企业雇佣结构、中间投入与出口产品质量变动之谜

Employment Structure, Intermediate Inputs and China’s “Mystery of Changes in Export Product Quality”

近年来,尽管中国企业雇佣大学生的比例在增长,但出口产品质量却没有发生显著提升,形成了所谓的出口产品"质量变动之谜"。本文将企业异质"雇佣结构"引入质量异质性理论框架,探讨劳动投入与出口产品质量之间的关系,并试图结合企业劳动技能投入和中间品投入质量的互补性对"质量变动之谜"进行解释。利用经济普查、中国工业企业数据库和海关数据库匹配数据进行实证检验,发现:(1)企业雇佣结构升级对出口产品质量起到正向促进作用;(2)雇佣结构与企业中间品投入质量具有互补性,中间品质量越高,雇佣结构对出口产品质量的促进作用越强;(3)现实所观察到的出口产品"质量变动之谜"部分源于进口中间品占比的大量下降所导致的中间品投入质量的下降,雇佣结构升级对质量的提升作用受到了中间品质量下降的拖累,未能充分发挥出其应有的质量升级效应。总之,在"贸易大国迈向贸易强国"的攻坚期,虽然高学历劳动力供给的增长有助于中国产品质量的提升,但这一过程亟须匹配相应高质量的中间产品投入。因此,进一步推进中间品贸易自由化、提升国内中间品供给能力是破解质量升级难题的重要手段。

The proportion of Chinese enterprises hiring college students has increased in recent years,but export product quality has not improved significantly,forming the so-called“mystery of changes in export product quality”.This pa­per introduces heterogeneous "employment structure" of enterprise into Hallak&Sivadasan(2013)model,explores the relationship lietween lalsir input and export product quality,and attempts to combine complementarity of enterprise skill inputs and intermediate product input quality to explain "mystery of change in export product quality".Using economic census,industrial enterprises and customs matching data,we find that:(1)employment structure upgrade has a positive promotion effect on export product quality;(2)employment structure and company's intermediate input quality aie complementary.and the higher tin-intermediate input quality,the stronger the promotion effect of employ­ment structure on export product quality;(3)the observed "mystery of changes in export product quality" is partly due to the large decrease in the proportion of imported intermediate product leading to the decline of intermediate in­put product quality,and the effect of the upgrade of the employment structure on the quality has been dragged down by the decline in the intermediate input product quality,and it has not fully exerted its due quality upgrade effect.In short,during the critical stage of "a major trading country moving towards a strong trading country",although the growth in the supply of highly educated labor force will help improve Chinese product quality,this process urgently nerds corresponding high-quality intermediate product inputs.Therefore,further promoting the liberalization of trade in intermediate products and the supply capacity of domestic intermediate products are important means to solve the problem of quality upgrade.