Does female labor scarcity encourage innovation? Evidence from China’s gender imbalance

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dc.creatorTan, Zhibo
dc.creatorZhang, Xiaobo
dc.date2016-07-01
dc.date2024-06-21T09:22:55Z
dc.date2024-06-21T09:22:55Z
dc.date.accessioned2026-06-27T15:00:24Z
dc.descriptionFacing scarcity of a production factor, a firm can develop technologies to either substitute the scarce factor (price effect) or complement the more abundant factors (market size effect). Whether the market size effect or the price effect dominates largely depends on the elasticity of substitution among factors according to the theory of directed technical change. However, it is a great challenge to empirically test the theory because factor prices are often endogenously determined. In this paper, we use imbalanced sex ratios across Chinese provinces as a source of identification strategy to test how female labor scarcity affects corporate innovation based on the matched dataset of annual surveys of industrial firms in China and the national patent database. In regions with a large male population, female-intensive industries face more serious problems finding female workers than their male-intensive counterparts. We find that such female shortages have spurred firms in female-intensive industries to innovate more. The pattern is much more evident in industries with low substitution between female and male workers than in those with high substitution, consistent with the predictions of directed technical change theory.
dc.formatapplication/pdf
dc.identifierhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/147474
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/123456789/91845
dc.languageen
dc.publisherInternational Food Policy Research Institute
dc.relationhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/151356
dc.relationhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/153558
dc.relationhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/150410
dc.relationhttps://cn.ifpri.org/archives/4607
dc.rightsOpen Access
dc.sourceTan, Zhibo and Zhang, Xiaobo. 2016. Does female labor scarcity encourage innovation? Evidence from China’s gender imbalance. IFPRI Discussion Paper 1540. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://hdl.handle.net/10568/147474
dc.subjectinnovation
dc.subjectgender
dc.subjecttechnological changes
dc.subjectmarket structure
dc.subjecttechnology
dc.subjectlabour
dc.subjectelasticities
dc.subjectfactor analysis
dc.subjectmarkets
dc.subjectprice volatility
dc.subjectprices
dc.titleDoes female labor scarcity encourage innovation? Evidence from China’s gender imbalance
dc.typeWorking Paper

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Instituto Internacional de Investigación sobre Políticas Alimentarias (IFPRI)