最低工资政策对中国中小制造业企业创新的影响研究

Effects of Minimum Wage Policy on Innovation of Chinese Small and Medium Manufacturing Enterprises

最低工资政策与企业创新的关系在学术界有一定的争议。本文使用2001—2007年中国工业企业的数据库和全国城市最低工资的匹配数据,运用DID和Heckman两步法考察最低工资政策对中国中小制造业企业创新行为的影响。结果表明,最低工资标准的提高对企业的创新行为具有消极效应,对企业参与创新的可能性和企业创新的规模均具有负面影响。进一步异质性检验结果表明,这种负面影响对中小制造业中劳动密集型行业企业和出口企业更显著,且该负面影响随着最低工资政策的实施逐年增加。此外,机制检验结果表明,最低工资主要通过“成本效应”对企业创新产生负面影响,“就业效应”在促进企业创新中并不明显。相关结论可以为最低工资政策效果评价提供新的研究视角,也为我国完善最低工资政策设计提供决策依据。

The relationship between minimum wage policy and firm innovation is controversial in academia.Using a database of Chinese industrial firms and matched data on the national urban minimum wage from 2001 to 2007,this paper examines the effect of minimum wage policy on the innovation behavior of small and medium-sized manufacturing firms in China using the DID and Heckman two-step method.The results show that an increase in the minimum wage has a negative effect on firms'innovation behavior,with a negative impact on both the likelihood of firms'participation in innovation and the scale of firms'innovation.Further heterogeneity test results show that this negative effect is more significant for firms in labor-intensive industries and export enterprises in small and medium-sized manufacturing industries,and this negative effect increases year by year with the implementation of the minimum wage policy.In addition,the results of the mechanism test indicate that the minimum wage has a negative impact on firm innovation mainly through the"cost effect",while the"employment effect"is not significant in promoting firm innovation.The findings can provide a new research perspective for the evaluation of minimum wage policy effects,and also provide a decision basis for improving the design of minimum wage policy in China.