财政政策扩张、异质性企业与中国城镇就业

Fiscal Expansion,Heterogeneous Firms and Employment in Urban China

本文反思扩张性财政政策对就业的影响。基于我国1998年第1季度—2014年第4季度的宏观季度数据,识别出我国财政政策对就业影响的特征事实:财政投资支出扩张会导致国有企业就业上升,民营企业就业下降。为了理解这一现象,通过对一个同时包含异质性企业、纵向产业结构和分割劳动力市场的动态随机一般均衡模型进行分析,发现产业间关联、要素禀赋结构和劳动供给弹性是影响财政政策就业效应的主要因素。财政政策扩张在带动国有企业产品需求的同时,也通过拉升中间投入品价格导致民营企业生产成本上升,进而抑制了该部门的劳动需求。随着财政政策力度的逐渐衰减,位于产业链上游的国有部门存在就业超调。贝叶斯估计结果显示,国有企业的资本密集程度更高,所对应市场的劳动供给弹性更小,且与民营企业的关联非常显著,以扩大政府投资为主要特征的财政政策总体上无益于促进就业。

Since the Great Recession in 2008,the unemployment rate in many developed countries has risen dramatically,while labor force participation has fallen significantly.The data suggest that governments’stimulus packages to boost the economy have increased output,but unemployment rates remain high.This is called“jobless recovery.”In many emerging and developing countries such as China,governments’have also implemented fiscal and monetary policies to stimulate the economy.This study uses post-2008 data from China to examine how fiscal policy affects employment.In 2008,the Chinese central government implemented a fiscal stimulus package to fight the negative effects of the global financial crises on the domestic economy.There are two important features of this plan.First,the fiscal policy was mainly implemented by expanding the volume of infrastructure spending.Second,the policy was mainly implemented by state-owned enterprises(SOEs)(Wen&Wu,2014).Many studies have shown that SOEs are in the upstream of industrial chains,whereas private-owned enterprises(POEs)are mainly located in downstream industries(Li et al.,2015).In addition,the labor markets of SOEs and POEs are partially segmented.We first identify the fiscal policy shock by applying the SVAR model to Chinese quarterly data from 1998Q1 to 2014Q4.The results show that fiscal expansion has two opposite effects on employment.Specifically,the employment of SOEs is indeed boosted,whereas that of POEs declines.Motivated by this result,we then incorporate the relevant characteristics of Chinese firms and labor markets into a standard dynamic general equilibrium(DSGE)model to understand the propagation mechanisms through which fiscal policy affects employment.Three elements play important roles in the process of fiscal expansion:endowment structure of different firms,vertical industrial connections,and elasticity of labor supply.In particular,the capacity of a firm to absorb employment is limited if it is capital-intensive.As fiscal expansion increases the demand for intermediate goods and pulls up their price,under strong vertical industrial connections a sharp rise in the cost of goods to downstream enterprises will inhibit employment in these industries.Furthermore,the smaller the elasticity of the labor supply,the stronger the auto-stabilization effect of the labor market.Finally,we identify the key parameters of the model using Bayesian estimation.The results demonstrate that SOEs are more capital-intensive than POEs and that the industrial connection between the two sectors is significant.The impulse response functions based on Bayesian estimation are consistent with the results obtained by the SVAR analysis.This study makes two contributions.First,we disaggregate the data and discuss the different effects of fiscal expansion on employment at the sector level.Most previous studies discuss only the aggregate effect of fiscal policy on employment.Second,we incorporate multi-dimensional characteristics of Chinese firms and labor markets into the DSGE framework and identify a new mechanism through which fiscal policy affects the structure of employment.Specifically,vertical industrial connections are explicitly incorporated into the model.Some recent studies indicate that the vertical industrial structure is a key feature of the Chinese economy.Li et al.(2015)discuss“state capitalism”and vertical industrial structure and examine how an exogenous shock affects the downstream industries directly.Our study considers how fiscal policy initially affects the upstream industries.The propagation mechanisms and predictions of the two studies are totally different.Specifically,if a positive demand shock hits the downstream industry,the expansion of production in this sector will push up the demand for goods produced by the upstream sector,so that the employment rates of both sectors move in the same direction.However,if the positive demand shock affects the upstream industry,the rise in the price of intermediate goods will depress the downstream sector,and the employment rates of the two sectors diverge.The fact that the simulations of the model coincide perfectly with the empirical evidence implies that the model proposed in this study is a useful framework for evaluating the effects of fiscal policy.