中国城市规模的工资溢价效应变迁研究

Quantifying the Earnings Premium of the China's Bigger City

大城市的企业是否支付更高的工资,历来是极具争议的问题,产生分歧的一个重要原因可能在于城市规模对劳动者工资产生的外部性发生着动态变化。本文通过匹配《中国城市统计年鉴》和中国工业企业数据,同时借助中国人口普查分区县数据,系统估计了2000—2009年间城市规模带来的制造业企业劳动力工资溢价情况。研究发现:(1)中国的大城市存在显著的工资溢价效应,但工资溢价从2000年到2009年呈下降趋势,这一结论在控制了企业劳动者的个体特征、企业的选择效应以及城市规模与劳动力工资之间反向因果关系后仍然成立;(2)城市规模的工资溢价效应呈现从西到东逐渐递减的特征,再次说明中国城市化进程存在发展滞后和户籍制度掣肘等问题;(3)城市规模的工资溢价效应不断下降的两个渠道可能是:城市规模对本市、周边企业的溢出效应不断下降和大城市企业的工资增长速度逐渐变慢。本文的研究结果对理解中国城市化进程以及推动中国城市化发展有着重要的学术价值。

Whether large cities pay higher wages has always been a highly controversial issue.An important reason for the disagreement may lie in the dynamic changes in the externality of the urban wage.In this paper,by matching China Urban Statistical Yearbook with data of Chinese industrial enterprises,the paper estimates the earnings premium of manufacturing enterprises from 2000to 2009with the help of the data of China census.The results show that:(1)there is a significant earnings premium effect in China’s large cities,but the earnings premiums decrease from 2000to 2009,the results is still established when the individual characteristics of enterprises,the choice effect of firms and the size of cities and labor wages between the reverse causal relationships are controlled.(2)The earnings premium in different regions is characterized by decreasing from west to east,which shows that China’s urbanization process is lagging behind and the household registration system is constrained.(3)The two channels of the earnings premium decrease are:the spillover effect of the city size to the city and the peripheral enterprises declines continually,and the wage growth rate of the large-scale enterprises slows down gradually.This paper is of great academic value in understanding the process of Chinese urbanization and promoting the development of urbanization in China.