劳动保护与企业智能制造转型——来自机器人进口的证据

Employment Protection and Intelligent Manufacturing: Evidence from Imports of Robots

本文基于中国工业企业数据库与中国海关数据库的匹配样本,借助《劳动合同法》实施这一准实验,采用双重差分模型考察了劳动保护如何影响企业智能制造转型。研究发现,《劳动合同法》实施后,高劳动密集度行业中的企业相对于低劳动密集度行业中的企业,更倾向于应用机器人。这一结论在排除各种可能干扰因素后依然稳健。进一步研究发现,加强劳动保护确实提高了劳动力成本,存在要素替代效应倒逼企业智能制造转型升级,但更重要的是劳动保护稳定了雇佣关系,技能—资本互补效应加速了企业智能制造转型升级。本文揭示了保障劳动者合法权益与加快制造业智能制造转型并不矛盾,优化劳动力市场制度设计助力中国智能制造发展战略的推进落实是政策应有之义。

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that the focus of economic development should be placed on the real economy, promoting new industrialization and accelerating the construction of a strong manufacturing country. As the main direction of the strategy of building a strong manufacturing country, intelligent manufacturing plays an important role in promoting the high-end development of the manufacturing industry, fundamentally transforming the form of enterprises, leading the digital development and intelligent upgrade of industries, and helping China's manufacturing industry move toward the high end of the global value chain. Improving the labor market system and protecting the rights and interests of workers are important guarantees for building harmonious labor relations, which not only concerns the immediate interests of workers and enterprises but also economic development and social harmony. In theory, economic growth and social harmony are often difficult to balance in the development of a country. Therefore, this article aims to explore the impact and mechanism of labor protection on the transformation of intelligent manufacturing in enterprises. On the one hand, this is an interpretation of the balance between fairness and efficiency, and on the other hand, it can provide reliable empirical evidence for the Chinese government's institutional exploration of building harmonious labor relations and strengthening the concept of labor contracts and provide a solid institutional guarantee for promoting high-quality development of intelligent manufacturing.Based on the matched sample of the Chinese industrial enterprise database and the Chinese customs database from 2000 to 2013, this paper used the double-difference model and a quasi-experimental design of the implementation of the Labor Contract Law in 2008 to examine how labor protection affects the transformation of intelligent manufacturing in enterprises. The study found that after the implementation of the Labor Contract Law, enterprises in high-labor-intensive industries were more likely to use robots than those in low-labor-intensive industries. This conclusion remained robust after excluding various possible confounding factors. Furthermore, it was found that strengthening labor protection increased labor costs and led to factor substitution effects that forced enterprises to transform and upgrade to intelligent manufacturing. However, the more important factor was that labor protection stabilized employment relationships, and the complementary effect between skills and capital accelerated the transformation and upgrading of intelligent manufacturing in enterprises.The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows. First, intelligent manufacturing is a manufacturing mode that matches information technology with intelligent manufacturing equipment. Robots are important carriers of emerging technologies and key equipment for modern industries. This paper used customs trade data and enterprise robot import data to measure the application of intelligent manufacturing equipment technology at the enterprise level, providing a feasible micro-level measurement method for exploring the factors influencing the transformation of China's manufacturing industry toward intelligence. Second, unlike existing literature that mainly explores how the aging population and the minimum wage system force enterprises to use industrial robots through factor substitution effects, this paper found that labor protection stabilizes employment relationships and encourages enterprises to invest in human capital, and the complementary effect between skills and capital positively motivates enterprises to transform to intelligent manufacturing. Third, this paper further expands the evaluation of the economic effects of the implementation of the Labor Contract Law from a new perspective, emphasizing the promotion of labor market system improvement to encourage enterprises to accumulate more skilled human capital. This conclusion provides micro-level evidence for continuing to improve the Labor Contract Law to provide labor market institutional guarantees for the development of the manufacturing industry.