Factor content and trade-induced farm employment change in China's agricultural trade

摘要

China has been a WTO member for over 10 years. The impacts of trade liberalization on its farm employment attract further research attentions. Theoretically, the net trade-induced employment effect could be divided into two parts, one is the employment substitution effect induced by net importing of land-intensive products, the other is the employment creation effect induced by net exporting of labor-intensive products. Given the different factor intensities of these two types products, the net effect would be counteracted or intensified. Therefore, when studying the impacts of trade liberalization on farm employment in China, the differences in labor intensities across different agricultural products and over time should be considered besides the changes in trade volume. In this paper, we first calculate and analyze the factor intensities across different Chinese agricultural products and over time. Then we use the factor's contribution analysis method to evaluate the contributions of both trade volume and the unit labor content to the aggregated farm employment effect in China before and after its WTO accession. Through our study, some interesting conclusions have been found, and they are all of high policy reference value.