Labor, institutions, and urbanization: The emergence of China's labor market and its impacts on urbanization policies

Urbanization and urban growth policy is one of the major concerns of urban planning. Labor migration, as opposed to natural growth of population, is another major cause of city population growth. Labor mobility is also one of the major factor mobility for economic development. This is particularly important for transitional economies such as China. It is because the reform and marketization during the 80's has brought with important pressure to the urban biased labor mobility policy at that time.; However, little has been discussed, except some empirical observations and news reports, on how and why the labor mobility policy changes into the current direction. In other words, I am interested in the driving forces that helps explain the institutional change of labor mobility policy during the 80's.; My thesis focuses on explaining the driving forces behind the institutional change of China's labor mobility policies and its implications to urbanization in China in different dimensions.; The central thesis of my dissertation is a “bottom-up” self-organizational activity such as family production activities and local governments' incentives could bring about the related institutional changes. This thesis not only studies Chinese labor mobility policy changes but I would like to use it as a case to show how labor market regulations and institutional rigidity from above can be altered. In particular, this study show the top-down policy may be confronted by micro-activities from below and a more viable policy development may be emerged. The implication of this thesis is to show a direct to set up a flexible institution with orientation towards local knowledge can lead to a positive policy development.