“经济学论坛”是由北京大学经济学院经济学系主办的专业学术性论坛。论坛致力于打造一个经济学专业人士进行交流与对话的平台，对当前及未来的经济理论、研究方法和现实热点问题展开广泛、深入、全面、开放的探讨。论坛每月举办一次，由主题演讲、专业评论和自由讨论构成。论坛邀经济学各领域素有研究的知名学者或研究取得积极进展的中青年学者发表主题演讲，并围绕相关问题展开讨论。本期论坛信息如下：
题目：Investing Like China
报告人：姚雯 博士/助理教授
时 间：2016年4月22日（周五）12点30分至13点40分
地 点：经济学院302会议室
主持人：郭 研 副教授
点评人：杨汝岱 副教授
赵晓军 副教授
Abstract:：
This paper first documents three important facts about Chinese economy for the past decade: i) The skill premium in wage has been rising till 2008 but falls sharply afterwards; ii) non-residential structure investment contributes the most to the surge of the aggregate investment rate since 2008; iii) on the firm level, after 2008 the return to capital is lower for firms with lower employee education level. We then use a two-sector model to show quantitatively that these features in the data are caused by distortionary government investment policy in 2008 that enables infrastructure sector absorb capital at a lower than market rate. Therefore, large amount of investment flows into the infrastructure sector, which drives up the demand of unskilled labor. The rising demand for unskilled labor leads to an increase of unskilled wage. On the other hand, since infrastructure sector borrows a lot, the market interest rate for the general good sector rises. The resulting reduction of investment in the general good sector reduces the demand for skilled labor and hence the growth of skilled labor wage, leading to a fall in the skill premium in wage. We calibrate the model to the Chinese data and our results suggest that government has strong incentive to invest in the infrastructure sector if they are only interested in the short-run output level. More interestingly, when we introduce migration of unskilled labor from rural to urban area, distortionary government investment policy could in fact increase the marginal product of labor and hence increase welfare. However, once rural to urban migration is completed, there is only welfare loss associated with distortionary policy.
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报告人简介：
姚雯博士现任清华大学经管学院经济系助理教授。2011年获得美国宾夕法尼亚大学经济学博士学位。2006年获得英国伯明翰大学计算机系统工程学士学位以及复旦大学计算机科学与技术学士学位。她的主要研究领域为宏观经济学，国际金融以及计算经济学。讲授课程包括经济学原理和中级宏观经济学。在加入清华之前，姚雯博士于2008至2011年期间曾短期任职于摩根斯坦利，纽约美联储以及中国人民银行。2011年至2012年期间曾任加拿大银行高级分析师。
北京大学经济学院经济学系
2016年4月13日
