数字经济时代的外包转型与经济高质量发展——分工演进的超边际分析

Structural Changes in Outsourcing and High-Quality Economic Development in the Digital Era——An Inframarginal Analysis to the Division of Labor

本文拓展已有的新兴古典经济学模型,研究传统外包、网络外包与网络众包的发生与演变的原理,解释分工演进对经济高质量发展的内在逻辑。超边际分析表明:发包者的最终产品和信息服务的综合学习成本过高,会逼迫网络众包成为均衡的分工结构,但是当该综合学习成本相对较低时,分工演进取决于交易效率,其改进将推动均衡的分工结构从传统外包向网络外包和网络众包转变;如果其他服务商的学习成本较低,专业化程度较高的中小企业,则更倾向于把中间产品通过网络外包或网络众包来实现市场化分工;随着交易效率的改进,传统外包向众包转变,这将产生多重的正向关联效应,从而推动经济高质量发展,即优化劳动力配置、改进劳动生产率、扩大市场规模、提高人均“连接红利”与人均真实收入。本文的理论框架及分析,不仅有助于理解传统外包向众包转变的分工经济原理,也对推动和发展高质量的数字化经济具有应用价值。

The purpose of this paper,based on an existing model in the framework of new classical economics,is to explore the emergence and transformation of traditional outsourcing,network outsourcing and network crowdsourcing,and to explain the evolution of division of labor for the high-quality economy.It is shown,by the inframarginal equilibrium and comparative static analyses,that if learning costs of the subcontractor are lower,the improvement in trading efficiency will transform traditional outsourcing to network outsourcing or to network crowdsourcing respectively as equilibrium structure of division of labor,and if learning costs are relatively high,network crowdsourcing will occur in equilibrium structure of division of labor.It also is shown that the small and medium-sized firms with a high specialization will be more likely to gain from supplying their intermediate products through network outsourcing or crowdsourcing if other service providers bear lower costs in learning.The shift from traditional outsourcing to crowdsourcing,propelled by trading efficiency,has positively interrelated effects on the allocation of labor,productivity,the market size,and per capita real income as well,thus stimulating the high-quality economy development.The model in this paper could be used to analyze the nature of the digital economy.