Talk Title:  Chinese Aid and Local Employment in Africa

Guest speaker: Shiqi Guo, Assistant Professor at the Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Friday, Feb 10, 2023

Venue: IB 1051

Meeting ID: 942 6618 1362; Passcode: DKUECON

Abstract: We study the impact of Chinese infrastructure aid on local employment using household surveys from ten African countries during 2000–14. Our main identification strategy exploits the variation in proximities between aid projects and survey locations, and the random timings of project construction relative to the survey date. Using an approach similar to difference-in-differences, we show that Chinese aid increases the probability of local employment by two percentage points within its close proximity, compared to areas near a not-yet-implemented project, relative to places that never have aid projects. Increase in employment starts immediately with project implementation and persists after project completion. The longer-term impact is driven by migration and employment of skilled labor. We also find evidence for cross-sector and spatial spillover effects. Our results persist when we use alternative datasets on employment and different empirical strategies, and when we account for the potential impact of other local development resources.

Bio: Shiqi Guo is an Assistant Professor at the Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He received a Ph.D. in Development Economics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva, Switzerland. He was also a visiting fellow in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard University during 2019-2020 and a visiting Ph.D. fellow at United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) in 2017. His research spans the fields of Development Economics, Behavioral Economics, Political Economy, and Environmental Economics. His work has been published in the Journal of Development Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

DKU Environmental Economics Research Group, with the Environmental Research Center and the Center for the Study of Contemporary China