Market Access and Individual Wages: Evidence from China
利用中国56个城市个体数据，研究地理因素对工资的影响，发现市场准入可解释个体间劳动回报差异，且高技能工人及外资企业工人工资对市场准入更敏感。
We consider the effect of geography on wages using individual data from 56 Chinese cities. We present a simple new economic geography model that links wages to individual characteristics and market access. The latter is calculated as a transport cost weighted sum of surrounding locations' market capacity. After controlling for individual skills and local factor endowments, we find that a significant fraction of the interindividual differences in returns to labor can be explained by the geography of market access. We further find greater wage sensitivity to market access for highly skilled workers and for workers in private and, particularly, foreign-owned firms.