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Does communist party membership bring a wage premium in China? a meta-analysis

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  • Xinxin Ma
  • Ichiro Iwasaki

Abstract

In China, despite the drastic economic transition from a planned system to a market economy, the influences of the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s organization on firm management in both the public and private sectors are still remarkable. This study performs a meta-analysis to examine the impact of CPC membership on wage levels in China using 622 estimates extracted from 71 English and Chinese papers. The results of meta-synthesis suggest that CPC membership positively affects wage levels. They also reveal that the effect size of CPC membership is greater for state-owned enterprises, urban regions, female workers, and regular wages, as compared with privately owned enterprises, rural regions, male workers, and performance pay. The test results of publication selection bias based on the FAT-PET-PEESE approach indicate that the collected estimates contain genuine evidence of the wage premium of CPC membership, and its true impact takes a value within a range of 0.0414 to 0.0431 in terms of the partial correlation coefficient.

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  • Xinxin Ma & Ichiro Iwasaki, 2021. "Does communist party membership bring a wage premium in China? a meta-analysis," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 55-94, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jocebs:v:19:y:2021:i:1:p:55-94
    DOI: 10.1080/14765284.2020.1842987
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    Cited by:

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    4. Cheng, Zhiming, 2022. "Communist Party branch and labour rights: Evidence from Chinese entrepreneurs," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    5. Iwasaki, Ichiro & Ma, Xinxin & Mizobata, Satoshi, 2022. "Ownership structure and firm performance in emerging markets: A comparative meta-analysis of East European EU member states, Russia and China," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 46(2).
    6. Xinxin Ma & Ichiro Iwasaki, 2021. "Return to schooling in China: a large meta-analysis," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 379-410, July.
    7. Chen, Jie & Pastore, Francesco, 2021. ""Study hard and make progress every day": Updates on returns to education in China," GLO Discussion Paper Series 787, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    8. Iwasaki, Ichiro & Satogami, Mihoko, 2023. "Gender wage gap in European emerging markets: a meta-analytic perspective," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 57, pages 1-9.
    9. Zagler, Martin & Amighini, Alessia & Fang, Weidi, 2023. "On the evolution of the wage premium for party membership in China," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 351, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    10. Ma, Xinxin, 2022. "Parenthood and the gender wage gap in urban China," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
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