On the basis of Becker＇s family economics and the theory of time allocation, it can be shown that labor supply under labor surplus conditions is not unlimited. Under the constraints of intra-household labor division,...On the basis of Becker＇s family economics and the theory of time allocation, it can be shown that labor supply under labor surplus conditions is not unlimited. Under the constraints of intra-household labor division, the supply curve takes on a special staircase form： as labor supply increases, the reservation wage of rural labor rises by an ever larger margin. The response of labor supply to wages is discontinuous. Labor supply will increase only when wages reach the new level of the reservation wage; otherwise, wage increases do not lead to an increase in labor supply. Corresponding to this special form of supply, the major driving force behind wage increases becomes industrial labor demand rather than agricultural income. The data from a survey of about 1,500 rural households in Gansu and Inner Mongolia bear out the above proposition. When labor demand rises, slight wage adjustments will not bring a corresponding increase in labor supply and labor market clearing will not occur for a long time. This reminds us that the present coexistence of a shortage of labor with wage rises for migrant workers may well derive from insufficient labor supply under labor surplus conditions. It does not necessarily imply the exhaustion of the labor surplus and cannot serve to prove the arrival of the Lewis turning point.展开更多
文摘On the basis of Becker＇s family economics and the theory of time allocation, it can be shown that labor supply under labor surplus conditions is not unlimited. Under the constraints of intra-household labor division, the supply curve takes on a special staircase form： as labor supply increases, the reservation wage of rural labor rises by an ever larger margin. The response of labor supply to wages is discontinuous. Labor supply will increase only when wages reach the new level of the reservation wage; otherwise, wage increases do not lead to an increase in labor supply. Corresponding to this special form of supply, the major driving force behind wage increases becomes industrial labor demand rather than agricultural income. The data from a survey of about 1,500 rural households in Gansu and Inner Mongolia bear out the above proposition. When labor demand rises, slight wage adjustments will not bring a corresponding increase in labor supply and labor market clearing will not occur for a long time. This reminds us that the present coexistence of a shortage of labor with wage rises for migrant workers may well derive from insufficient labor supply under labor surplus conditions. It does not necessarily imply the exhaustion of the labor surplus and cannot serve to prove the arrival of the Lewis turning point.
