负重前行:经济增长压力的收入分配效应——基于企业劳动收入份额的视角

Going Forward with Heavy Burden:The Income Distribution Effects of Economic Growth Pressure

实现宏观经济持续稳定增长,是缩小收入分配差距的重要基础。但当做大“蛋糕”的压力持续增加、内生动力不足时,势必给分好“蛋糕”的政策目标带来挑战。为此,本文从经济增长目标管理视角构建增长压力测度指标,从理论模型和实证分析两个层面考察了经济增长压力与劳动收入份额的内在关系。研究结果显示,经济增长压力负向影响劳动收入份额,并且通过了一系列稳健性检验。机制分析发现,经济增长压力迫使地方政府在降低企业实际税负的同时,大力增加公共支出规模,但这些积极财政政策客观上扭曲了辖区企业既有要素投入结构,提高了资本密集度,进而降低了劳动收入份额。这一结论在城市经济增长压力感知与压力转嫁、企业间与企业内压力承担等方面,都存在着显著异质性。本研究不仅为探讨我国劳动收入份额的变动机理提供了新视角,也为新时代完善宏观经济治理模式、深化企业内部收入分配制度改革提出了政策启示。

At present,China’s development is facing many pressures and challenges,making it more difficult to keep the economy running smoothly.The external environment is complex and volatile,with global inflation still at a high level,the momentum of growth in the world economy and trade weakening,and various negative external shocks continuing to rise.The foundation for stable growth of the domestic economy still needs to be consolidated,and insufficient demand remains a prominent contradiction.Investment growth has slowed down;consumption growth has fallen;and export demand is low.Thus,the three engines pulling economic growth have all suffered from a lack of power.Moreover,China is still in the catching-up phase of its economic development and the critical phase of its climb to a high-income economy,so the rate of economic growth remains a crucial global economic variable.The expected target for China’s economic growth rate in 2023 is approximately 5%,which is medium-to high-speed growth from a high base and requires hard work to achieve.In the face of multiple pressures on the Chinese economy at home and abroad,the importance of maintaining the necessary economic growth rate has become more prominent.Meanwhile,the income gap among Chinese residents has always hovered at a high level,and under the existing economic pattern,the higher income gap will be a long-term trend,which poses a challenge to the policy objective of narrowing the income distribution gap.CPCCC’s proposals for the formulation of the 14th Five-Year Plan(2021-2025)for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 suggest that people will lead a better life,and more notable and substantial progress will be achieved in promoting well-rounded human development and achieving common prosperity for everyone.By 2035,the gap between the development of urban and rural areas and the living standards of the population will be significantly reduced.However,to narrow the income gap and achieve common prosperity,a certain economic scale and growth rate are required as a guarantee.When economic growth pressures continue to increase,they inevitably pose challenges to the policy objectives of income distribution.This important issue is addressed by exploring in depth the role of economic growth pressures on the share of the labor income of enterprises.Based on the perspective of local growth target management,this study measured the economic growth pressure indicators of each prefecture-level city from 2004 to 2019,matched them with listed companies,and examined in depth the impact of economic growth pressure on the share of the labor income of enterprises from theoretical and empirical perspectives.The main findings are as follows.First,the benchmark regression model reveals that economic growth pressures significantly reduce the labor income share of regional firms—a finding that remains robust after a series of robustness tests.Second,the mechanism analysis finds that economic growth pressures forced local governments to reduce the corporate tax burden and expand the scale of local government public expenditure,which further increased thecapital intensity of firms in the region,thereby reducing the share of firms’labor income. According to thegovernment’s balance-of-payments constant equation, the above behaviors are bound to widen itsbalance-of-payments gap,and further regressions find that economic growth pressures expand the size ofgovernment debt. Third,the study also analyzes in depth the economic growth pressure transfer process,which includes the following four parts:urban pressure perception,urban pressure transfer,as well asinter- and intra-firm pressure bearing. The results reveal that the impact of economic growth pressures onlabor income shares is more pronounced in regions with strong pressure perceptions,higher levels ofmarketization,and lower fiscal surpluses. At the inter-firm level,this is more pronounced in state-ownedfirms,non-technology-intensive firms,firms with stronger financing constraints,and firms with weakerbargaining power of employees. Within firms,economic growth pressures have led to a more pronounceddecline in the incomes of rank-and-file employees,with a non-significant impact on the proportion ofmanagement’s incomes,which has led to a widening of the gap in the distribution of incomes within firms.This study provides policy insights for optimizing China’s growth target management model andsustainably increasing the share of labor income. First,the setting of growth targets should take fullaccount of the actual economic growth capacity of each region. Based on the reality of unbalanced regionaldevelopment,the mobilization of economic growth targets should be tailored to local conditions,and thetarget setting should be endogenous to the economic growth capacity of each locality to avoid distortion,which would lead to the crowding out of the share of labor income resulting from irrational economicgrowth pressures. Second,active fiscal policies implemented to“stabilize growth”should be concernedabout the impact of their investment bias on the income distribution gap. The optimization of theinvestment structure of enterprises is an important element of China’s“14th Five-Year Plan”and animportant means of promoting the structural transformation of the economy. Positive fiscal policy shouldnot only incentivize enterprises to expand the scale of investment and promote economic growth in ajurisdiction but also promote the continuous improvement of the investment structure of enterprises.Taking into account the optimal labor factor allocation structure for the development of enterprises underdifferent ownership systems and in different industries,the policies implemented by local governmentsshould be tailored to the needs of each enterprise. Third,improving the macroeconomic governance modelshould be oriented toward favoring high-quality development. The new macroeconomic governance modelfor entering the new era should implement the new development concept in a complete,accurate,andcomprehensive manner;adhere to the basic synchrony between labor wage increases and laborproductivity increases as well as the basic synchrony between the growth of residents’incomes andeconomic growth;and synergistically promote the dual policy goals of sustained and stablemacroeconomic growth and significant reduction of the income distribution gap.