工业机器人应用与劳动技能溢价——理论假说与行业证据

The application of industrial robots and the labor skill premium: theoretical hypothesis and industrial evidence

工业机器人应用诱致生产环境复杂化且易偏向于技能劳动,但现有文献并未重视在不同情境中这种偏向是否会扩大不同性质劳动的收入分配差距。基于此,采用中国2006—2018年工业行业数据,以工业机器人密度刻画工业机器人应用水平,检验中国情境下工业机器人应用对劳动技能溢价的真实影响,并分类考察工业机器人应用诱发技能溢价的生产率效应、劳动岗位更替效应和行业间技术溢出效应的作用差异。结果表明:中国工业机器人应用正扩大劳动技能溢价,这可归结于工业机器人应用更易于提高技能劳动生产率,并通过非技能岗位替代和技能岗位创造的非对称方式扩大劳动技能溢价,而且在资本密集型、高垄断程度和低劳动保护程度行业中,工业机器人应用的技能溢价效应更显著。同期,工业机器人应用不仅会扩大本行业劳动技能溢价,还能通过技术溢出效应诱发关联行业技能溢价,行业间技术关联性越强则溢出效应越大。

The application of industrial robots creates environmental complexity and tends to favor skilled labor.However,the existing literature does not address whether this bias increases the income distribution gap for different types of labor in various situations.This paper adopts industrial data from 2006 to 2018 in China to measure the application level of industrial robots by density.It examines the real impact of industrial robots on the skill premium for labor and separately investigates the productivity,job alternation,and inter-industry technology-spillover effects.Results suggest that the application of industrial robots increases the labor skill premium in China.This can be attributed to the fact that the application of industrial robots generally improves the productivity of skilled labor,displacing unskilled jobs,and creating skilled jobs.The skill-premium effect of the application of industrial robots is more significant in the capital-intensive,high nationalization degree and low labor protection degree industries.Meanwhile,the application of industrial robots will not only increase the labor skill premium of this industry,but also induce the skill premium of technology-related industry through the technology spillover effect.The stronger the technological correlation among industries,the greater the spillover effect.