美貌能提高创业收入吗?

Can Beauty Raise Entrepreneurs' Income?

创业是我国经济转型升级的重要驱动力之一,创业者本身的人力资本在整个创业活动中起着基础性的决定作用。而美貌作为特殊的人力资本是一种稀缺资源,具备美貌的个体在各种社会交往博弈过程中具备更高的议价能力,从而能够争取到更好的机会、占据更多的资源,进而享受所谓的"美貌溢价"。文章将"美貌经济学"的讨论限制在创业劳动力样本中,以探讨在创业劳动力市场中,是否同样存在着类似的美貌溢价现象。文章基于中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)和中国劳动力动态调查(CLDS)数据考察了创业者的外貌与其创业收入之间的关系。研究发现,在控制了创业者的个体特征以及外部环境特征之后,外貌对创业者的收入有着正向促进作用,也即外貌更具吸引力的创业者能够获得更高的收入。相较于女性创业者,美貌更加能显著提升男性创业者的收入,且美貌的溢价作用在不同收入水平的创业者群体中存在差异。

Entrepreneurship is one of the vital driving forces of the economic transformation and upgrading in China. The human capital of entrepreneurs plays a fundamental role in the entrepreneurial activity.Beauty is a special kind of human capital,which may have an impact on entrepreneurial performance. Individuals with beautiful appearance have higher bargaining power in various social interaction games,so they can strive for better opportunities,occupy more resources,and enjoy the so-called ＂Beauty Premium＂. Related studies have generally found that beauty can improve the labor compensation obtained by labor force. In this paper,we focus on the ＂beauty economy＂ in the entrepreneurial labor market,and try to explore whether there exists the similar effect. According to the existing research,physical appearance affects entrepreneurial performance through many channels. First,beauty could affect the development of entrepreneurs＇ knowledge and skills,since beauty requires self-management and self-control. Second,beauty may reflect the individual enterprising spirit and self-motivation,and affect the entrepreneurial motivation of entrepreneurs. Third,individuals with good appearance normally enjoy trust and encouragement from others,which will help them cultivate confidence and optimistic spiritual quality. The data used in this study are derived from the Chinese Family Panel Studies（CFPS） and the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey（CLDS）. The estimated results are as follows. The estimated coefficients of the core explanatory variable are significantly positive at the 1% level. For every one point increase in the appearance,female entrepreneurs＇ income will increase by 12.8%,while male entrepreneurs＇ income will increase by 14.3%. It is obvious that beauty can bring a higher income premium to men in the entrepreneurial market than women. In addition,the results reveal that the beauty premium in urban areas is significantly higher than that in rural areas. Considering that different industries and occupations will have an impact on the beauty premium,we control the fixed effects of industry and occupation. In addition,the fixed effect of region is also controlled in the model to consider the economic development and the cultural gap. Finally,people dress differently according to the season,which may interfere with the interviewer＇s visual assessment of appearance,so we also control the time-fixed effect. After controlling the above fixed effects,the core estimated coefficients remain significantly positive at the 1% level basically. Also,after controlling the fixed effects of industry and occupation,the beauty premium of female entrepreneurs is no longer significant. This means that beautiful female entrepreneurs mainly choose to carry out entrepreneurial activities in industries and occupations that give higher beauty feedback. We also find that as the whole income increase,the effect of beauty on entrepreneurial income generally increases first and then decreases. In addition,we perform the estimation with CLDS data to make a robustness test,and hourly income and operational income of entrepreneurs are used as the dependent variable in the model to correct the income deviation. At last,the estimation of the instrumental variable is used to solve the problem of endogeneity. Compared with the existing literature,the marginal contribution of this paper contains two points. First,this is the first time for a Chinese paper to work on the relationship between physical appearance and entrepreneurial income. Chinese traditional culture thinks little of personal appearance,while this paper shows that physical appearance will affect the personal income of entrepreneurs. Second,this paper identifies the causal relationship between physical appearance and entrepreneurial income effectively.