Lecturer:Prof. Hu Jingbei
Discussants:Prof. Mo Jihong, Prof. Chen Yunsheng, Prof. Li Xiaoning, Prof .Sheng Hong, Prof. He Haibo 
 
 
At the 386th Unirule bi-weekly symposium, Prof. Hu Jingbei from department of economics, Tongji University, gave a speech on the subject of “Short-Run Macroeconomics with sectoral labor migration”.

In the history of modern economic growth, agricultural labor migrates out into non-farm sector. For example, in US, employment share in agriculture falls from 70% in 1820 to 2.8% in 1992. The trend in China is showed on the figure below.

Besides, the labor out-migration takes the wave-form, that is, the long-run decrease of agricultural share in the total labor comes with short-run fluctuations. So, Prof. Hu proposed to set up a short-run macroeconomic framework to study the relationship between the velocity of rural labor migration and economic fluctuations and crises. This study is especially of great use amid this financial crisis and mass lay off among migration labor in China.

The conclusions are as below:

1 Because increases in relative price p and nominal price P, demand for transaction means, money, grows quickly and leads to increase in r (interest rate). And lenders have to increase r to compensate nominal price P’s increase.

2 Demand will induce supply in labor market thus induce demand and supply in money market.

3 To non-farm sector firms, money costs grow after the growth of labor costs, while their product price cannot match increasing nominal price.