去杠杆的分配效应——来自中国工业部门的证据

Firm Debt and Labor Share——The Distributional Effect of De-Leverage

高杠杆是我国经济当前面临的主要挑战。本文构建模型说明,企业策略性负债能提升企业在劳资谈判中的筹码,进而压低劳动收入份额。实证分析发现,企业负债显著地降低了劳动收入份额,而且企业负债和劳动收入份额的关系随企业所有制、劳动密集度、工会力量和债务类型而变动。本文研究有助于理解劳动收入份额下降的原因,并进一步阐明了高杠杆对收入分配的危害,为我国经济去杠杆和缩小收入差距的经济政策提供了理论支持。

China is now facing the challenges of high leverage.Our study examines the role of firms’rising debt in explaining the decrease in labor share in recent years.We develop a model to show that firms may strategically use debt to increase their bargaining power,resulting in lower labor share.Empirical evidence shows the labor share is robustly negatively related to debt per worker,and the negative correlation varies across ownership,union and maturity of debt.The findings imply that the de-leveraging policy may help alleviate the worsening income inequality.