OLS method as the relevant cointegration test. The empirical evidence in the current paper shows that trade liberalization has a strong, positive effect on China's income inequality, regardless of the measure of income inequality and trade liberalization, discrediting the Stolper–Samuelson theorem. There is mixed evidence on the effect of FDI inflow on income inequality. Meanwhile, there is no evidence that the pursuit of decentralization is associated with deterioration of income inequality. It would be necessary for the Chinese government to think of strengthening the social safety net to offset the negative effect of trade liberalization on income distribution.