题目：Paperless Tigers: Do Urban Chinese Employers Prefer Temporary Migrants?

主讲人：Kailing Shen, WISE, Xiameng University

Abstract

Temporary migrant workers play a large role in many economies, and are the subject of much policy debate. But as the majority of temporary migrants are undocumented and the definition of ‘temporary’ often depends on national policies and the changing situation of immigrants, they are hard to study. In this paper, we consider workers without permanent residence permits (hukou) as temporary migrants and studies one aspect of the interaction between temporary migrants and permanent residents in one Chinese city (Xiamen): who wins in the ‘hiring race’? More specifically, among equally qualified-and equally-matched-candidates who have applied for the same job, who gets the job? Our data are internal records from the city’s main internet job board,xmrc.com. Our empirical results show employers in the competitive, private-sector labor market prefer workers without a permanent residence permit-hukou-in the city over equally-qualified permanent residents; and, such preference is especially strong in jobs requiring low levels of skill. Our evidence further suggests that the hiring preference found is unlikely to be caused by: 1) higher unobserved ability among migrants; wage discrimination between migrants and natives; or, migrant-native payroll tax differentials. This leaves room for explanations in which migrants choose to work longer and harder. More generally, While there are many studies of temporary and undocumented immigrants, and while it’s often asserted that employers prefer these workers (not just because they’re cheaper, but also because they work harder and longer. To our knowledge we are the first study to show that, when faced with identically qualified workers with and without a permanent residence permit applying to the same job, employers tend to prefer the latter.